new releases

the main purpose of this site – letting you know about albums i have discovered that need attention

march musings

i have been listening to some new music, but not as much lately. the winter has been pretty brutal here this year, and i have spent a lot of time hibernating in the redeyegin man cave and devouring some books. my last post on books was well received and i was given quite a few suggestions – most of which i read and are included below. so here they are, again in no particular order:

‘sound man’ – glyn johns

his fifty year career as either an engineer or producer of some of the most iconic albums of all time is legendary. this is his story of working with groups and artists such as the rolling stones, beatles, the who, led zeppelin, csn, steve miller, emmylou harris. i could go on and on. he does a very good job of staying away from the sex and drugs parts and focuses on the rock and roll. very enjoyable read. really couldn’t put it down.

‘petty’ – warren zanes

authorized biography of the artist. tom reached out to him after reading some of warren’s writings (zanes also did the book that the recent springsteen movie was based on. he was also a founding member of the del fuegos in the eighties). honest and thorough. a lot of history here, and you get a real sense of tom and the heartbreakers long road to eventual stardom, and then the toll that the road took on all of them. you will learn a lot.

‘southern man’ – alan walden

i had never heard of this guy until reading this book. but he and his brother phil were big music producers out of macon, georgia and had a huge influence on the music that made its way out of the south. they challenged the system and were two white guys promoting some of the bigger r&b names like otis redding, percy sledge, sam and dave and many, many others. more than just promoters though, alan and otis were best of friends and alan was usually on tour with him. alan was also instrumental in getting lynyrd skynyrd and boz scaggs to market. chock full of great stories, tales of heartbreak, and occasional success. thanks, peter.

‘cruel to be kind’ – will birch

i was reading a short novel on the making of elvis costello’s masterpiece ‘armed forces’ (more on this later), and the author kept referencing nick lowe. now, i am somewhat familiar with his work over the years, but i had no idea how prolific he was – as a musician, yes – but the amount of bands he was involved with as a producer and promoter was astounding. if you are in any way a fan of seventies and eighties english rock (and even if you are not), this book is full of inside baseball on that whole scene – both good and bad. it is jokingly referred to as a somewhat authorized biography in the book. but will birch and nick are long time pals going back some forty years.

‘the uncool’ – cameron crowe

you may know cameron from one or two ways. if you were a regular reader of rolling stone in the seventies, he was one of their more famous writers – either doing interviews with artists or reviewing new releases. he is also a pretty famous movie producer and is best known for his work on ‘almost famous’, ‘jerry maguire’, and ‘fast times at ridgemont high’. he wrote the screenplay for ‘almost famous’, for which he won an oscar. it is a fictionalized but somewhat autobiographical account of his early life breaking into the music journalism business. ‘uncool’ is his actual autobiography, basically intertwining his career from the beginning with the tale of his family and upbringing. you will hear stories about legendary tours he was asked to join like the allman brothers and led zeppelin in their heyday, to other close relationships he had with bowie, csny, the eagles, fleetwood mac and so many others. most of this before he turned 22. his family life was a bit of a mess, but he is open on how it helped him and shaped him. one of the better books in the music genre i have read in a long time. my friend dave c. recommended this to me and said at one point – part of why it is good is because it is really well written, which you would come to expect from someone who writes for a living.

‘a life in the wings’ – david spero

another recommendation from dave c., because he knows like him i grew up in cleveland in the seventies. spero is not a household name, but he is very well known in the music industry with a career that goes back to the early sixties. he started his career in local media and eventually became one of the dj’s at a local fm station here – wmms. they were a local powerhouse with a very innovative approach to breaking in artists struggling to make it nationally – bruce springsteen and rush are two examples. they were voted best fm station nationally by rolling stone 7 years in a row. david then went into managing artists and has had significant relationships with artists such as joe walsh, ringo starr, the eagles, cat stevens, michael stanley, and dozens of others. he still lives here in town and works in various capacities at the rock hall of fame. again, lots of stories, but maybe too long. it is a big book, and written in a bit of a quirky style that could have used some editing.

‘insomnia’ – robbie robertson

i am almost done with this one, but i have seen enough already to include it here. this autobiography is obviously posthumous, as it just came out, but focuses on the period after the band broke up and he started a lifelong relationship with the director martin scorsese. i am almost 75% into it and so far we are only about two years into their friendship and professional dealings. scorsese directed their masterpiece ‘ the last waltz’. robbie had recently been divorced and at some point he moves in with martin in his hollywood home and the party begins. the two are working in post production and getting it to market, which was not easy. and martin is starting to see things in robbie that would lead them to be tied at the hip for much of martin’s film career over the next forty years. this is likely one of the more troubling periods in robbie’s life, and he is brutally honest with himself and the reader. can’t wait to get back to it.

