waiting with bated breathe for your next entry. Also super looking forward to that threatened smack down of my Lets Get It On >>>> What's Going On take of mine lol _________________ -Ryan
waiting with bated breathe for your next entry. Also super looking forward to that threatened smack down of my Lets Get It On >>>> What's Going On take of mine lol
I liked reading your Emmylou Harris thing. I think you're a good writer. When it comes to Emmylou Harris I have the opposite taste of her fans. They all seem to agree that her albums White Shoes and Cimarron suck, but they're actually my personal favorites besides Luxury Liner. White Shoes has her very best track on it, In My Dreams. And it also has Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, which I think is one of her top 5 or 10 tracks. I guess I just have weird taste. Heh heh.
baystateoftheartNeil Young as a butternut squashProfile Massachusetts
So, in regards to The Free Design record I recommended before, I've been exploring their discography more lately. While the best of is probably still the best introduction for a newcomer, here are my top three albums for further exploration. Honorable mention to "Kites Are Fun." Didn't love "Heaven / Earth."
Hey there sunshine!
Don't let me down
Hey there sunshine!
Please come around
Hey there sunshine!
My friend! (Hello Sunshine)
As anyone who’s seen The Trolls movie knows, moods are contagious. And no one knew this better than Jimmy Cliff. His early career was one giant happy face emoticon. Bursting with positive vibrations. He was the perfect artist to christian the 70s as the decade of Sunshine Pop (just stole this from Baystate. Thanks, Baystate! Go Pats!). At the time when The Smiley Face icon beamed from a thousand coffee mugs and the parting phrase “Have a Nice Day” greeted you from virtually every bumper sticker on that family truckster station wagon just in front of you. These icons became ubiquitous parts of the 70s culture. Hell, even my cookie jar was one big giant yellow smiley face growing up (typically filled with my Dad’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies! Yum!). Before the 70s, no one said “Have a Nice Day” as a parting remark. It’s true!. It was just “Goodbye.” Or maybe “See you later”. Have a Nice Day and the Smiley face were inescapable & quintessential pieces of 70s culture. Like the guerrilla art of those Andre the Giant stickers in the late 80s, you just couldn’t escape it.
I'm gonna use what I got
To get what I need
I'm gonna use what I got, use all I got
To get what I need, yeah (Use What I Got)
And Jimmy Cliff was the embodiment of this 70s spirit. That a smile & a healthy dose of moxie could make your life better. Make your dreams come true. As the real life Don Draper ingeniously framed it - “Have a Coke and a smile.” And suddenly all things are possible. This was the ethos of the 70s. 60s Hippies culture made accessible, commodified & mass marketed. Making the world feel better about themselves and their possibilities while collecting a tidy profit on the side. Everybody wins. Everybody smiles. And Jimmy Cliff was the embodiment of this - part happy go lucky shaman, part cunning, street smart rude boy.
I've got a hard road to travel
And a rough rough way to go
Said it's a hard road to travel
And a rough rough way to go
But I can't turn back, my heart is fixed
My mind's made up, I'll never stop
My faith will see, see me through (Hard Road To Travel)
For the 1972 film The Harder They Come, you were initially hired to write the films score. How is it you ended with the lead role?
When Perry Henzell [films director] saw me, and I answered him to one question, he asked, Do you think that you can write some music for a movie I am making? I answered him, What do you mean if I think? I can do it.” [Laughs.] So, that answer made him say, This is the man that I want to do my movie.
And that, ladies & gentleman is Jimmy Cliff in a nutshell. Eternal optimism. Despite living in abject poverty and being from the “cliffs” of Jamaica, he totally believed in himself. In his possibilities. And there is immense spiritual power in that. If you ask any star athlete if they’re the best [enter position here]. They all unreservedly boast “YES!”. And they all believe it. Really, really believe it. Most may sound at best a tad delusional and at worst like total cocky assholes, but without that belief , they wouldn't be a professional athlete to begin with. The day they lose that belief is the day they’re no longer kicking field goals through the uprights from 60 yards out (Go Gostkowski!). If you don’t think you can guard Steph Curry… well you can’t. And Jimmy believed. Really, really believed. And basically browbeat record store clerks up and down the streets of Kingston to produce him at the age of fourteen until he at last found someone (the great Leslie Kong aho had never even produced a record before) who believed in him as much as he did.
“He [Leslie Kong] was the one who said to me first, Youve got the best voice that Ive ever heard in Jamaica. And when he said that to me, I said somebody believes like I believe. [Laughs.]”
