| Author | Message | ||
     Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4536 Registered: 03-2005 |
Nacho Vegas -- Canciones Inexplicables 2001 - 2007 This, for me, is an introduction to Spain's singer/songwriter. He seems to have come onto the scene in the 1990s in a band context and then went solo. He sounds like a 1990s/2000s missing link from Dylan and Cohen. His songs are seldom short and are very lyric-heavy. Perhaps this will force me to attempt to learn Spanish, a much easier move from English than French, at least for this Californian. This anthology contains one single cover version, of a Townes Van Zandt song translated to Spanish. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBB66ZD LKQ It's clearly done with love and understanding. But the point, of course, is his originals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hK12f9B 5aE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyx-r43g 9y4 It's daunting to dive into the career of somebody who's been around almost as long as Dominique A. I thought maybe I'd be able to skip Vegas' newer records on the assumption they'd be dropping in quality but if my youtube explorations are accurate, it sounds like his records have gone UP in quality since the time period covered by this set. So I'm in a position somewhat like Stuart with Conor Oberst. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1859 Registered: 10-2006 |
I'm still teetering on the diving board with CO's complete works scattered about my studio, Randy, after working all through the "festive" period: little to be festive about this year, so perhaps it was good to have a distraction, if an exhausting one. But I have watched all the best stuff I could find on Youtube, over and over again to the point that my wife is worried about incipient brain enfeeblement. There is a wound up rage in some of his recent performances that I find highly therapeutic, even more so in the last few days. I hope there will be some period of calm in the near future when the virulent poison seeping through the world, of so many different sorts, will be eradicated, and books, music and travel come wholly into their own again. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4538 Registered: 03-2005 |
3Pecados -- Diciembra Dating from 2011, this dark horse South American gem from the three piece band headed by Uruguayan songwriter Pau O'Bianchi took over 18 months to record. Controversially, there's no bass guitar but there are the occasional extra singers for choruses, viola, saxophone and flute. O'Bianchi's vocals occasionally run beyond his range rather like Peter Milton Walsh's on the first Apartments album. The album is the stuff of legend in Uruguay, the subject of an annual radio talk show in December. The entire album can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeJGukyk Tj8 One of the songs that stands out for me can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNxpIHKS Jsc | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4541 Registered: 03-2005 |
The Bats -- Foothills The stability of this band is amazing. Is there any band anywhere else in the world who've stayed together with the same personnel for so long? I hope they come to LA when the current misery is finally over. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1342 Registered: 03-2007 |
Still Corners - The Last Exit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk8ZJ_rw I1A Listening to the above I am reminded of The Paradise Motel. | ||
| Austin Member Username: Bruegelpie Post Number: 221 Registered: 09-2004 |
>> Still Corners - The Last Exit Hey, "The Last Exit" reminds me of Last Exit, which was Sting's band before the Police, which makes me think of the main (music-related) thing that I did during lockdown in the pandemic, which was find out the name of the hotel in Paris where Sting wrote 'Roxanne' on October 18, 1977. It wasn't in any of the books! It was unknown to the world! I've wanted to find out the name of the hotel for 20 years or so, since the oft-told story of Sting walking around the Paris red light district while staying in a nearby hotel, which had a poster of Cyrano in the lobby, when he was struck by inspiration when he thought of what it would be like to be the boyfriend of a Parian prostitute. My journey of finding the name of the hotel facilitated me meeting many new folks (virtually) that were early members of the 'punk' community. I was beginning to give up, but then I gained access to Stewart Copeland's diary, which named the hotel - Hotel du Havre at Rue d'Amsterdam. The band was kicked out of the hotel the next day, it turns out. Sorry for the tangent, but I've been dying to tell this strange tale to someone! Even if folks on this Board think the Police are crap, I know that you would appreciate the (virtual) very long and winding journey that it took to find the answer to an important (to me) piece of rock and roll history. I think it is really cool that no one (except Stewart) knew, but probably didn't know, unless he looked at his old diary. Anyway, the lesson to me is don't give up on finding the answer to an important trivia question! Another lesson is also old punks in bands are really nice and friendly people (but most don't have very good memories). Last lesson - when you can access a rock and roll diary of a multimillionaire rocker nice guy, it is a special day! | ||
