Mockup of vinyl packaging for Ryan Adams Blackhole
Announced unexpectedly today from Ryan Adams‘s camp is the long-awaited (or long-delayed) release of Blackhole. From the description in the webstore:
Ryan Adams’ infamous cult classic album “Blackhole” will be released on classic black vinyl and CD for the very first time.
The album’s contents and final track listing have been widely speculated since its conception in the early 00’s. After nearly two decades of anticipation, Adams is now ready to unveil the official release of Blackhole. Featuring “Catherine”, heard only in live performances, alongside previously unheard material, Blackhole captures the raw, unfiltered emotion that defines Adam’s songwriting.
The shelved album, first demoed in 2006, became heavily bootlegged, with fans circulating low-quality recordings and snippets from live performances, fueling a demand for the album’s official release. This long-awaited, full-length album not only satisfies years of fan speculation, but also reclaims a crucial moment in Ryan Adam’s history.
I made an article back in 2014 collecting everything I could find about Blackhole when he started performing two tracks from it during the self-titled album tour. Here is the link to that article:
I had been following Ryan’s career really closely for about ten years at that point and the Blackhole album was talked about a lot in the various forums online. The interesting part about the album was that it really hadn’t leaked up until that point and the only information about it was from Ryan himself.
The short version is that he recorded most of the album over Christmas 2005 with Jamie Candiloro and spent four years working on it adding guitar parts, mixing and other work. In 2010 he had the masters completed and showed a picture of the test pressing which marked the long journey of announcements of Blackhole releases with one of the most recent announcements in 2018. The 11-track album confirms some of the tracks that have leaked over the years and there seems to be some new titles, that I’ve never heard, but based on the general tone of the album, which Adams once described as “Love Is Hell Pt. 3” I’m sure they’ll be more of the same Smiths-influenced guitar rock.
Here is the confirmed tracklist from the order page along with my notes about where these have leaked or debuted previously. Some of these songs have leaked in different versions and presumably mixes a few times over the years. It really is some of his best work in my opinion.
Above is a picture of one of my latest guitar acquisitions. It started life as a neglected Gibson LG-1 flattop acoustic that I picked up in July 2017 from a Facebook music instrument for sale group. The guitar was being sold by a local musician for the wife of a late friend who was also a musician in Cedar Rapids. He had it listed as “Make an Offer.” He had sent photographs and the serial number off to Gibson to get it dated. Based on the serial number of X9112 24 stamped on the inside and the teardrop pickguard, they estimated it to be a 1954.
The guitar was bought in the early 1970’s when his friend worked at Carma Lou’s House of Music, which was a long-standing music store in Cedar Rapids. I think I’m likely the third owner of this guitar.
It apparently languished in its guitar case under a bed for a long time because the plastic tuning keys had denatured which made them very brittle and had mostly crumbled off. What apparently happens is that the plastic off-gases as it ages and because it was locked in its case, those gases couldn’t escape. As a result the guitar couldn’t be tuned.