‘exile on main street’ – bill janovitz

kevin m. recommended the previously mentioned book on springsteen that i reviewed along with the film in an earlier post. he had also mentioned a small novel zanes had written about dusty springfield’s ‘dusty in memphis’. the latter is in a series of books i was soon to discover from a series referred to as ’33 1/3′. they are all small books – maybe about a 100 pages each, that act as liner notes on steroids for some of the more iconic albums of all time. i really started going down that rabbit hole (there are i think over 150 of them). the ones i have got and read so far are the aforementioned ‘dusty in memphis’, ‘murmur’, ‘pet sounds’, ‘armed forces’, ‘music from big pink’, ‘harvest’, and ‘exile on main street’. i have taken a break from this rabbit hole for now because i have found that some are better than others, and some are just weird. but this is one of the best – a true dedication to one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and why that is. if you like this one, get ‘pet sounds’ next. do not get ‘big pink’.

next up on my reading list:

‘hardcore troubadour, the life and near death of steve earle’ – lauren st. john, ‘what do you do when you’re lonesome, the authorized biography of justin townes earle’ – jonathan bernstein, ‘tonight in jungleland, the making of born to run’ – peter ames carlin

chaser: paul mccartney’s new documentary came out on amazon prime last week. mrs. redeyegin and i screened it last night in the redeyegin studio. it focuses on the period right after the beatles break up and his solo career up until and including ‘band on the run’. learned a lot, and will likely watch again.

marcus king band – ‘darling blue’

as i have probably mentioned before, my process for vetting new music is thus: once i have found something i think i may like and have burned it to my collection, i will listen to it all the way through at least once, usually in my drive to and from work. one round trip usually takes care of the length of most new releases these days. if it intrigues me (or if i am too lazy to find something else), i usually give most a second chance. i then start to ponder whether this is something i want to write about and share. i would say less than 20% ever make it to a full post.

but every once in a while there will be a new offering that i just find damn near impossible to get out of the rotation and out of my head.

this is one of them.

so if you are a regular reader of mine then we likely move in the same musical circles and i feel confident that it may have the same effect on you. just get it.

now, a fair warning is due. if you are familiar with marcus, then you are probably thinking this will be a blues guitar dominated collection, with meaty guitar licks throughout. but you really don’t get that here.

what you do get is a tremendous variety of genres and vocal styles, and some really catchy lyrics and harmonies. all fourteen songs are completely different. i can’t say i have a favorite, but i can tell you that there isn’t one that i can point to and say maybe that should have been left off.

he has a few friends help out, including jamey johnson, kaitlin butts, billy strings and noah cyrus.

for a little background, he has conquered some demons that had threatened his life and career, and there are numerous references to that throughout. he has also found a new true love and several songs seem to be inspired by that. ‘darling blue’ refers to the blue ridge mountains where he is from, and so that is also a common theme.

i have added a few sample videos below, just to give you a flavor of the variety.

this next one reminds me a bit of jason isbell.

mrs. redeyegin also loves this album, and we both like the motown sounding ‘carolina honey’. that video is well done but maybe not suitable for a family audience. just sayin’.

‘deliver me from nowhere’ – warren zanes

this is the book that the current movie by the same name showing in theaters around the country is based on. the movie looked interesting and my friend who suggested the book to me only a week or two before the movie was debuting assured me that it was a pretty quick but very good read. he was right on both accounts.

the premise of the book is to do a deep dive into the making of his album ‘nebraska’. it doesn’t spend a great deal of ink on the rest of his career – there are plenty of other books that can help you there. the author is of the impression that this is his most important work in many ways, and makes a very good case throughout the book. bruce had just had his biggest commercial success so far in 1980 with ‘the river’, and was under some pressure after the tour promoting the album to follow up with another release.

but as the book and the movie make clear, bruce was exhausted from the tour, and on top of that was beginning to deal with some inner demons. he rented a place in a small town in new jersey with the idea that he would buckle down and start writing some songs. his roadie set him up with a fairly new tape machine that could add four track recording onto a standard cassette tape you could buy in a drug store at the time.