| TROU Member Username: Trou Post Number: 521 Registered: 05-2005 |
https://fr.tripadvisor.be/Hotel_Review-g 187147-d197600-Reviews-Grand_Hotel_du_Ha vre-Paris_Ile_de_France.html You have to investigate for the number of the room now... After some research like you, I know where the Smiths slept and nr of the room of Morrissey when they gave a concert in Lerwick (Shetland Isles). http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/live /smiths-g850928.htm Funny thing is that I was in these isolated islands three months before for birdwatching. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10002 Registered: 05-2005 |
Icecream Hands - No Weapon But Love. Mostly great McCartney-esque power pop, all the way from Melbourne. https://icecreamhands.bandcamp.com/album /no-weapon-but-love | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10003 Registered: 05-2005 |
An hour of the goddess-like Maureen Ann Tucker - her 1989 album Life In Exile After Abdication (1993 version with four EP tracks tacked on). Austin, I certainly don't think The Police are crap. Most of their singles are great pop songs, though their albums had some duds. Sting solo, though, has released a lot of crap. Klark Kent's (aka your mate Stewart) 7" Don't Care EP is still the best Police sideshow release. Great story, by the way. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2025 Registered: 08-2006 |
Good call, Padraig. I love Moe Tucker's solo stuff. "Spam Again" and "Hey Mersh" are classic. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1405 Registered: 04-2005 |
I've just been reading a great interview with Moe from the book "The Velvet Underground Companion" by Albin Zak III. Good one with Sterling Morrison too in the book. Seems to be pretty easy to find secondhand. Well worth getting if you are a fan. If I could go back in time just once I would probably choose to be present at one of the Velvets' SF Matrix dates in November '69 ! | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1872 Registered: 10-2006 |
And I'd be the other time traveller buying you a drink! | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2026 Registered: 08-2006 |
Man, those Matrix tapes. Thank god for Bob Quine (who I met at a wedding once). | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4548 Registered: 03-2005 |
Personally, I had an ambivalent relationship to the Velvets. I was late to them like most people, in my case first hearing them after they were finished but before Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." I loved the first album passionately from start to finish, was exasperated at the conscious decision to render the second album so hard to listen to, was lukewarm about the pokey numbers on the third album and thought "Loaded" had veered too far to please the uninitiated, though I always did love "Who Loves the Sun." It doesn't help that a rather nonmusical friend of mine played "Sweet Jane" over and over and over again for several years. But after all of this my best musical buddy bought the two-LP "1969 Velvet Underground Live." I'm not generally keen on live recordings. But finally, here was an awesome endless version of "White Light, White Heat"--always a great song that was hard to even hear in its original form. And the long extended "guitar solos" gave the finger to all the tedious guitar god rubbish you had to endure if you were listening to rock music from the advent of Cream until the advent of punk. So yeah, the people who preserved and exhumed those live tapes really performed a cultural service. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4549 Registered: 03-2005 |
Meanwhile, I'm listening to a vinyl reissue of . . . . Graham Fellows -- Love at the Hacienda 1985 Manchester, much more fey than usually associated with that city in that era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w0QJsBq A3I | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1873 Registered: 10-2006 |
And the definitive version of that extraordinary song Ocean, my favourite weep-yourself-to-sleep-drunk tune for many years. And the perfect version of New Age, with the wonderful original lyric - I could never understand why Lou changed it for that fat blonde actress stuff on Loaded, interview after interview with him I read hoping the journalist would ask him, "Why, Mr Reed, why did you jettison those brilliantly evocative words for that later tat?" but nobody ever did. And then he gave it to Yule to sing as well, maybe he didn't like the new words that much either. So having that version there is priceless. And even Lou's laconic between song patter is highly engaging. "So, do you guys have a curfew round here or anything like that? Ok, well, pull up your cushions and whatnot and whatever you have that makes life comfortable here in California..." Or something similar. |