In addition to that, one of the braces was missing from the inside, and the rosewood bridge was pulling away from the top, which also caused a bulge. The guitar was not playable in its current state, so a decision needed to be made. What is the goal? I could have bought it and just hung it on a wall somewhere. Maybe replace the tuner keys. Or, I could have had the guitar restored by a luthier. Replace the tuners, glue in another brace, fix the bridge. I reached out to my friend Scott Baxendale of Baxendale Guitar. Scott is a renowned guitar luthier and has created guitars for a lot of musicians including the guys from The Drive-By Truckers. I know Scott from when I helped him promote a record he made with Jack Logan. He has a business where he takes “learner guitars” or cheaper acoustic guitars from the 40’s through the 60’s and completely refurbish them he calls Baxendale Conversion (It was called Harmony Conversion at the time, after the Harmony guitars of this period). His team takes the guitar completely apart, upgrades the interior bracing from a ladder style bracing to a cross-bracing based on 1920’s Martins. They then do a complete re-fret and re-radius the fretboard to a 12″ or 14″, replace the bridge with a newly created one and install a bone nut and saddle. They install period correct upgraded tuners as well. They put the guitar back together and adjust the neck for perfect intonation, making it a guitar, that in his words will sound and play better than a vintage guitar that costs ten times as much. The key to this is that even inexpensive guitars from this period used good tonewoods. So, you get a nicely aged guitar but upgraded. I saw a couple of videos on YouTube of folks who had this done and I had my decision made– I’d do a conversion on the guitar. As much as I would have loved to have a 1950’s Gibson that was restored to original specs, this guitar had a lot of work needing to be done and LG-1’s aren’t really that desirable because they were the cheapest of the LG’s at that time and you can get really nice examples for around $1300 currently. The conversion process changes the ladder bracing to cross bracing, which essentially makes them like the more desirable LG-2. Vintage LG-2’s are going for over $3000 in very good condition on Reverb with pre-war examples above $6,000!
Some background on the Gibson LG-1 from Reverb’s page on them: “During World War II, Gibson pared its flat-tops down to six standard models, the Gibson LG-1 acoustic guitar among them. As a student model, the LG-1 was introduced alongside the LG-2 and LG-3 to be a less expensive model that even younger players could afford. Because it was initially intended to be a lower-end guitar, the LG-1 uses ladder-style bracing and is made of a mahogany back with a spruce top.”
In a kind of Baader-Meinhof version of musical gear ownership, I started seeing LG guitars everywhere where I hadn’t noticed them before. It seems that the LG’s are a popular choice for working acoustic guitar players– at least among the players I pay attention to. Here are some examples of players:
Charles Esten as Deacon Claybourne on the ABC/CMT series Nashville playing an LG-2
The ABC/CMT TV show Nashville was a worthwhile watch if only for the incredible stable of guitars the show had. Prop Master Danny Rowe was interviewed by Gibson for their website and shed some light on the guitars, and mentioned two LG-2’s on the show:
“Sam Palladio, who plays Gunnar Scott, has an LG-2. I had that guitar recreated It’s been in the Country Music Hall of Fame as a flagship for the show and now it’s on its way to Disney World. That guitar has stayed with his character and been a part of what he does. And Chip [Charles Esten] has played quite a few. His character Deacon Claybourne has an Advanced Jumbo that he plays in his living room or on his front porch. A character like his would own a whole bunch of guitars, so he’s also played L-00s, ES-125s, and an LG-2 with a pickup and a J-200.“
Another TV show that featured an LG prominently was ABC’s The Middle. The youth minister Reverend Tim Tom played by actor Paul Hipp wields a 1943 “banner” logo Gibson LG-2. I messaged Hipp through his fanpage on Facebook about the guitar.
“It is indeed a 1943 Gibson LG-2. I bought the guitar at Matt Uminov on Bleeker St in The Village in 1990. It has an amazing and balanced tone. I walked into the shop and heard the salesman talking to another guy about it and that “Bob” had been in the day before and tried and loved it… blah blah…. probably all salesman bullshit I thought… but I figured I’d give it a strum just for the hell of it… one strum and SOLD. Been loving it ever since.”
Elvis with prop Gibson LG-1 in Viva Las Vegas with Ann Margaret
According to guitar legend Scotty Moore on his website, the Gibson LG-1 was used in more of Elvis Presley’s films than any other guitar, featured prominently in his MGM films from 1963-1968. Moore’s page on the LG-1 gives a lot of good information about the LG-1 in general in addition to many photographs of Elvis from the films. Based on Moore’s research, there was at least two LG-1’s in the prop department at MGM. These are 1955 or newer because they have the larger (not teardrop) pickguards. Unfortunately, one of the LG-1’s ends up in a swimming pool in the debut scene of Viva Las Vegas (for a few takes it seems) which would have really trashed the guitar. In later movies starting with the 1966 film Spinout, one of the LG-1’s gets a mustard colored paint job– Moore guesses it might be the pool victim.
