Muswell Hillbillies

Check out the beard on Dave "Death of A Clown" Davies:

The Broken West

A certain fella I used to work with is a big fan of KEXP out of Seattle. He used to listen to that station at work on the computer every day. Overall, the selection of music is pretty cool (although if i ever hear that f'in Peter Bjorn & John song again I'll kill, i promise), and for a while they used to play this really cool power pop/rock song a few times a day. Every time it came on, I would ask my colleague to turn up his speakers. That song was "Down In The Valley" by the LA band The Broken West, whose album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" came out (relatively) recently on Merge Records. The song rocks kicks so much ass that I find myself listening to it several times every day. It has one of the most infectious choruses I've heard in a while, and the harmonies are amazing.
Check it out: "Down In The Valley"
Here's their myspace page

Also, I just noticed right now that The Broken West is playing TONIGHT at the Bowery Ballroom, but they are also playing at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ on the 31st. I really want to see them live, who else is down??

New Releases

Out tomorrow:

Johnette Napolitano (of Concrete Blonde) - Scarred
Russian National Orchestra - Dead Symphony: An Orchestral Tribute To The Music of The Grateful Dead
Satellite Party - Ultra Payloaded
Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior

Reissues:
Jeff Beck - Official Bootleg USA '06
Black Oak Arkansas - Live Mutha
Richard Hawley - S/T
Nils Lofgren and Grin - 1+1/All Out
Ray Price - The Essential
Judee Sill - Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973
The Smithereens - Green Thoughts
The Spinners - Love Trippin'
Various - The Transformers: The Movie (1986 Soundtrack)
Various - '90's Anthems (Import) (ed. Pick of the Week).
Various - Real Life Permanent Dreams: A Cornucopia of British Psychadelia 1965-1970 (Import Box Set)

DVD
Dinosaur Jr - Live From The Middle East

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Day 1

I was up in the Northeast area this weekend and by default found myself in a Newbury Comics. Amongst other finds, I discovered they had all the remastered "20 Bit K2 Super Coding" Creedence Clearwater Revival albums brand new for $5. I picked up a handful of the band's classic albums and have thoroughly enjoyed listening to them.

I figured I would do a series of CCR related posts (to justify my spending habits) including some album tracks, live cuts, John Fogerty solo work and cap it off with some selections of Fogerty backed by Bruce and the E Street Band from the good intentioned Vote For Change tour.

To get things off is Susie Q from CCR's first album. The reason I am posting this well known track is twofold. First, I went to summer camp with a girl named Susie Q (though I don't know how her family name was actually spelled). We pondered whether she knew of the song and would sing it to her along with playing her the track but sadly I feel she had no clue that the song was legit and felt we were horsing around at her expense.

The second reason is that Susie Q is a killer track. The band jam this rockabilly wonder out to over 8 minutes, something you will not have actually heard if your memory of this song is from the radio or the band's greatest hits which has an edited version at half the length. Trust me that this song has a groove that is indestructible and fucking jams.

Susie Q as mentioned is featured on the band's first album and is the standout track. It's a good portrayal of what CCR would unveil on its audience in the future. Sometimes I forget (because of their presence on the radio) just how dynamite an act CCR was and the power of their catologue. I'd even go as far as to state, that Creedence may be one of the more underrated groups of its time and its caliber as of today. There aren't many young bands citing them as influences or much scholarship noting their impact on popular music but it would be hard to ignore them in the pantheon of rock.

So take a listen and come back in the next few days to check out more tunes from CCR.

CCR- Susie Q

Antibalas and Your Gut

Antibalas started out as an afrobeat band, albeit a very good afrobeat band. But by their fourth release, Security, they have begun to reinvent the wheel and turned themselves and the genre into something that can be both traditional, experimental and a fucking hoot.

If you've never heard Antibalas before let me paint you a picture. Imagine your at the circus and in front of you is that tiny car and clowns just keep exiting from the passenger door. After a few moments you begin to wonder just how many clowns can fit in one damn car. No, maybe there's a trap door underneath the vehicle. Now imagine each clown is carrying an instrument. Congas, organs, piano, clavinet, synths, trumpets, saxophones, guitars, trombones, basses, drums, dulcimers, and things I can't spell and you may not be able to pronouce. Once out the car, they all assemble on some stage that can barely contain them, let alone, instruments, and begin to make music as magical and wondrous as the clowns piling out of the car.

That is Antibalas.

