Last year on a snow day I posted about finding a digital copy of George Orwell's 1984. But this year's snow days are filled with music. That is, until I get my lazy ass out to shovel the 50 inches (no exaggeration) of snow at my house. But I'm still sore from shoveling the first 27 inches. The extra 19 we got yesterday is damn near going to kill me. As I write this I look out the window to see two assholes in dual axle trucks (one's got a plow even!) stuck in front of my house. Idiocy knows no boundaries.
15. Sonny Stitt - Two albums. Primitivo Soul! and Stitt Plays Bird. I really like Sonny Stitt and these are two quality albums which I did not even know existed until very recently.
14. Duke Robillard - The Unheard Tapes of Duke Robillard. For a disc (tape?) full of Duke's leftovers a whole lot of this stuff is very very good. Duke is the consummate musician.
13. The Mighty Sparrow - Calypso Carnival. The Mighty Sparrow is one of the preeminent Calypso artists ever from Trinidad. No Calypso genre would be complete without him.
12. Oliver De Coque - Two albums. Identity and I Salute Africa. These are vinyl rips which contain all the inequities of vinyl analog source. But they are a very good representation of African Highlife music.
11. Spyro Gyra - Stories Without Words. Actually I've recently added a slew of Spyro Gyra albums to my collection but this is the one I keep coming back to.
10. Darrell Mansfield Band - If such a genre of Christian Blues exists, this guy/band is at the top of the heap. Mansfield is an accomplished harp player and leader of this outfit. The music itself is top notch blues. It is not until you listen carefully to the lyrics that you hear the Christian message embedded within.
9. Eva Cassidy - Three albums. Songbird, American Tune, & Imagine. If I could pick a favorite I'd have listed only one. She's a local girl from Bowie, MD. A friend of mine gave me an Eva Cassidy live album late last summer and it's very good. So when I saw these three I scooped them up. Almost all of her success and recognition has come posthumously as she died of melanoma in 1996.
8. Foo Fighters - I've been listening to a number of their albums lately but mostly their first album, Foo Fighters, and one called The Color And The Shape.
7. Chet Atkins & Jerry Reed - Sneakin' Around. As you might imagine for a couple of country pickers this accomplished, Sneakin' Around leans heavily toward the jazz side of country. Outstanding!
6. Mare Edstrom - Mare's Blues. This is a compilation from three of her earlier releases. Edstrom is a classically trained vocalist and it shows. She is completely spot on with every note. This is almost unheard of in blues music (or in Super Bowl events either right, Carrie Underwear and Roger Daltrey?). While it's precision is something to marvel over, there seems to be little of the true blues passion which is at the heart of the music.
5. Jimmy D Lane - Legacy. Jimmy D Lane is the son of blues legend Jimmy Rogers. He was working a jackhammer for a construction company when Huber Sumlin gave him a Stratocaster. Once he decided on a musical career there was no turning back. Fans of Stevie Ray Vaughan will enjoy this disc immensely.
4. Dwight Yoakum - Again I have been listening to a bunch of his old albums. But the one I'll list in case anybody actually checks out any of the music I post here is Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.
3. Slim Harpo - Baby Scratch My Back. This was ripped from a vinyl source in mono! But it is an outstanding old blues album from 1966. I'm not sure if it's a compilation album or not but it does contain many of Harpos famous songs. In particular, Shake Your Hips, which was popularized by the Rolling Stones on Exile On Main Street.
2. The Forever Fabulous Chickenhawks - Live at the Gypsy Tea Room. I had read positive reviews about this album but had never run across it. I found it in Florida a couple weeks back and have been listening to it ever since. Very highly recommended.
1. Otis Rush - Right Place, Wrong Time. This album from 1971 completely blew me away. I did not know blues riffs were played like this in 1971. Otis Rush was a man way ahead of his time. Rest assured I will be seeking out more of his recordings going forward.
Nonetheless, I've come across some real good stuff to add to my collection lately and here's what I've been listening to while Mrs. Dog watches some zombie-shit on FearNet. Since it's been a long time since I posted one of these WAYLT articles, and since I have some free time to explore, I have to expand the list:
15. Sonny Stitt - Two albums. Primitivo Soul! and Stitt Plays Bird. I really like Sonny Stitt and these are two quality albums which I did not even know existed until very recently.
14. Duke Robillard - The Unheard Tapes of Duke Robillard. For a disc (tape?) full of Duke's leftovers a whole lot of this stuff is very very good. Duke is the consummate musician.
13. The Mighty Sparrow - Calypso Carnival. The Mighty Sparrow is one of the preeminent Calypso artists ever from Trinidad. No Calypso genre would be complete without him.
12. Oliver De Coque - Two albums. Identity and I Salute Africa. These are vinyl rips which contain all the inequities of vinyl analog source. But they are a very good representation of African Highlife music.
11. Spyro Gyra - Stories Without Words. Actually I've recently added a slew of Spyro Gyra albums to my collection but this is the one I keep coming back to.
10. Darrell Mansfield Band - If such a genre of Christian Blues exists, this guy/band is at the top of the heap. Mansfield is an accomplished harp player and leader of this outfit. The music itself is top notch blues. It is not until you listen carefully to the lyrics that you hear the Christian message embedded within.