the solitude led to an outpouring of creativity but also a wellspring of emotions revolving around his troubled childhood in freehold, new jersey, which was just down the road. i will let the book and the movie flesh out more of the details here, but the songs that he was writing here were starting to break down into two categories – a handful of tunes that were more on the possible commercial side (and many would eventually show up on the the ‘born in the u.s.a’ album), but then at least a dozen that were much darker in material and characters.

it is this latter batch of songs that would eventually be the basis for the ‘nebraska’ album. and the album would eventually use the tracks he made on that cassette tape in the bedroom of that rental, crude as they were. against great market pressure, bruce was adamant to release it as is with no marketing, tour, or press.

i am not the biggest bruce fan around – i was into him quite a bit early on, but started to lose interest in the late eighties. but i do think that ‘nebraska’ is certainly one of my favorites, and so the story was very compelling to me.

i finished the book this morning, and went to see the movie in the local theater this afternoon. i was glad i read the book first, but also glad to see the movie. i think that it also helped that i relistened to the album all the way through about three times while reading the book. the book helped to prepare me for a lot of the material and topics in the movie. i think that the movie was well done – emotional and well acted. obviously there is a lot in the book that did not make it to the big screen, and there are parts in the movie that are not in the book (probably the biggest one being a focus on his relationship to a local waitress at a diner in town). i don’t think you need to read the book to appreciate the movie. but if you enjoy the latter, maybe you might be interested enough to circle back on the book.

hat tip to kevin for the suggestion.

catching up

hope all of you are still out there. i had taken a leave of absence from writing posts for my blog. i have no other reason other than ‘life gets in the way’. i have been listening to plenty of good new music lately, seen a few great shows, but also read a number of good books, and so i thought i would start with the latter, especially since the last one really got to me.

as most of my loyal readers know, i am a huge fan of john prine. i think one of the best pieces i ever wrote was around the time he succumbed to covid in the summer of 2020. that hit hard. i still remember putting on a playlist of his and made a few ‘handsome johnnys’ – his favorite cocktail, vodka and ginger ale – and sat on my back porch for quite awhile and tried to figure it out. never did. which brings me to my first book review. the rest are in no particular order.

‘living in the present with john prine’ – tom piazza

this book essentially chronicles the last few years of his life. after a chance meeting with the author, they seemed to hit off real well. sometimes you meet people like that where you know right away that this is a person i really connect well with, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. john started to reach out to him to spend some time together, including an early chapter that details one of their early bonding sessions where they take john’s newly acquired cherry red 1977 coupe de ville and hit the road to florida. there follow a number of more travel sessions and eventually, with wife fiona’s authorization, discussions start turning to writing a memoir. tom is also a musician (along with being a writer) from new orleans. interview sessions usually involved talking about john’s past while also playing various songs they both liked late into the night.

when people think of john prine they almost always are thinking about his musical legacy, and that is important and should be remembered. this book goes into that a bit, but more importantly it reveals the man behind the music. so if you are a prine fan, that is why you should read this. in the final chapter, after he has died, tom states that he could not listen to john for a whole year, and then once he did he states that it helped bring him back into the present. i don’t often quote the books i review, but let me just share his last paragraph:

‘listening to john, singing along with him or with each other, we can share time, see and hear the same thing, walk the same road for those minutes. we generate a current then, make a moment that transcends the moment, even if only briefly. so the words ‘the end’ don’t really seem to fit here. john’s spirit – everything that is just beyond the reach of words – remains. we are so lucky that, by hearing his voice or singing his songs, we can summon that spirit. living, while we can, in the present.’

i will drink a handsome johnny to that.

‘the name of this band is r.e.m.’ – peter james carlin

this is not an ‘authorized’ biography of the band, as none of the members participated in its writing, but it is well researched and treats them honestly and fairly. as usual it starts looking at their individual childhood experiences and follows them through until the band finally calls it quits in 2011.

i was a fairly early adopter of the band. ‘murmur’ was their first full length album, out in 1983, and even though it took awhile to get national airplay, i can tell you that it was very popular at the campus parties i went to at that time. i know i got hooked, and also sought out the earlier ep, ‘chronic town’. i had been absorbing all kinds of new music since leaving my small midwestern town and heading to college. but this band was different. not punk, and not pop, but a curious mixture of authentic passion and energy. that fact that you couldn’t understand the lyrics, especially in the early years, just added to the alure.

as is my wont, when i get into something i tend to go down rabbit holes, and this was no exception. as i was going through the part of the book where they were recording and touring on the aforementioned albums, i found myself dusting them off and listening all the way through. obviously there were a few cuts that made their way to greatest hits albums and my playlists, but to actually sit down and attentively listen cover to cover was something i likely had not done in nearly forty years. it all came back to me very quickly.