Security is comprised of only a few tracks but clocks in at a normal length. It's filled with horns that both pucker and blurt, synths galore and a rhythmic madness that is always dedicated to the groove which is why Antibalas remains great. For all the new sounds and fresh ideas the band keeps everything revolving around that groove, never letting it get out of its site for even a moment. Like a cautious parent at Disneyland. Except Antibalas aren't particularly cautious, at least they don't come off as such, they just know what is best to serve the music.

As with the group's last album, Who Is This America?, Security is political fare with tracks titled Filibuster X and War Hero and artwork featuring a painting of lots of colorful people pact in a stadium and lots of different flags running through the space's center. This record came out on Anti.

Antibalas - Sanctuary

The Go - Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride

Detroit retro rockers The Go have released their new album, Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride. I've followed the band since getting turned on to their 1999 Sub Pop debut "Whatcha Doin", which blew me away. With catchy tunes, and killer fuzz, The Go would have fit in well with their Detroit brethren circa 1970. They've since moved away slightly from the full throttle garage stompers to more mid-tempo rock songs. Their last self titled album from '03 had an almost glam/rock feel to it. On the new album though, songwriters Bobby Harlow and John Krautner have fully embraced '60s British pop/rock. Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride has songs that sound like they could have been outtakes from Revolver, Between The Buttons, or Something Else. If you're into the Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Hollies, Creation, Pretty Things etc. then check out this album as soon as you can.
Heres a song: You Go Bangin' On, which is also available on their myspace page, where you can see their upcoming tour dates also.
Or Better yet, screw myspace and go to their own website.

Jesse Malin and Bruce Sprongsteen - Broken Radio

Check out whose driving cabs in NYC.

iPod on Random

So the Mets reader's of HBBB must be a pretty happy bunch while the Yankees fans around here are pondering their team's existence at the moment. Word is that the Yank brass may be getting trigger happy soon and there are a few heads in the barrel to shoot at though the most obvious choices to aim at really can't be blamed (it's not like Torre or Gator created Murphy's Law, though the Cash-Master could readily be at fault for putting this staff together). My favorite quote from this whole debacle, outside of all the amazing subtle threats to Pavano is Torre talking about the reserve pitching staff in AAA. He said something like, I knew we had a bunch of good players down there but I didn't expect to be seeing them all this year.

Anyway, I sort of hope they don't ax Torre and install Bova, Girardi or Matts since this is a mess no one should have to inherit and Torre deserves to ride the season out with his boys.

Up to tonight is John Maine against some guy named Tyler Clippard (11th Yanks starter of the season) who is making his major league debut tonight on national TV. The pressure is on.

Dead Faces - Okkkervil River - Down The River Of...
Blue Angel - Roy Orbison - The Essential
When You're Walking Away - Jackie Greene - American Myth
Get Off This - Cracker and Leftover Salmon - O' Cracker Where Art Thou?
Mrs. Robinson - The Lemonheads - It's A Shame About Ray
Fixture In The Park - Kate And Anna McGarrigle - Pronto Monto
Three Changes - The Good, The Bad & The Queen - S/T
Simply Thrilled Honey - Orange Juice - The Glasgow School
I and I Are The Chosen - Prince Far I - Free From Sin
Lullaby For A Girl Friend (Happy Trails) - Memphis - I Dreamed We Fell...

New Releases

Out this Tuesday:

Tim Armstrong - A Poet's Life
Meg Baird - Dear Companion
The Bravery - The Sun and The Moon
Michael Brecker - Pilgrimage
Chick Corea and Bela Fleck - The Enchantment
Erasure - Light At The End Of The World
Handsome Furs - Plague Park
Kidz Bop Kids - Kidz Bop Country
KRS One - Hip Hop Lives
The National - The Boxer
Uncle Monk - S/T
Loudon Wainwright - Strange Weirdos - Music From and Inspired By The Film Knocked Up
Adrienne Young - Room To Grow

Reissues:

The Beach Boys - The Warmth Of The Sun (ed. pick of the week: This looks like an excellent Beach Boys mix and not so much a best of).
Jeff Buckley - So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley
Maynard Ferguson - The Essential
Benny Goodman - The Essential
Charles Mingus - Tijuana Brass
Nina Simone - Just Like A Woman: Nina Sings Classic Songs of the '60's

On The Horizon:
Bruce Springsteen, Afghan Whigs, Mark Olson, John Doe, Sonic Youth, Traveling Wilburys, Bryan Ferry, The Mooney Suzuki, Nick Lowe

Warren Zevon Stand In The Fire

In the last few weeks a plethora of Warren Zevon material was released. First up was a wave of reissues on Rhino including two never before released on CD albums (Stand In The Fire and The Envoy). Also reissued and remastered was the classic and near perfect Excitable Boy.