9. Eva Cassidy - Three albums. Songbird, American Tune, & Imagine. If I could pick a favorite I'd have listed only one. She's a local girl from Bowie, MD. A friend of mine gave me an Eva Cassidy live album late last summer and it's very good. So when I saw these three I scooped them up. Almost all of her success and recognition has come posthumously as she died of melanoma in 1996.
8. Foo Fighters - I've been listening to a number of their albums lately but mostly their first album, Foo Fighters, and one called The Color And The Shape.
7. Chet Atkins & Jerry Reed - Sneakin' Around. As you might imagine for a couple of country pickers this accomplished, Sneakin' Around leans heavily toward the jazz side of country. Outstanding!
6. Mare Edstrom - Mare's Blues. This is a compilation from three of her earlier releases. Edstrom is a classically trained vocalist and it shows. She is completely spot on with every note. This is almost unheard of in blues music (or in Super Bowl events either right, Carrie Underwear and Roger Daltrey?). While it's precision is something to marvel over, there seems to be little of the true blues passion which is at the heart of the music.
5. Jimmy D Lane - Legacy. Jimmy D Lane is the son of blues legend Jimmy Rogers. He was working a jackhammer for a construction company when Huber Sumlin gave him a Stratocaster. Once he decided on a musical career there was no turning back. Fans of Stevie Ray Vaughan will enjoy this disc immensely.
4. Dwight Yoakum - Again I have been listening to a bunch of his old albums. But the one I'll list in case anybody actually checks out any of the music I post here is Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.
3. Slim Harpo - Baby Scratch My Back. This was ripped from a vinyl source in mono! But it is an outstanding old blues album from 1966. I'm not sure if it's a compilation album or not but it does contain many of Harpos famous songs. In particular, Shake Your Hips, which was popularized by the Rolling Stones on Exile On Main Street.
2. The Forever Fabulous Chickenhawks - Live at the Gypsy Tea Room. I had read positive reviews about this album but had never run across it. I found it in Florida a couple weeks back and have been listening to it ever since. Very highly recommended.
And the #1 album I've been listening to and recommend to you is...
1. Otis Rush - Right Place, Wrong Time. This album from 1971 completely blew me away. I did not know blues riffs were played like this in 1971. Otis Rush was a man way ahead of his time. Rest assured I will be seeking out more of his recordings going forward.
So that's it for now. Please leave any comments about what you're listening to or anything about the albums I've listed. I'll be happy to share whatever I know about the music. Time for me to go shovel snow.
2 comments:
i dont have my ipod handy as i'm in bed with the laptop so i know i'll mess up some names here and there....but i recently traded music with a friend whose brother lives in germany and has 150 gb of music. i picked up about 15 gb that i wanted from his collection. i'll revisit the foreign stuff in a few years and take some of it, but for now i stuck with what i know.
The Cure B sides and Rarities - I already had a lot of this stuff from cd singles and movie sountracks but I love the cure and try to get everything I can by them.
Depeche Mode - I had mostly the stuff they did while I was in college or just after. I now own a lot of their earlier stuff which is better in my opinion. Not sure I'll pull this out much, but nice to have. I prefer The Cure and Psychodelic Furs to DM.
The Alarm - good voice on that dude. Can't recall the album name.
The Beastie Boys - To The Five Boroughs. I owned every BB release except 3 and now I have them all. The thing I find infuriating about them is that with the exception of Licensed To Ill which I grew up on - I have a hard time listening to a complete album. I'll say a good 40% are throwaways.
Beck - Beck is an artist that I've always liked when I'd hear him but never owned a thing. I now have about 6 albums worth and the hit to miss ratio is huge. What I like I really like - what I don't I could delete.
The Buzzcocks - not sure of the album name but the number "30" keeps popping up in my head so maybe that's it. This shit kicks ass. I love it. There is something about straight ahead punk/rock that is very likable to me.
The Donnas - My friend Still A Cowbell has been into The Donnas for years. Now I know why. I have two, not sure of the names but again I've listened to each twice so far and I really like the songs.
Will do more later when I actually know the cds I'm talking about. This was about groups for me, not so much individual recordings.
Stilladog, it's all on 4 dvds which I figure I'll send down to you at some point.
I'm starting to get worried about the size of my library. I've got unused (by me anyway) music from a variety of sources sitting on various external hard drives, some attatched, some detatched, to my computer.
My real music library is over 51,000 songs and 330G. And I need to get some of this external stuff into the core library. No problem with iTunes except the hideously small 160G max on an iPod. But I'm on the threshold of maxing out my Sonos system.
The new Sonos maximum is roughly 65,000 tracks. But as you know, there's no real track limit. It's all memory size limits. So what it loads is all the indexes and metadata into each Sonos Zone (wireless ip address on your home network). Once you've exceeded the memory allocation Sonos randomly starts dropping stuff from your playable library.
Acquiring new music is like an addiction for me so I hope they resolve this issue before I load up another 10,000 tracks or I'm screwed. But Fan, you're done I'll peruse those DVDs to see what might be useful to me.
Of all the stuff you listed I think I only have The Donnas and only 1 CD of them. Buzzcocks and Beck I know and like, but do not own any.
Question to everyone: Would any value be added if I posted an album cover to the recordings I mention in these WAYLT posts??
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