Bo Ramsey with his LG-2 photo by Sandy Dyas
There are a few musicians with roots in Eastern Iowa who play mid-century LG’s and they are all related to Bo Ramsey it seems. Bo has an early 1950’s LG-2 that he said to me in an email is a “honey dog.” What a fantastic way to describe the tone! According to an interview with his wife Pieta Brown, she played that guitar on her album Mercury.
Benson Ramsey of The Pines and his script-logo LG-2
I’ve been following The Pines since their first self-titled album in 2004. Their atmospheric take on folk and blues is unique and every album is a stunner. They’ve taken the template laid down by Bo Ramsey and run off in their own direction. Benson and Alex Ramsey are sons of Bo. Benson is a guitarist and he plays a script-logo LG-2. This dates the guitar from 1943-1947. But, since it doesn’t have the banner on the headstock, it could be a 1946 or 1947. In 1948 Gibson changed the logo to the “block” design. Gibson has in recent years reissued the LG-2 as the “American Eagle” (natural finish with block logo) and the “Americana” (burst finish with script logo). I’ve never talked to Benson about the guitar, so I don’t know if it is an original or if it is the reissue. It has black plastic string pegs and the reissue has white ones, so maybe it’s an original one.
Kelly Pardekooper’s 1952 LG-1 (photo from his Facebook post)
Kelly Pardekooper started out as an Iowa musician and bounced around a bit before settling in Las Vegas. Bo Ramsey has produced a few of his records over the years including his 2018 album50 Weight. Kelly posted this picture of his 1952 LG-1 to his Facebook feed around the time they were recording the album at Flat Black Studios in Iowa. I hadn’t seen the guitar before so I asked him about it. “This is my LG1. Not surprisingly Bo helped me find this one at Willie’s Guitar in Minn back in ‘07. It’s a sweet one..Use it mostly for recording and writing.”
Kevin Gordon on stage at CSPS in Cedar Rapids, IA with his 1940’s LG-2.
A recent LG spotting I had was when Kevin Gordon played at CSPS. Gordon spent a few years in Iowa getting his Master’s degree in writing at the University of Iowa in the early 90’s. During that time he also was in Bo Ramsey’s band The Sliders. Gordon brought a collection of unique guitars with him and among them was a “banner” script logo LG-2. Banner logo Gibson acoustics were manufactured during World War II when the Kalamazoo factory hired skilled women to build the guitars. Many say that this was the pinnacle period for Gibson acoustics.
Recently Gordon posted a picture of the guitar to Facebook with the note, “Been a good friend for 25 years—my Gibson LG-2, which far as I can tell dates to 1943 or so. Replacement bridge was there when I bought it in Austin way back. Came with non-original (50s era?) cardboard case. A good traveler (except for that case).”
Chris Stapleton has been interviewed a few times about his LG-2 which he paid around $380 for and spent another $900 getting it to where it is today. It needed new tuners and a new neck, but is his primary songwriting guitar.
After I bought the guitar from the seller I made the arrangements with Scott and ordered a nice and inexpensive chipboard case from Musician’s Friend and shipped it to Athens, GA (where he was located at the time). Scott said it would take at least three months before I’d get it back. I watched his Instagram feed with interest to catch a glimpse of my guitar being worked on. On October 27th Scott posted a picture of an LG with scratches I recognized instantly. I got a shot of the guitar in disassembly which was great and I got an interesting bit of history about the guitar. It got a new top at some point in its life– likely at the factory, so the dovetail tenon is hidden under the top rather than cut around it.
After some time with the guitar, I think it was the right choice to have the guitar “resto-modded” (to borrow a car culture expression). It plays beautifully and is surprisingly loud for such a small guitar! It projects as much as my Taylor dreadnaught. The neck is incredible and the guitar itself is really light.