i then started listening to their next 5-6 albums all the way though as i would drive to and fro from work, until i got through ‘automatic for the people’, which is the last album of theirs i really dug my teeth into.

there is a chapter nearer to the end of the book that the author breaks down the overall fanbase to three categories. the first is what he refers to as the ‘murmerers’, people who got on board early and then dropped out not too far after when they got a little more popular and thought they sold out. the next group picked up slightly after that and rode their initial rise to some national recognition, and then the next group that grabbed on when they started having number one hits and albums and also generated an international following.

i might be a hybrid of the first two groups, as i was there at the beginning, kept up with them for a few years, and then slowly moved on at some point, for no good reason i can remember.

so if you are an r.e.m. fan, this might be a good read for you. but at the very least pull out ‘murmur’ and sit down so you can listen all they way through, maybe with a little volume.

‘dylan goes electric’ elijah wald

supposedly the book the recent movie ‘a complete unknown’ was based on. a very thorough accounting of the people and events that lead up to one of the defining moments in rock history – the evening at the 1965 newport folk festival when bob dylan brought out his band with electrical instruments and stunned the audience. even though i have read a number of accountings of the affair over the years in various books, nothing compares to this. in fact, i think you have to be a pretty big fan of both bob and the folk scene of the early sixties to really appreciate this book. i say that because it gets pretty granular as it builds for over 300 pages before it gets to the final scene. i learned a lot, but i found myself speed reading a few times to keep going. maybe go see the movie first (if you haven’t already).

‘heartbreaker’ – mike campbell

an autobiography by tom petty’s lead guitarist. mike was there from the beginning to the end, and was really petty’s most reliable friend for nearly all of his life. this is a remarkable story and if i would recommend one book off this list to start with, this would be it. a hardscrabble beginning to his life, and then a long period of time of playing in various bands around the florida and georgia area before they finally started to make it big after they moved everything out west to california. mike was a big part of the songwriting over the years. so if you are a fan of petty (and really, who isn’t), like guitars, and tales from life on the rock and roll road, this is a great read. his relationship with dylan and harrison was pretty profound.

he is a good writer and is honest with himself. accordingly, he spends a good deal of time on his personal life, including his marriage to his wife of fifty years. he seems like a pretty good dude.

i am not doing it justice. add it to your library.

‘richard manuel: his life in music, from the hawks and bob dylan to the band’- stephen t. lewis

richard was a seminal member of the band, one of the most important bands in rock and roll history. this is a very deep, loving, and honest portrayal of the man. his keyboard playing was obviously very important, but he is mainly known for some of the most soulful singing ever. the band had a unique vocal blend, of which you could argue he was the foundation. this book takes us through his childhood in canada and his early high school bands, to joining ronnie hawkins and the hawks, then being asked to join dylan’s early electric band with the rest of the hawks. after dylan invited the hawks to join him in woodstock after that tour, they eventually got around to forming their own band (‘the band’), and the rest was rock and roll history.

the latter third of the book covers the highs and lows of the band’s career, and the divisive forces that eventually drove them apart. i already knew most of this story, but the author did a lot of research on all of his life and i did learn quite a bit. i am a sponge for anything i can learn about this band, and this is a welcome addition to my catalogue.

a truly talented and remarkable individual, who unfortunately did struggle with insecurities and doubt that eventually did him in. he left us too early.

‘drums and demons – the tragic journey of jim gordon’ – joel selvin

if you are in a group of fairly knowledgeable music fans and ask the question ‘who are the best ten rock and roll drummers ever?’, i can be pretty certain that no one will say ‘ jim gordon’. but i would, and so would eric clapton. jim gordon became a staple studio drummer as a part of the ‘wrecking crew’ in southern california studios in the sixties, and would be on so many songs that you would know. among them being songs by the beach boys, the monkees, sonny and cher, the ronettes, the byrds, george harrison, john lennon, frank zappa, steely dan, merle haggard, and so many more that it defies belief when you read the partial summary of songs he has played on at the end of the book. he was eventually asked to join a few bands you may have heard of, like derek and the dominoes (he wrote the coda at the end of the title track ‘layla’). he was on joe cocker’s ‘mad dogs and englishmen’ tour. he basically was on nearly everything clapton did in the mid seventies.

he was not a flashy drummer, just one so technically competent and rock steady that he developed a reputation for being exactly where he was supposed to be on the down beat, all the time. as clapton has said of him (and ginger baker), he ‘had time’.

he had the rock and roll world in his hand – until he didn’t. the excesses of the industry and fame, along with his eventual descent into madness due to his progressive mental issues, caused him to spin out of control and eventually be shunned by nearly everyone. he went completely insane in the end and violently murdered his own mom. he spent the rest of his life in prison.

obviously a depressing end, but if you like you some rock and roll history, especially clapton at his low period and the crazy aforementioned mad dogs and englishmen tour, then you might want to pick this one up.