New West Records released Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings and Crystal Zevon, Warren's ex-wife just published I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon. The book is supposed to be pretty interesting and very revealing of the Zevon that not many people knew.

Stand In The Fire is a Zevon live album recorded at the Roxy. It's pretty killer and makes me sad that the man ain't here to rock like this.

Here's Excitable Boy from that record.

Afrobeat

So far this year I think my favorite new album of the year has to be The Good, The Bad and The Queen. It's been the album I have given the most listens to and oddly enough the second most listened to new album I can claim is Jarvis Cocker's Jarvis so if one of the Oasis guys decides to record and release a side project or solo album I'd may have a Brit-pop trifecta on my shelves.

The other day, I thought I'd check out some music by Tony Allen who plays drums in TGTBTQ and is a well known and regarded afro-beat musician. I'd read somewhere that Damon Albarn appears on an Allen record and planned on picking that up and thought I did. Apparently though, I read the sticker on the album wrong and ended up purchasing an Afrobeat comp on Honest Jon's Records, Albarn's label, of tracks selected my him and his buddies while abroad.

I was bummed at first, but put Lagos All Routes - Juju & Highlife, Apala & Fuji on and was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying the whole thing. Afrobeat is a lot like Reggae in that it is highly effective in putting you in a good mood and keeping you there. It's music that keeps your head bopping and body a grooving and you got to love that.

The posted track is Eyi Yato / Elere Ni Wa by Ebenezer Obey. Enjoy

TREY DAY 1: UPDATED....

Dearest Readers,

I come to you with exciting news from the land of upstate New York! All you post-college, post-tour, post-post folks who pretend that you never listened to Phish, never jammed out to dank, crispy board tapes, never jumped the fence to sneak in to a summer tour show listen up... we've got a mystery on our hands....

Rumors have been flying about former Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and his current whereabouts since his sentencing for a recent drug possession and driving violation. He has been seen quite a few times in downtown Saratoga Springs, NY in the past month. I have been hired by the Hendo Bendo team to seek out as much information as possible, in the hopes that I can find the hero that is Trey. My identity will remain secret as I cannot let my "inside sources" be known.

RUMOR #1:
Trey is living in a mansion apartment on Circular Street in Saratoga Springs, NY; chance that this is true - 50/50 - certainly an appropriate location for Trey.

RUMOR #2:
Trey is living in a luxury condo above Banana Republic on Broadway in Saratoga Springs, NY; chance that this is true - 50/50 - also another appropriate location, although a bit "nouveau faux riche" for our hero.

RUMOR #3:
Trey was seen playing guitar in Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, NY; chance that this is true - 10/90 - would our red-headed wonderboy risk revealing his location by playing in such a publicly populated place?

RUMOR #4: (*New!*)
Trey will be teaching a music class at Skidmore College; truth chance - 80/20 - 95% of the Skidmore College population would drop their bongs and head for the music building if they heard that Trey was teaching.

TRUTH #1:
Trey was seen buying a large coffee at a local Saratoga Springs coffee shop this morning. No Starbucks for this star! Go Trey!

TRUTH #2: (*New!*)
Trey was seen at Borders on Broadway last week buying books. Boo Trey -- skip the chain and stop by the Lyrical Ballad!


Stay tuned for more Trey in 'Toga updates as the plot thickens! Feel free to share any intel you have in the comment section below....

Signing off,
Kenneth Gaines

Top Ten Songs You Would Live In

Ever seen Mary Poppins? There's a scene where Bert, Mary and the kids with a little magic jump into sidewalk chalk drawings and end up in a cartoon world where the animals dance and the merry go rounds come alive. So I got thinking while listening to something earlier today about a strange idea that reminds me of that. If you could jump into a song or a world of songs by one specific artists what would they be? Desolation Row? Yoshimi? I think you catch my drift.

I'm working on a post cum essay about the music of Jackson Browne but wanted to post Take It Easy today because it's where my heads at. One of my favorite things to do is bash The Eagles and I hate them because they recorded this song, denying Jackson Browne's version from being the famous one. Hell, he wrote the thing so his should be the one anyway. The song is great though, and even if a shitty band like The Eagles cover it, they can't wipe out its' inherent magic. Gotta love all that pedal steel too.