Certainly I’m not comparing myself to the musicians who use Gibson LG’s, but it’s cool to see a community of players who all like the LG-1 and LG-2’s and it makes my own LG project that much more special. The guitar is 70 years old in 2024, which is kind of mind-blowing and with the proper care, this guitar should make it past 100 years (and I’ll be in my 80’s if I make it that long). My grandson would be in his late 30’s for that, it would be great to hand this to him and continue its journey into its second century.
In 2023, I saw my first “normal” live shows since the lockdown, though I only managed to hit a few and they were all local/regional acts. On April 29th, I saw Dickie/Dick Prall perform at CSPS in Cedar Rapids backed by a string quartet which was really fantastic. Dick’s music tends to adapt well to strings. Cedar Falls artist Joel Sires opened as a duo with Jacob Lampman. I also saw a reunion show for seminal Iowa band House of Large Sizes at The Octopus in Cedar Falls. I hadn’t seen them since I lived in Iowa back in the early 90’s. Considering the age of the band (and the fans, frankly) they put on a fantastic high-energy show complete with Barb jumping up and down. The show was a warm-up for the 80/35 Festival. You can watch the complete performance at 80/35 here. The band that opened for HOLS the night I saw them was 10-Watt Robot from Des Moines with Mike Sangster of The Hollowmen and Head Candy fronting. 10-Watt Robot recorded their debut album at Pachyderm Studios (where Nirvana recorded In Utero) this year and their album should come out in 2024!
I saw Joel Sires a couple more times this year– once was for a live-streamed performance for VUit that I produced (click here to watch) and I also caught him playing a show in the “Art Alley” in Marion, IA with Jacob.
I wouldn’t say that vinyl production returned to normal, but maybe to borrow a phrase from the early COVID times, “a new normal.” Pre-orders were months out, and while that isn’t unusual, most of the preorders I had missed original estimates, and often months from the original estimate. I have resorted to creating a Google spreadsheet that keeps track of my pre-orders so I don’t forget them (and also remember to check on them!). Craft Recordings kicked off a campaign to start reissuing the Original Jazz Classics series from the 80’s. The OJC series was a bargain-priced reissue series of Prestige/Riverside/Contemporary jazz titles. Under its new reboot, these are remastered from tape by Kevin Gray, but are now decidedly NOT discount at $32. I ordered Bill Evans Trio’s Waltz for Debbie and Sunday At The Village Vanguard together to save on shipping in May when they were announced. I received the albums in late December. There was a manufacturing problem with Vanguard apparently which delayed it, and since I ordered them together, Waltz was held up for me. These are gorgeous releases with very heavy Stoughton-style jackets and OBI strips and 180g vinyl. Rather than try to track down originals (or even reissues) this is a great way to build a jazz essentials catalog.
The recurring topic in the vinyl community was the rising prices of new and used vinyl across the board. Most new vinyl was $28-$30 for a single LP in 2023, with multiple LP sets often twice that. Market studies showed the vast majority of new vinyl collecting came from younger collectors who were more interested in collecting the records than actually playing them. This explains the deluge of release variants with different color vinyl and different covers. The most obvious of this are the Taylor Swift “Taylor’s Version” of her Big Machine catalog. This contributed to the clogging of the production of vinyl as well, and I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Some part of this is the increase in cost of manufacturing and distribution, but also I think that the major labels saw the opportunity to “adjust” prices. Lots of counterarguments said that these increases corrected for inflation. Used vinyl looks to be on the upswing in pricing for bigger titles, which is compounded by median pricing reported by discogs. There are still deals to be had, but you have to be diligent.
I finally bit the bullet and joined Vinyl Me Please in 2023. They had a 40% coupon for members and I was very interested in the VMP Anthology release Miles Davis : The Electric Years box set. The member price of the box set was $349, and with the 40% discount, it brought it down to $209, which is a great deal for this beautiful box set, which was mastered by Ryan Smith from the original analog master tapes. The membership for 1 month is $46 and the release for December (when I joined) was VMP’s release of Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, which I didn’t have. $46 is steep for one album, but it is beautiful with a foil-stamped tip-on gatefold with an exclusive photograph and an essay. I considered stopping my membership, but I swapped the record for January (Labelle’s Nightbirds) for Monk’s Music, which I didn’t have an official release of (I had a gray-market one I picked up from Half Price Books years ago).
One big thing for me for 2023 was the purchase of some new gear. I managed to purchase one of the NAD C 3050 LE (limited to 1,972 worldwide). This replaced the circa-1978 Kenwood amp I’d been using for a really long time. I loved it, but it had some issues with the right channel cutting in and out. It probably needs to have the pots or the power switch cleaned on it. Also, I wanted to use a subwoofer in the room, and that amp didn’t have a good way to do that without using an Aux out or trying to loop through a speaker connection. This started me down the path of looking at newer amps and I considered one of the vintage-look Pioneer amps, but I stumbled over a YouTube review of the C 3050 LE and I was sold, I preordered it in 2022 and it took months to get, but it was worth the wait. The C 3050 LE has a phono stage and a dedicated headphone stage, but also can do bluetooth and network/internet streaming via BluOS. I had been using a bluetooth receiver on the old amp, but this amp can stream popular sites like Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Music, and Sirius XM. You use the BluOS app to chose the streaming site, which makes this amp a lot more flexible as a center of music for the home. NAD has introduced a non-limited edition version of the amp, which is available now. It’s the same except the BluOS card is available separately and the wood box is different.
Now onto the list. Quite a few interesting releases this year– I listened to a lot of new music this year, and looking back I’m reminded of releases that I was hot for a minute on, but then moved on. Writing this list each year ends up being a good exercise in reminding me of releases from earlier in the year. Here are my Top 20 of 2023 (in no particular order).
Neal Francis – Francis Comes Alive – Chicago musician Neal Francis put out a 2 LP live album this year. He brought an 11-piece band to Thalia Hall in Chicago and they filmed the concert as well as multi-track recorded the audio to analog tape. This album shows Francis in his element as a brilliant showman. The resulting album is certainly a callback to important 70’s live albums like Paul McCartney and Wings’ Wings Over America, Little Feat’s Waiting For Columbus and, of course Frampton Comes Alive. The extended workouts of songs like “Sentimental Garbage” with its Pink Floyd-esque extended outro jam is one I play a lot, especially to introduce friends to Neal Francis.
Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump For Joy – Another damn fine album from MC Taylor and company. Characteristically laid back jams with prime vintage vibes. I’ve said it before, but every year that HGM puts an album out is a year they’ll end up on this list. Bonus release: Solo MC Taylor Live from April of this year or Live at EartH Hackney.
Beth Bombara – It All Goes Up – St. Louis musician Beth Bombara was signed by indie record label Black Mesa Records, and It All Goes Up is the first release. The album is a continuation of the arc of brilliant albums from Beth. Most of these songs were written, or started during COVID, so songs like “Lonely Walls” certainly speak to that isolation, but certainly the record is more than just a “COVID album.” My favorite album of hers to date!
William Tyler and the Impossible Truth – Secret Stratosphere – An unexpected live album from William Tyler! A full-band set which includes songs from Tyler’s previous albums, but also a Kraftwerk cover “Radioactive” and a new song “Area Code 601” which is a tribute to 70’s instrumental band Area Code 615. The band includes pedal steel genius Luke Schneider. Schneider was in a post rock band with Tyler called Character in the early 2000’s, so this is kind of a reunion, too! Bonus release: “Darkness, Darkness/ No Services” 12″ collaboration between Tyler and Kieran Hebden.
Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble – III – For Chicago fingerstyle guitarist Elijah McLaughlin’s third release he moved to one of my favorite jazz labels Astral Spirits. On III, we find McLaughlin expanding the tonal palate of his work to include field recordings and new treatments to the cello and some synths. Beautiful album.
Alanna Royale – Trouble Is – For her third album, Alanna Royale took a chance and drove to California during the lockdown to work with R&B and Soul producer and musician Kelly Finnigan. Those sessions included members from Kelly’s band The Monophonics. The resulting album Trouble Is ends up being the perfect marriage– a Monophonics album lead with the dynamic vocals of Royale. A pairing we didn’t know we needed, but WOW, kind of the best of both.
I Think Like Midnight – Microtonal Honkytonk – The Philly instrumental guitar band I Think Like Midnight fronted by Andrew Chalfen started life as a band that’s original stated direction was to record albums in the style of Pell Mell, and to that end they released a lot of music that sounded like it was a continuation of that band. But, over the band’s previous albums, they’ve experimented with different styles and tones, so they’ve released albums that have strayed from that formula. For Microtonal Honkytonk, we hear some of that original sound as the band dips back into a more guitar-focused direction. If you’re a fan of bands like Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, or obviously Pell Mell, that are less surfy guitar instrumental, then this is a band you should check out. I Think Like Midnight is one of my favorite instrumental guitar bands today.
Black Duck – Black Duck Continuing the instrumental guitar theme of this list is Tortoise bass and Bass VI player Doug McCombs’s latest project called Black Duck. Black Duck is a trio with McCombs on bass and guitar, Bill McKay on guitar and Charles Rumback on drums. If you’re familiar with McCombs’s outings in Brokeback, this album sounds like an extension of that work. Gigantic reverb on the guitar coupled with light drumming recalls Tom Verlaine’s Warm and Cool album (an album McCombs openly admits is his favorite).
Sam Prekop and John McEntire – Sons Of – 2023 brought us another unexpected release from the Thrill Jockey stable of bands. Sam Prekop of The Sea and Cake, and solo and John McEntire of The Sea and Cake as well as Tortoise collaborated on an album anchored in analog synths and sequencers. Prekop is known for his recent analog synth works and McEntire brings his love of synths to Tortoise, so the record’s synergy is one that works. McEntire brings the beats to this effort which makes it very expansive and compelling and somewhat Tortoise-like in that regard. Bonus Release: A Yellow Robe Remixes by A Soft Pink Truth who is Drew Daniel of Matmos.
Okonski – Magnolia – Steve Okonski from Durand Jones and the Indications released his first solo album on Colemine Records. The album started out as an instrumental soul record with the idea that these songs would be composed in that manner and recorded. In fact, he released the demos from the initial sessions later in 2023 and the songs seem like break beats similar to El Michels or even kind of like J Dilla’s instrumental breaks. He liked the warmup recordings so much he switched to improvising in the studio resulting in a jazz trio record and one of my very favorite records from 2023. I really love that Terry Cole expanded the genre scope of Colemine Records to include a piano jazz record. I think that Okonski is going to record a new album in 2024. Bonus Release: Trio Session Demos
John Fahey – Proofs & Refutations – Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting a new John Fahey album in 2023! Comprised mostly of an EP put out in 1996 by his manager Dean Blackwood, the album on Drag City collects some “lost” sessions of Fahey’s later career. In addition to some improvised guitar work, there are some spoken works that reveal a fascination with a digital loop pedal. This album is not for the casual fan of John Fahey. It’s on this list because I’m a huge fan of John Fahey. I wrote an article HERE about the album’s history which covers the mid-90’s resurgence in interest of Fahey which led to his later period noise and electric works.
Exploding Star Orchestra – Lightning Dreamers – Exploding Star Orchestra is one of the many projects led by jazz trumpet player Rob Mazurek (Chicago Underground Duo/Trio, Isotope 217). Mazurek more than any other jazz musician carries the mantle of the Chicago Jazz Improvisation legacy first established by the Art Ensemble of Chicago in the mid-60’s. Lightning Dreamers brings back many of Mazurek’s regulars including Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and Nicole Mitchell. It picks up where the band’s 2020 album Dimensional Stardust left off. Funky and angular, this album shows what jazz can be in the 2020’s incorporating sounds and textures of our times.
Subatlantic – Say It Again – Quad Cities band Subatlantic released their sophomore album in 2023. This album was the result of some woodshedding done in a cabin in 2022 by the band. The album has a kind of theme around interpersonal conflicts that clearly Rebecca Rice wanted to get off her chest. Happy that this album and their last album Villians are both on vinyl. Subatlantic albums are best consumed in a vinyl listening session, in my opinion. You can read my review of Say It Again for Little Village Magazine HERE.
DeYarmond Edison – EPOCH – This massive box set encompasses the brief but intense period of creativity of a band moving from nascent post-high school hopefuls in Eau Claire, WI to wildly unbounded Americana band in Raleigh, NC. The band is normally a footnote in the careers of Justin Vernon as Bon Iver (whose middle names comprise the band name) and the Cook brothers, Phil and Brad and Joe Westerlund who would become another brilliant but sadly overlooked band Megafaun. Phil Cook has his own solo career these days and is also a go-to producer and sideman. Brad Cook is the manager of Hiss Golden Messenger. Westerlund has found success as a solo musician as well as contributor to bands like Califone. This box is an incredible undertaking, digging out lost recordings from the band as well as the legendary Hazeltons solo album which marked the end of DeYarmond Edison and foretold the beginning of Emma, Forever Ago. It’s a massive, sprawling box which taken in whole tells the story of the band.
Jared Mattson – Peanut – Jared is one of the Mattson twins that make up the band The Mattson 2. Peanut is the first solo record from either of them. Peanut is mostly sung in Japanese– a language picked up while touring the country often as The Mattson 2. The album is not really much of a departure from The Mattson 2’s breezy West Coast sound which draws easy comparisons to The Sea and Cake and Toro y Moi (whom they’ve worked with).
Toro y Moi – Sandhills EP – Speaking of Mr. Chaz Bear/Toro y Moi, he put out an EP of quietly acoustic music this year. This 14-minute release is a tribute to his hometown of Columbia, SC. It draws comparisons to Sufjan Stevens or Elliott Smith. Beautiful record. The EP has an etched side B that also has a short track of field recordings.
James Elkington – Me Neither – James Elkington seems to be a sideman on a lot of albums I listen to from bands out of Chicago. It helps that his groups are all related to Thrill Jockey– Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback, and Freakwater. But, his solo works are also fantastic– his moody baritone vocals are some of my favorites starting in his band The Zincs and moving to his duo with Janet Beveridge Bean in The Horses Ha (one of my early reviews is HERE) as well as his solo albums on Paradise of Bachelors. Me Neither is a 2 LP compilation of instrumental guitar sketches and is a great album to have on in the background or while driving for me.
Ratboys – The Window – Even though Chicago band Ratboys has been recording for over 10 years, I had only come across them this year. Fronted by the high soprano vocals of Julia Steiner, the band has a kind of twee sound that recalls 90’s acts like Juliana Hatfield. Really great punky pop.
Bob Martin – Seabrook – A lot has been said about Bob Martin elsewhere, but the short story is that he recorded a brilliant debut record called Midwest Farm Disasterin 1972 for RCA Nashville, but it wallowed in obscurity due to management changes at the label, as well as a change in focus to rock by RCA overall. Bob continued to record music up until his death in 2022. His final album Seabrook was produced by Jerry David DeCicca (of The Black Swans and solo). DeCicca had approached Martin about the possibility of reissuing Midwest Farm Disaster a while ago and struck up a friendship that resulted in his involvement in the final album. A bittersweet release, it is an album of reflection and a wonderful last work from Martin. Bonus Release: DeCicca released an album this year as well!