And that’s the secret to success for anything. Not having any doubt. And finding kindred spirits. Finding people who believe in you. People who can pick you back up when the tides knock you down. People who can put you on a whole new beach & gift you an entirely new horizon. (Thanks, Komo!) A whole new way of seeing yourself and your situation. Because if a hayseed from the cliffs of Jamaica could become a movie star and inducted into the rock n’ roll hall fame, what’s to stop YOU!
2 Timothy 1:7 … For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
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Grade: A-. I actually own two versions of this album. They’re both entitled Wonderful World, Beautiful People (its title for its American release). But they have completely different track listings. One it turns out is a hodgepodge comp of Jimmy’s work during this period with Leslie Kong released on the Castle Pie label in 1999. And ya know what? I just ordered more. That’s right. I just splurged twenty bucks for yet another CD comp entitled Harder Road To Travel: The Collection (Truth be told I thought I was getting a double LP of all his 60s singles AND this album! Read the fine print, Repo!!! (Or really. Just read!)) for even more of his work with Leslie Kong. And this is on top of already owning the super deluxe double cd collection of The Harder They Come soundtrack. Overkill? Not even close. Because this stuff is maybe the most life affirming, positive thinking music out there.
The album that epitomizes the Have a Nice Day, Smiley Faced mind state that I need to be all about. Songs about prevailing. NO MATTER WHAT. Staying positive. NO MATTER WHAT. So find your Leslie Kong, people. Believe in yourself. No matter what. Because that’s not just half the battle. It is the battle.
And this ray of sunshine pop beams down to to somewhere in the 30s on my Essentials chart. Along with The Harder They Come soundtrack, this is the Jimmy Cliff album that every fan of 70s rock should own.
The Essentials
30. Gene Clark - No Other
31. Real Estate - Days
32. V.A. - The Harder They Come
33. Beach House - Bloom
34. John Phillips - John, The Wolf King of L.A.
35. Townes Van Zandt - High, Low and In Between
36. Emmylou Harris - Pieces of The Sky
37. Bob Dylan - New Morning
38. Jimmy Cliff - Wonderful World, Beautiful People
39. Real Estate - Real Estate
40. Deerhunter - Fading Frontier
So many bangers. Could slum it with the punks, drink with the rednecks, smoke with the hippies, and get deep in conversation with the folkies, often all at once. A natural pop songwriter in the truest sense, his ability to knock out a seemingly effortless three-minute wonder was almost unrivaled, and didn't desert him for a good two decades, from the mid-'70s to the mid-'90s (and possibly later, though I'm unfamiliar with his more recent stuff). I'm a relatively late convert, and I definitely get the sense that his music spoke more openly to Americans than it did Europeans, but it's no less devastating. - The Immortal Skinny
Some friends of mine and me stayed up all through the night
Rockin' pretty steady till the sky went light
And didn't go to bed
Didn't go to work
I picked up the telephone
Told the boss he was a jerk (Anything’s That Rock n' Roll)
The rock critics called them the three angry young men - Costello, Jackson, and… and…. you know… that other guy. But, to me their were only two that mattered - Elvis Costello and Tom Petty. Petty & his Heartbreakers were the American answer to England Pub Rock. Taking the torch from The legendary Flamin’ Groovies and bringing fun, fresh fireworks back to rock in the good ol’ USA.
But Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers weren't just some retro revivalists. They took rock BOTH forward & backward at the same time. Often in the very same song. Taking rock back to its primal, ass kicking basics, but adding a freshness and punch that just wasn’t there before. More snotty. More keyboards.. And way more vocal tics & idiosyncrasies. The hallmarks of New Wave are all over this album, and it could easily be proffered up as the FIRST New Wave classic. Hell, on some songs, such as Luna, they really weren’t that far from what Ric Ocasek would achieve with The Cars debut (easily one of the greatest New Wave albums of all time).
Tom Petty nowadays has the rep of being a retro artist, but his early records were clearly pointing mostly in one direction - the future.
Grade: A. Interestingly, if Petty had only made this debut, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers would probably have been considered a a New Wave pioneer - packaged on one of those Rhino CD collections of 70s New Wave nuggets. It just so happened that Petty had other ideas.
A-side: My only gripe with this album is that it’s pretty obvious that American Girl was tacked on at the end as “the single..” It just doesn’t flow from the preceding track, Luna. Talk about minor quibbles. In other words, this album is fantastic. Especially considering American Girl is one of the best Rock n’ Roll singles of the 70s.
