Virtuosismo Newborn

More words will be spilled about Phineas Newborn, Jr. (and Calvin Newborn & Elvis) in a few days, but this tour de force just can't wait for my lazy brain to generate nouns, verbs, etc.

Ed's Top 18!

We've got a guest in the Tavern! Ed Moloy, modern manuscripts curator supreme & avid (indie) rock listener, has graced us with a top ten albums & top eight singles list for 2thousand10. I'm not too well schooled in these contemporary sounds, so the only name on the list that I recognize is Roky Erickson who helped start-up the legendary 60s Austin psychrock band 13th Floor Elevators. But if Ed is telling you this stuff be the cream of the crop, then you better believe it.

ALBUMS:
1.


















Sea of Bees - Marmalade [emusic]

2.


















Radio Dept. - Heaven's On Fire [emusic]

3.


















Kathryn Calder - Arrow [emusic]

4.


















First Aid Kit - Ghost Town [emusic]

5.


















Lower Dens - Blue & Silver [emusic]

6.


















Tamaryn - Sandstone [emusic]

7.


















Best Coast - Boyfriend [emusic]

8.

















Mynabirds - Ways of Looking [emusic]

9.


















Dean & Britta - It Don't Rain in Beverly Hills [emusic]

10.


















Sambassadeur - Small Parade [emusic]

SINGLES:

1.


















Lower Dens - Blue & Silver [emusic]

2.


















Aleo Blacc - I Need a Dollar [emusic]

3.


















Sunshine Factory - Down [emusic]

4.


















Best Coast - Boyfriend [emusic]

5.


















Sherlock's Daughter - Song for Old People [emusic]

6.


















Violens - Already Over [emusic]

7.


















Roky Erickson - Goodbye Sweet Dreams [emusic]

8.

















Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds [emusic]

sam quinn, chattanooga

I Hear Them All

Punk Rock Woody
When I first wrote about the Dave Rawlings Machine's Friend of a Friend I enthused about how a feeling of great possibility emanated from the album. Seeing the band live in 2009 at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston only confirmed that feeling. Fortunately, someone recorded the next night’s DRM show, and doubly-fortunate that recording just got passed on to me by my pal John. One of the stand-out tracks meshes fellow Machine and Old Crow Medicine Show member Ketch Secor’s beautiful “I Hear Them All” and Woody Guthrie’s sturdy and triumphant sing-a-long “This Land is Your Land.” It’s one of those heaven-made matches.

I Hear Them All - Dave Rawlings Machine
This Land is Your Land - Dave Rawlings Machine

There are different versions of “This Land,” and I don’t think it’s an accident that Rawlings & friends decided to include two of the “extra” verses of “This Land” when they paired it with “I Hear.” While the most well known version of the song celebrates the natural wonders of the land and the right for all to full participation in the life of the country, the extra verses call attention to the stark economic inequities and exclusionary practices which deny this right.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Those verses jive quite well with the sentiments expressed in “I Hear.”

I hear the crying of the hungry
In the deserts where they're wandering
Hear them crying out for Heaven's own
Benevolence upon them
Hear destructive power prevailing
I hear fools falsely hailing
To the crooked wits of tyrants when they call.

It’s not hard to imagine finding those lines in the pages of the lefty folk magazine Broadside or being sung, like Woody’s song, at a 60s anti-war rally. And while a lot has changed in the country for the good since the sixties, there’s still plenty of same as it ever was injustice and rabid inequality. Perhaps at no time during the past 50 years was this more evident than during the Bush administration’s sorry, and yes, racist response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. OCMS did right by the post-Katrina gulf stream waters town of New Orleans when they filmed the “I Hear” video there.



Both are deeply American songs of affirmation: your voice will be heard and this sprawling landscape and all-men-are-created-equal idea called America has room for everyone. They are affirmations only partially incarnated throughout our history (to put it all too kindly), but they place a demand on us to find ways to make that incarnation more true to the ideals expressed.

If the world serves up a shot of the Machine in a town near you, get yourself to the bar lickety-split. Here’s the band singing the gospel at Bonnaroo 2010.

Tony Tengo

Dig the fadeout...
Yo La Tengo - Let's Save Tony Orlando's House [buy]

Happy Birthday Elvis

Thought I'd celebrate the 76th birthday of Elvis with a few originals the Big E reworked under the Memphis Sun.
That's Alright - Arthur Crudup
Blue Moon of Kentucky - Mr. Bill Monroe
Mystery Train - Little Junior Parker
Milk Cow Blues - Kokomo Arnold
I Want to Play House with You - Eddy Arnold

And here's one of my favorite songs by The 60s King:
That's Someone You Never Forget - Elvis Presley

Elvis stirring up delirium with far too much ease:

not in faith and not in madness

Another year presents itself -- plural, shifting, novel, offering us black ice and chance once more to step outside.

All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby --
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,
or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,
opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music. But once
in the night I heard a sound
outside the door, the canvas
bulged slightly -- something
was pressing inward at eye level.
I watched, trembling, sure I had heard
the click of claws, the smack of lips
outside my gauzy house --
I imagined the red eyes,
the broad tongue, the enormous lap.
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.
Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it?
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope --
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?
-- Mary Oliver, "The Chance to Love Everything"

most things haven't worked out

Crawling around in the dirt. Crawling around in the dirt between the rows of blooming, blinding white cotton in the field to the side of Junior's old country juke, and this woman, Lord she must have been sixty, she was out there crawling around in the dirt with me, I'm not lyin'! Both of us out there in the sun, drunk on white lightnin' in the middle of the day! And it was Sunday! Amps turned up all the way inside the shack, drums making the floorboards boom, you could hear it fine. Yeah out there in the dirt.
--Robert Palmer "Out There in the Dirt" (from Blues & Chaos)

Palmer was out there in the dirt, trying to find what people go looking for when they're drunk on shine - sex, laughter, the throb of life lived a little on the edge - even if only for a drunk Sunday in the country. And while those words are from the liner notes to Junior Kimbrough's All Night Long, they speak the truth for Most Things Haven't Worked Out, Kimbrough's album released a year after he passed away at age 67. From the sound of "I'm in Love" it doesn't seem like the old dog was ready to give up the ghost. Kimbrough comes on strong, talking about making love all night and how he can't help himself. The man may be close to the other shore, but he's still got both feet in the muddy waters of life. But words aren't even half the point of a song this elemental and driven. Everything which needs to be said comes from Kimbrough's guitar surging on the heavy bottom current provided by Gary Burnside (R.L.'s son) on bass and Kenny Malone (Junior's son) on drums.

Junior Kimbrough - I'm In Love [buy it at Fat Possum]

when i came home from work

Sybille Baier - Tonight [buy at orange twin]

Grateful Handle

The Dead, thoroughly in the bag, with Pigpen fronting on Hard to Handle, churning up the R&B dance grooves, with some, it has to be said, slomo camera to catch freedom in motion. With Pig belting through covers of his beloved r&b, soul, and blues classics, the Dead had a strut about them that was lost when McKernan passed on. He looks very in his element in a great clip from "A Night at the Family Dog" circa 1970.