@nutty - Thanks for your various interesting music suggestions. Don't know Budgie but will look them up.
What's in your CDP tonight? the minority report
This evening for me, it's Genesis (definitive edition remaster) "A Trick of the Tail".
Real Live Dylan and band are smokin’. In particular, Mick Taylor sounds fantastic. Check out his work on "I & I", e.g., his solo after the last verse... "Someone else is speaking with my mouth, but I’m listening only to my heart I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot" Hey adg, I’ve not yet tried Fallen Angels. Thought it was going to be another curious collection of covers (how’s that for alliteration) like Shadows. Not my cuppa. Guess I’ll give it a try. Well, it is more covers. Found "Melancholy Mood" on Spotify. Dylan’s band is great (as usual). The arrangement and recording sonics are excellent and, surprise, surprise, Dylan’s voice sounds (almost) smooth and polished crooning this one. While I don’t "get it" like Reviewer Erlewine in the All Music Guide apparently does, I respect Dylan for going down this unexpected path in Shadows and, now, Angels. |
Prog-rocker Steve Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Luminol....This song is 12:00 long, it's recorded very very well. I really like the driving bass and drums on this one. keyboards are frantic. It rocks! https://youtu.be/_w8SY_9yO8k N |
Sounds From The Ground... "Brighwhitetlight" https://www.amazon.com/Brightwhitelight-Sounds-Ground/dp/B001GXVQN0/ref=tmm_msc_swatch_0?encoding=UTF8&qid=1223492132&sr=1-6 SFTG Web Site... Great catalog. http://soundsfromtheground.com/releases.html This music will test your system. 8) |
@nutty Let me know if any of the other Nines titles are similar to that S/T download-only-one. I'll be interested in hearing more along those lines but I'm thinking the other stuff I sampled was pretty different. Let me know if otherwise. I don't know how much "fixing" JJ & Mofro did to those Brighter Days live tracks. Fixin' things can't fake energy tho' and those boys got that in spades. Thanks for another great recommendation. Got a "like new" The Way It Is CD ordered for under $15 shipped from an eBay seller w/100% rating, Glad to find it. |
@nutty Hey Nutty - I had not but thanks for the reminder. I have the YouTube clip running now and found the whole thing on Spotify. They reminded me of J. Geils on that first track; on Track 2 sounding like Al Green...well the arrangement a bit, if not the vocal. Thanks for the suggestion. Going to listen to this some more. It’s got that old R&B vibe for sure. You get a chance, check out The Nines. Pretty hard hitting and bears up to repeated listening. BTW - tracked down a copy of Glenn Hughes’ The Way It Is. Making an offer. That one is starting to get a little bit scarce and pricey. Another one that bears up to repeated listening. |
100 Watt Vipers, Something wicked this way comes. 2 piece heavy blues/rock. JJ Grey & Mofro, This river. "Your lady is shady". https://youtu.be/1pvGjWMXpjE N |
Check out this band....Red Stone Souls. S/T (Heavy stoner doom blues.) "Harder every day". https://youtu.be/RWqu-C5IA_4 N |
Hey 2psyop - welcome to the thread. Van is certainly one of the greats. Have loved Into The Mystic for a lot of years now; also, It Stoned Me, from the same album. Do you know Beautiful Vision? Cleaning Windows and Dweller On The Threshold are standout tracks for me. Hard to name a favorite album with VM. He's one of the few where I own almost all their studio output. BTW - What Schiit DAC do you have? |
Thanks for the kind words Ghosthouse. The Grays. What a great supergroup. Ro Sham Bo is an amazing compilation of songs by some of LAs great songwriters; a very solid record front to back. I had the opportunity to see them while I was in college and thought "I'll see them the next time the come around". Except they never did. Jason Falkner is another LA-area musician that is at the forefront of his trade. Author Unknown, for me, is his best effort and he just hits the nail on the head. I tried to like the Jellyfish, but Jason or no Jason, couldn't really warm up to the band. Another great LA band from that time period if Toy Matinee. They did a single record and the main guy, Kevin Gilbert, went on to do a number of albums. I never had the opportunity to see The Toy Matinee, but did see Kevin several times. He could sing and play beautifully. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. The Grays and Toy Matinee got lots of local airplay on KLOS. But I don't think they every broke nation wide and none of these bands really made it. I'm glad that Jason Falkner has continued to release albums because I like the power pop beatlesque type of music for sure. The Rembrandts made several albums plus they have a couple of best of albums. They made it huge here in SoCal with "Just the way it is, Baby". They also had another hit, "New King". I find them a bit more art rock than power pop but I do see that they fit in with the other bands above. The hit from friends is "I'll be there for you". Apparently they charted a number of times according to Wikipedia. Jon Brion is a great musician and can really put on a show. His only album, Meaningless, is very good IMO. I've seen him at Largo in LA and the show was amazing. He is now very in demand as a producer. Another SoCal band not mentioned here is Matthew Sweet. His record "Girlfriend" is for me by far the best. He had several hits on that one and I'm not sure he made it nation wide but was very popular here and in Japan. Give this one a look. It is very good. I took a listen to Great Buildings. So it is apparent that the lead singer is from the Rembrandts. A little more poppy than artsy; certainly less refined than the Rembrandts. Glad this topic came up. Nice stroll down Memory Lane. |
The Rembrandts did the theme song for the TV show Friends, and had another hit single, I believe (but can’t for the life of me recall the song). They kinda seem to me like an American version of Squeeze. For anyone trying to follow the musical thread, Jon Brion and Jason Faulkner were in The Grays together, Jon then going on to become an in-demand producer and Jason a member of Jellyfish (at the time they made their debut album). Jellyfish were a quite unusual group, the lead singer of which was also the drummer. He did live shows playing a very small drumset (bass drum, snare drum, one cymbal) standing up, like the guy in The Stray Cats. Jellyfish did an instore at the Tower Records in Hollywood to promote the release of their second album (post-Jason Faulkner), and the little sound system they were going to use as their P.A. went down. So they did their set acoustically, almost a cappella. Great harmony singing, often compared to Queen but sounding more Brian Wilson-esque to me. |
@bdp24 @pokey77 bdp - You are like a like a walking music encyclopedia!...guess they call them "musicologists"! I have to give credit to pokey77 for turning me onto The Grays and Jason Faulkner. From those I found out about JellyFish. For some reason tho' I found JellyFish's stuff inconsistent and occasionally annoying. By contrast (IMO) Ro Sham Bo is a strong album all the way through. JF's Author Unknown (not quite as consistent but still very good) could have been on the playlist last night but I ran out of time. Apart from Pokey's recommendations, I'm pretty ignorant about that whole (SoCal?) late 80s/90s pop music scene. Don't think those bands were getting much airplay on the east coast back then...leastways not the station I was mostly listening to then (WXPN out of Phila). Anyway - NO. I don't know Great Buildings. Did find Apart From the Crowd on the Spot and will listen more later today. Brief sampling I did sounds promising. Funny, heard of The Rembrandts but I couldn't name you a tune by them, so something else to explore. FWIW, much of my taste in pop music can be explained by this hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypv1lZlW1WY "Formative" as they say. |
The Grays! Okay ghosthouse, you win. You must also know about Great Buildings, the group Danny Wilde and Phil Solem were in before The Rembrandt’s. The singer/songwriter I was playing with in 1980-1 loved GB, so we went to their show at The Starwood celebrating the signing of their Columbia Records contract. I didn't see the attraction. GB didn’t hit paydirt, but The Rembrandt’s sure did. Danny made some okay solo albums. Much better at the turf they toiled in was Jellyfish, a really outstanding Group. |