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The Essentials
20. Harold Budd - The Pavillion of Dreams
21. XX - The XX
22. Paul McCartney - McCartney
23. Beach House Bloom
24. Virginia Astley - From Gardens...
25. Yo La Tengo - And the Nothing...
26. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - s/t
27. Mazzy Star - So Tonight
28. A Winged Victory for the sullen - s/t
29. The Fun Years - One Quarter Descent
I was just being thorough. I had no intentions of reviewing this album. Zero. Zilch. Placing it in my Mellow Zone. I had heard it a half a dozen times in the past and my sense was that of many others - the National had not yet become THE National yet. They hadn’t found themselves. If they had just released this, they would have been forgotten. Probably not even worthy of the bargain bin since no one would even have had the foggiest idea who they were. A second or third tier indie rock band with alt country leanings. Nothing more.
But, I was trying to figure out that critical point. When The National became THE National. Survey says it’s Alligator. And they’re totally right. Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers is definitely still a transition album. And a really, really good one at that. They were right on the cusp of who they were set to become with their next release, the now modern classic, Alligator.
But as I said, I’m thorough. I wanted to give their debut one more chance. The album that no one talks about. My version of Make or Break Time you might say. (Cheers, Palladisiac)
So I burnt it a couple of weeks ago. Placed it on a cd and loaded it up on my 6 cd changer in my car. And I need to mention a critical fact here. Without which this little discovery would likely never have happened.
My car is old. Like really old. So old it doesn’t even have an auxiliary input. I’ve tried to get the radio changed over the years, but it’s literally impossible since the radio is somehow built into the car’s security system or something. It mechanical so it’s way over my head. I’ve brought it to several people who always say “No Problem” which inevitably changes to “Big Problem” over the course of the day. So I’m stuck with cds. Which were NOT made for cars. At all. There a royal pain in the ass in a car. God I miss my tape deck. Cassettes. Now those knew how to behave on the road. lol.
So… where was I? Right. So I threw The National’s debut into my cd player two weeks ago. And it hasn’t left since. And there’s mighty fierce competition going on in that 6 cd changer of mine - Jansch, Buckley (Tim of course), Vampire Weekend, Haim, and of course my kids’ favorite fave The Trolls soundtrack. BUT, because it’s a 6 cd changer It’s ridiculously hard to change cds while driving. It literally takes about 10 seconds to eject and then load a different cd. I’m telling you - my car is like them hills out back. Except blacker. So there is a certain level of inertia to my listening habits. But, you know what? That’s turned out to be a good thing. And I’ve really gotten to know and understand certain albums because of it. Fallen in love with things that I otherwise would have glanced over. Never seen. So thank you, CD changer! Sorry I’ve tried to get rid of you so many times!
Grades: The National get a lot of shit for making the same album over & over again. But that’s bullshit. On these first two albums, they have a remarkably different sound except for Behringer’s distinctive baritone. The drums. The production. The arrangements. The atmosphere. That was yet to come. But these are two incredibly solid (Indie Rock > Alt Country ) albums. Fans of The National NEED to check them out. They BOTH deserve more respect than been’s paid in the past. They’re both slow growers that yield their pleasures more & more on repeated spins. “I Never Happened” from Sad Songs is a particular gem.
Music wise, there’s not much to talk about here. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. It’s standard fare indie rock with alt country leanings. But it’s done well. Really, really well. And once they discovered their own sound (with some amazing help from some friends as I will talk about later), it’s no surprise really that they would become THE National.
As someone who is not a big fan of The National (especially anything off their last several albums), I always find it strange how much hate that first album gets. I think "Pay For Me" and "Anna Freud" are both great songs. It might be that country flavor here that I like that is completely absent from any other release.
As someone who is not a big fan of The National (especially anything off their last several albums), I always find it strange how much hate that first album gets. I think "Pay For Me" and "Anna Freud" are both great songs. It might be that country flavor here that I like that is completely absent from any other release.
That sucks. I haven't listened to their last two yet. I was really into Alligator, The Virginia EP, & Boxer when they came out. I was pretty surprised how much I've been digging their first two! 😁
As someone who is not a big fan of The National (especially anything off their last several albums), I always find it strange how much hate that first album gets. I think "Pay For Me" and "Anna Freud" are both great songs. It might be that country flavor here that I like that is completely absent from any other release.
I'm the polar opposite to you I guess, Chief. I'm a massive fan of The National, they made up such an important part of my high school experience. And I'll admit I agree with you about the two aforementioned tracks. I'll also confess that I've only heard their debut twice and I'm pretty dismissive with it, I probably haven't given as much attention as I should've in my only two sittings with it. So thanks Till, I'll give another before the year ends because what you wrote was fantastic. You're a brilliant writer. _________________ Some RYM paraphernalia:
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