The Detroit Cobras - Tied And True

The Detroit Cobras just released their new album, Tied & True on Bloodshot Records. The Cobras have easily been one of my favorite bands the last few years. I have really loved their 3 previous LPs as well as the 7 Easy Pieces EP. The combination of rollicking r&b rave-ups with slow-burning ballads has worked really well. When you add the amazing vocals of Rachel Nagy, you get some really great records. However, I've seen the band live 3 times, and have left dissapointed each time. At best, it was just a good show, not great, and at its worst it was uninspired. The energy level just isn't the same as it is on record, and the band has just seemed like they werent really into it. Needless to say, I was a little worried about what their new album would sound like. On first listen, I was not really blown away. It seemed like the band had lifted a little off the gas pedal. The song selection, which has always been stellar, didn't seem to highlight the band's strengths. On further listens, the album has really grown on me. The overall sound is really great, with the band's sometime guitarist Greg Cartwright manning the controls. Whereas on previous albums, the ballads were some of the better tracks, I think the slower paced songs on Tied and True drag a little bit. Overall, the album is definetly worth a purchase, it's just not as amazing as their other stuff. It also features "On A Monday", made famous by the man Johnny Cash.

Check it out:
As Long As I Have You

New Releases

Out This Tuesday:

Tori Amos - American Doll Posse
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
Doyle Bramhall - Foodland
Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond (ed. pick of the week)
Feist - The Reminder
Robbie Fulks - Revenge (2 disc live set)
The Puppini Sisters - Betcha Bottom Dollar (ed. pick - 3 part do wop female harmonies and covers of interesting tracks including The Smiths' Panic)
Rush - Snakes & Arrows
Tangerine Dream - Madcap's Flaming Duty (dedicated to Syd Barrett)
VA -Spiderman 3 Soundtrack

Reissue Front
Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!, Trust, Almost Blue, Imperial Bedroom, Punch The Clock, Goodbye Cruel World, King Of America, Blood & Chocolate, The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years, Rock and Roll Music - Key Album Tracks, B-sides, and unreleased tracks

Steve Earle -20th Century Masters: The Best of Steve Earle - The Millennium Collection
John Eddie - S/T
Marcia Griffiths - Melody Life: Reggae Anthology
David Johansen - In Style
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Architecture & Morality
VA - Dirty Dancing: 20th Anniversary Edition (20 years, man!)
Warren Zevon - Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings (ed. pick of the week)

Books:
Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica 33 1/3 Series
MC5 - Guitar Army: Rock And Revolution With The MC5 and the White Panther Party
Charlie Parker -Chasin' The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker
Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker
Warren Zevon: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon

iPod on Random

Traces - Built To Spill - You In Reverse
Girl - The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Never Change - Jay-Z - Blueprint
I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Shannon - Volebeats - Solitude
Greensky Greenlake - Dead Meadow - S/T
Watch Me Jumpstart - Guided By Voices - Human Amusements...
The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople - Mott The Hoople - Mott
I'm On Your Side - Patty Loveless - Honky Tonk Angel
What Do I Get? - The Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady

ACPC

Every once in a while, girlfriends do something that just knock you sideways with something amazingly cool. That's just the way it is. Well, recently I was blown away with a group project that my girlfriend, fancypants (formermly known as Break Me Off A Piece Of That Kit Kat Bar) was working on for her graduate school program in Museum Studies. They had to design a mock museum from start to finish, and they were able to choose the topic that their museum would focus on. And while other groups in her class chose topics like The Rainforest (which I'm sure was great), her group decided to make a museum of punk rock (now thats pretty sweet). The place is called The American Center For Punk Culture (ACPC). If it were a real place, I would pay whatever fee they needed to become a lifetime member. The goal of the museum would be to document, archive, and celebrate punk culture, with a focus on the nascent punk scene in New York in the 1970s. The paper that they wrote is beyond overwhelming, but here a few good tidbits. The board members for the ACPC would include: Jello Biafra, Lee Childers, Danny Fields, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, John Holmstrom, Lenny Kaye, Don Letts, Leggs McNeil, Jack Rabid, Patti Smith, Steven Van Zandt, and Tom Verlaine. Some of the people on the advisory board would be John Cale, Lux Interior & Poison Ivy, Mick Jones, Wayne Kramer, Hilly Kristal, Mickey Leigh, Tommy Ramone, Mike Watt, Ron Asheton, and a whole lot more. Some of the specific exhibits include : "Raymond Pettibone: Posters, Prints and Drawings", "East Coast/West Coast : Punk Across The USA", "Afro-Punk: From Ska to Hardcore", "From Pop Art to Punk Rock: Max's Kansas City", and "No Home For The Blank Generation: The Turbulent Relationship Between New York City and The Early Punk Movement". Honestly there are too many cool things about this proposed museum for me to fit in here. Let's just say that this place would be absolutely amazing. How cool would it be if there was a place like the rocknroll HOF, but done corectly.... Nicely done fancypants.

Grinderman

Someone decided to give Nick Cave a guitar and told him to rock. For his latest project, Grinderman, Cave hand-picked 3 members of his long standing backing band, The Bad Seeds for a scaled-down, return-to-basics rocknroll outfit. The band consists of Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos. Notably missing is Mick Harvey, who has been playing with Cave since pre-Birthday Party days. Personally, I have never been a huge fan of Cave's work, but I liked his last dual album Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. When there was talk of Cave releasing a "garage rock" album, I was eager to hear it. The album does not dissapoint, as it features some gritty, demented rock/hard blues. With song titles like "No Pussy Blues", you know this one's a keeper. Also worth noting is that according to a recent interview in Harp magazine, this project marked the first time that Cave was open to any input whatsoever from bandmates on his lyrics.

Here's the first track from the album, which along with a few others is also available on their myspace page:
Get It On

Tonight Will Be Fine

"By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are.” - David Halberstam

I've got an anal side to me. My bookcase would tell you that. I've had a series of books written by David Halberstam scattered throughout that piece of wooden furniture that I was purposefully saving so that over the course of my life, I would have something worth reading. Right now, there's a book about Vietnam, Basketball, the decline of this country's manufacturing force, a New York City Firestation, and the civil rights movement of the 1950's. But now there will never be another new book added to my shelf and in turn into my mind.

Taking a look at the quote up top from Halberstam is paradoxical in a way. If the statement is a true one then David Halberstam defied it. He won a Pulitzer early in his career for his Vietnam reporting for the New York Times and went on to a life of reporting. His topics were so vast but always interesting whether it was the rise of big media, the 1964 World Series or the decade of the 50's. And yet, he never became the story, never the main character in a Washington Post article about hobnobbing with his subjects. More importantly for a guy who wrote numerous books, there is no accusations out there that he plagiarized or anything of the sort. These days that is pretty commendable.

I think if I ever had chosen a career in writing non-fiction I would have tried real hard (and I mean real hard) to emulate a Halberstam-esque style. It wouldn't have been easy. Rather than just brainstorm a topic, conduct interview after interview, and finally begin the process of setting it all to paper, he made sure there was something else included in his account. Halberstam made sure that each and every topic he wrote about became the definitive work on that topic. One could obviously argue that no topic exists that can be definitively written about and that may be true in essence but in reality once a writer goes near something and makes it his own, other writers are thereby warned to stay away. This I believe, was not a tangible warning, instead the works spoke and speak for themselves.

Hitting to something close to creating definitive works, Halberstam could be trusted. As I recall the end of his books are filled with pages of his sources. Sometimes you read something in a book and want to to know how it got there and why you should believe it and most of the time there is nothing to support the point. I don't know why that is but I do know the credibility factor regarding the accuracy of the work goes down as does the interest one is willing to devote. Maybe I should have, but I never doubted what I was reading in one of his pages, I took it at gospel.

There is no doubt that Halberstam was a great journalist but it would be unfair to say that that was all he was. He was like the favorite college professor who condensed a whole area of life into an understandable course that was both interesting and riveting. I've sort of always equated a book like The 50's or The Powers That Be as being as important to my knowledge of this country's history as any classroom experience I've ever had.

I once heard the quotation upon a songwriter's death that went something like, "Now that the singer is gone where shall I go for the song?" The line is a powerful way to conjure up the importance of the recently deceased, but almost a trick to get some emotion out of your audience and come off poetic at the same time without having really done your work. The reason I bring the line up isn't for a cheap emotive pull, though that is always nice, but because I'm not really sure how else to say that Halberstam is gone and I don't believe anyone will be able to replace him or those books that slowly peel off my bookshelf.

GIVING AMERICANA BACK IT'S GOOD NAME

Not that it ever really had that good of a name 'till the Kamikaze Hearts came around....

Here's a scan of the May Uncut review No Name was speaking of:



VICTORY!!!! That definitely reads like a 4 Star review to me.. don't know where that 3 came from. Uncut, why you always so stingy??

If you haven't picked up a copy of Oneida Road yet, you're in for a big, tasty treat. Go grab it from now Collar City Records.