‘doc watson: a life in music’ – eddie huffman

if you are not familiar with doc watson, one of the greatest folk and bluegrass guitarists that ever lived, then first of all you should at least acquaint yourself with him (and his son merle) and his story. but this book is probably more intended for folks who are at least somewhat familiar and would like to do a deep dive into both his personal and artistic life – because both are remarkable. an incredibly well researched book, it takes you from beginning to end on his journey, which was both hard fought and also profound. there are many artists who are considered legendary in the world of folk and bluegrass, but no one was more influential than doc, in my opinion (and the author’s).

it gets pretty granular, so be prepared for that. but i am sometimes asked ‘if you could go back in time, who would you want to see live?’. i have a few doc issues in my library, including some with son merle. but after reading this and watching videos i found online, i am pretty sure i am adding him, in his prime, to that list.

‘my effin life’ – geddy lee

an autobiography from the bass player for the band rush. you are probably saying right about now ‘ wait, mr. redeyegin is a rush fan?’.

yes i am, or at least i was big time when i was in high school. it helped that i was a drummer, and neal peart, their drummer, was one of my heroes.

i stopped listening to them after i went to college, and so the middle part of the book describing making their later albums and world tours was probably the least interesting to me. but i found the rest really enjoyable, or at least very educational. geddy is a great storyteller and tells his tale in a self effacing manner. his descendants were survivors of the holocaust and emigrated to canada where they were able to provide him with a decent suburban life. but being jewish caused him to be rejected by many in his high school, and he sought refuge in music. obviously the next part detailed him meeting the other members of the band and then grinding their way to stardom.

the latter part of the book spends a fair amount of time on neal’s tragedy of losing his daughter in a car crash, and then his eventual struggle with brain cancer. but i found the whole thing to be an enjoyable read and i got through it pretty quickly.

‘loud and clear: the grateful dead’s wall of sound and the quest for audio perfection’ – brian anderson

a very thorough accounting of the history of the grateful dead’s dedication to the quality of the sound that was emanating from their pa system. the band does not get enough credit for the constantly innovative approach that they took – from the early reengineering of existing speakers and amps in the sixties to the eventual monstrous masterpiece, the ‘wall of sound’ in 1974. the band plowed much of their profits back into the development of these systems – and the stage crews and technicians that would be needed to put it all together – for all of their 30 year career. as the author makes clear, there may be no other band that did more to develop the technologies and concepts that revolutionized the live music industry and are still used to this day. it also added a stress level to individual shows when the shit didn’t work. he also chronicles – to an extent i have never seen before – as to how the magnificent ‘wall of sound’ was the cause of their downfall in late 1974, and led to the hiatus the band took till the summer of 1976. as a warning, this gets really technical at times, and i think you need to be a pretty hard core head to really appreciate it.

thanks for staying with me, and i promise there will be more soon.

norman’s rare guitars

last year was an interesting year for me, and not all of it necessarily good. probably the biggest time absorber was a long overdue house renovation, which took most of the year. plus a busy year at my day job and it all added up to squeezing out much of my leisure time, which includes my favorite hobby – music. it also took away my time and energy needed to keep up with my blog. but that is all behind me now and i hope to make up for it in 2025.

to help me with my writer’s block, i thought i would start off with an easy one – a documentary my brother steve turned me on to. ‘norman’s rare guitars’ is a very well done accounting of the store by that name in hollywood, and the tale of it’s founder – norman harris.

norm was a nominally successful musician in the late sixties who started a side job finding and then selling vintage guitars. after about a year or so it became his main gig, and word of mouth led to major musicians seeking him out to find guitars for them. his business exploded and his store is still in existence today and he probably has the largest collection of vintage guitars in the world.

this trailer will give you a taste of the magic of this place:

running time is over 90 minutes, so it is a bit of a commitment. but if you are into vintage versions of the premier instrument in rock and roll history, and the musicians who played them, you might find this interesting.

for marcus king fans, his in store spontaneous recording basically jump started his career: