Month: December 2021

the year in review 2021 version

it has been another great year of music releases. i wish i had more time to get to all of these when they came out. but as usual i try to do a year end roundup of stuff i have listened to all year but never got around to posting on, for various reasons. so here are a dozen small samples, in no particular order.

thanks again for following me and putting up with my musical pontifications.

seek.better.music

chrissie hynde, ‘standing in the doorway’

even though i did not do a full post on this when it came out, this might be my favorite album of the year. chrissie and multi instrumentalist james walbourne selected nine songs from dylan’s catalog and then do them in an acoustic stripped down fashion. it is flawless. somehow chrissie’s vocals take to these songs very well, and the arrangements are well thought out. if you decide to purchase just one of my recommendations here, i would suggest starting with this one.

robert plant and alison krauss, ‘raise the roof’

this is the second collaboration between this unlikely duo, the first being ‘raising sand’ in 2007. produced by t bone burnett, the song selection here is one of the most intriguing parts, with covers from a very diverse array of artists – calexico, everly brothers, allen toussaint, bert jansch, merle haggard and so many more. ‘raise the roof’ might be a bit of a misnomer, as the overall tempo of the album is more subdued than the original. but the production is outstanding and they have a lot of great studio musicians helping out – bill frisell, david hidalgo, marc ribot, buddy miller, and lucinda williams, just to name a few. i still think i like the first one better, but if you enjoyed that one, i think you will find value in this one.

hayes carll, ‘you get it all’

this one slipped by me somehow this summer. which is inexplicable as hayes is one of my favorite songwriters out there today. i think it is his best album in over a decade.

neil young and crazy horse, ‘way down in the rust bucket’

another installment in neil’s archive series, this one was recorded on november 13, 1990 at the catalyst in santa cruz, where the band was warming up for their upcoming ‘ragged glory’ tour. ‘ragged glory’ is one of my favorite crazy horse albums. if you like it as much as i do, then you will dig this. nineteen songs in all, and it captures them at one of their peaks.

sturgill simpson, ‘the ballad of dood and juanita’

sturgill’s attempt at a ‘concept’ album. it is the tale of a husband and wife, and the adventures that they go through out in the old west. clocking in at only 28 minutes, and featuring willie nelson on one of the tracks, it is an interesting addition to his catalog. i ordered it when it came out, but was away on vacation when it arrived. so the first time i heard it was on steve earle’s show on outlaw country, when i was driving home from maine. he interviewed sturgill about the making of the album, and then played it all the way through. pretty cool.

jerry garcia band, ‘garcia live volume 17 norcal 76’

the 17th installment of this great series is a doozy. recorded live at three different venues in northern california in november of 1976, it features keith and donna godchaux, john kahn on bass and elvis’ drummer ron tutt on drums. at over two and a half hours of material, and recorded by betty cantor-jackson, it has everything you want in a jerry garcia band show. very solid.

james mcmurtry, ‘the horses and the hounds’

this one is heavy on my rotation right now. like hayes carll above, mcmurtry is one of the great texas songwriters working today. this is his first new release in six years, but it is worth the wait. ten stories, told in his singular way – tongue in cheek wit with an attention to details. out on tour now, i am hoping to catch him in the spring.

the band, ‘stage fright, 50th anniversary edition’

this is the 50th anniversary version of their third studio album. the first disc has the original album in its entirety, but in the original song track order before it was changed. it also has ten outtakes and demos. the second disc is the complete show from royal albert music hall in november 1971 from the subsequent album tour. the second is worth the price alone.

jesse malin, ‘sad and beautiful world’

i thoroughly enjoyed his last album, so i definitely had to get this one. jesse has a very unique sound, one that is hard to categorize, but i find it very compelling. pop, with a bit of an edge. and he creates great videos.

sierra ferrell, ‘long time coming’

my friend tracy turned me on to this one. her debut album, it is a great one to start what hopefully will be a long career. a native of west virginia, her ‘category’ is bluegrass – and there is certainly plenty of that here- but there is quite a mixture of styles on display as well. new orleans jazz, calypso, jump blues, and so on. ‘bells of every chapel’ features billy strings on guitar. a vocal presence that is beyond her years.

van morrison, ‘latest record project, volume one’

as i have mentioned about van before, he is still very prolific in his recordings. and more importantly, he is still churning out great stuff and as such is still very relevant. this is a double cd, 28 songs and over two hours in length. there is some political content here, as he was one of the more outspoken artists in regards to the lockdowns in the british isles. but it might be only a half dozen here, with the rest being very typical morrison song content.

asleep at the wheel, ‘half a hundred years’

this is basically a celebration of the band’s 50 years of existence (hence the title). nineteen songs showing the diversity of styles that have inspired the group over time, and also featuring various alumni from the group’s history. there are also a slew of guest artists – willie nelson, lyle lovett, bill kirchen, george strait, lee ann womack, emmylou harris, plus many more – that show just how influential this band has been over their half a hundred years.

jason isbell and the 400 unit, ‘georgia blue’

even though he is from alabama, for various reasons jason isbell decided to do an album dedicated to artists from the peach state, and invited a slew of musicians to help give it a diverse approach. with his standard recording and touring band, the 400 hundred unit (named after a nickname for a pychiatric ward in florence, alabama), they tackle many genres and succeed at most.

they kick off with r.e.m.’s ‘night swimming’, with bluegrass artists bela fleck on banjo and chris thile on mandolin. up and coming vocalist brittney spencer gives an interesting twist to james brown’s ‘it’s a man’s man’s man’s world’.

jason does his best to do otis redding’s ‘i’ve been loving you too long’. ‘sometimes salvation’, a black crowes standard, features their original drummer steve gorman.

indigo girls’ ‘kid fears’ is presented by brandi carlisle and julien baker, and brittney spencer returns to join john paul white (civil wars) on a compelling version of gladys knight and the pips’ ‘midnight train to georgia’.

they turn in a respectable version of ‘in memory of elizabeth reed’ from the allman brothers, and then close out the session by returning to r.e.m.’s ‘driver 8’, one of my favorites of theirs.

there are five other offerings here, but you get the point. worth a listen if you can find the time.

coming up this weekend, my annual look back at the year that was, where i give my honorable mentions on stuff i listened to but never got around to posting.

stay tuned.

‘get back’, the beatles

well, i have been waiting for this for a long time, and i finally got to watch the finished product when it debuted over the weekend. originally scheduled to be released in movie theaters about this time last year, the schedule was changed a number of times due to covid and other editorial reasons. directed by peter jackson, they eventually settled on a three part documentary to be available for streaming in three episodes.

the original premise was to revisit the 55 hours of footage taken of the recording of the ‘let it be’ album, which had been in a vault for 50 years untouched. the filming was used to create a documentary to coincide with the release of the album, which eventually did happen in 1970. although i have not seen that in a long time (and i could not find a current version on any streaming services i have), there is some thought that the way the material was presented for that version gave support to the theory that yoko ono was one of the drivers of the band breaking up soon after the album was released. i also recall that it gave the impression that the sessions were full of tension.

paul and ringo, as well as the surviving spouses of john and george (yoko and olivia), gave full support to the project, and gave jackson full latitude to present it as he saw fit. i get the impression from interviews that they all disagreed with the premise of the first one, and were hoping to have the world see it for how it really was. and maybe they succeeded.

so here are a few of my takeaways after watching all three episodes:

it is a lot of material, with the whole thing clocking in at 8 hours. this is the main criticism it has received, and i think that it is warranted if you are only a casual and curious beatles observer. however, if you are a student of the band’s history, it gives significant granularity to what happened during this critical era. nearly all of it had to be presented to show the true dynamics between the band members, and the pressure of the situation they were under. maybe it could have been trimmed an hour or so, but i was fine with the length. i watched one each night.
as opposed to the aforementioned tension, it seems clear to me that they were still great friends, but sometimes cracked under pressure. the original project was to write and record fourteen songs in about three weeks, perform a live concert immediately after that, and have the film and album released that summer. they were disciplined in the studio, and got through the stress by constantly joking around. that is a constant throughout all three episodes. sure, george quits the band at the end of the first episode. but he was trying to make a point and eventually they came around to him.
usually lennon gets the blame for the tension in the studios, but the footage presented here shows that it might have been mccartney. their previous manager died unexpectedly, and paul was trying to assert himself to keep things going. when pushed back on this, he said something to the effect that they needed a leader, and he was only doing it because no one else would. but i also think that he is the creative leader for this portion of their career, and the shots of them writing songs from scratch show that. others may see it differently.
as for yoko, she may get a little vindication here. it is pretty annoying in the first episode when she is sitting in a chair between john and paul all the time while they are playing. but she certainly isn’t intervening – she just sits there and writes or sows. as the episodes move on, she is barely involved or seen, and indeed linda eastman (later mccartney) is around a lot more. maybe yoko was more involved in the abbey road sessions, which were recorded later that summer, but she seems pretty benign here.

all in all i learned a lot. and i will probably watch it again in the not to distant future, to see if i pick up things i missed before. i would encourage you to at least watch the two trailers to get a feel for it. the first one here is from peter jackson from last year, explaining why the movie was being delayed, and the second is the official trailer for the final release.

enjoy.