Dave Helmer – Such A Clown – Dave Helmer’s primary focus since 2014 has been his band Crystal City, which also includes his wife Sam Drella. They released a three great albums as Crystal City, with 2019’s Three-Dimensionality being one of my favorite local releases in recent history. Dave’s rough and ragged vocal delivery I compared to Paul Westerberg in my Little Village review of that album. So, it was somewhat surprising that he decided to release an album under his own name. I suspect it was mostly a factor of trying a different band or maybe the ability to focus the songs in a more personal direction. Crystal City seems more like a “we” band whereas the songs on Such a Clownare more “me” focused. Whatever the reason is, the songs are fantastic and don’t really stray too far from the guitar punch of Crystal City.
Shabooh Shoobahwas Australian band INXS’s third album, and the album that brought the band worldwide attention. The huge, anthemic singles “The One Thing” (July 1982) and “Don’t Change” (October 1983) hit the charts everywhere with “The One Thing” breaking the Top 30 in the U.S. as well as being the debut video from INXS for the fledgling music video channel MTV. “To Look At You” dropped as a single in March 1983, and the final single “Black and White” came out in June the same year.
In September 1983 the US was treated to an EP of remixes of singles from Shabooh Shoobah. Titled Dekadance, it included extended dance remixes of “Black and White,” “To Look At You,” “The One Thing,” and a “new version” of “Here Comes” called “Here Comes II.” The band is credited as producing the new remixes with Mark Opitz and David Nicholas credited as the engineers, so it seems by the credits that the band was fairly hands-on with the creation of the EP. Ostensibly, it seems that the band and their label wanted to ride the wave of excitement around the album and the band. When this EP dropped, the band was already in the studio with Nile Rodgers at the Power Station in NYC working on their next album The Swing.
In Australia, there was a related 12″ release just called Dance with a similar cover which was really just a single release of the extended mix of “Black and White” along with two b-sides, “Long In Tooth” and “No Day But Sunday.”
As an aside, the band released another EP confusingly also titled Dekadance in Australia in 1985 of remixes from The Swing.
By the time Shabooh Shoobah came out, INXS had established a standard practice of using non-album b-sides on their singles and these songs usually presented a more loose and fun version of the band including jazz instrumentals usually composed by Kirk Pengilly. As a fan of the band in the 1980’s I collected every 7″ and 12″ I could find to get all of the remixes and b-sides. I even created a mixtape of all of the b-sides and remixes as well as soundtrack songs that stayed in my car. In fact, my first car still belongs to my family, and my brother found the tape recently when they were detailing it.
The RSD release of Shabooh Shoobah Rarities is a collection of some of the non-album tracks from the 2022 Deluxe 40th Anniversary reissue of Shabooh Shoobah. The song titles listed below are links to YouTube videos of the songs.
A1 The Sax Thing – The b-side to the “To Look At You” single from March 1983. Jazzy Pengilly composition.
A2 Long in Tooth – The b-side to the “Don’t Change” single from October 1983. Also on the Australian Dance EP. Nice chiming synth track.
A5 Here Comes II – From Dekadance EP. I have always loved this re-imagining of this song. Slower, moody.
B1 Go West – B-side from the Australian “Don’t Change” single. Very stripped down with Casio rhythm track. Almost seems like a demo, Hutchence’s vocals are dry/no reverb.
B2 Phantom of the Opera – “The One Thing” b-side from July 1982. This track as presented in the RSD information, is actually spelled wrong. This is a Tim Farriss track, so the real title is a pun: “Phantim of the Opera.” A pastiche of film dialog and synths.
B3 Soul Mistake (Live from the US Festival, 1983) B4 Here Comes (Live from the US Festival, 1983) B5 Spy of Love (Live from the US Festival, 1983) B6 Old World New World (Live from the US Festival, 1983) – These last four tracks are live takes from the US Festival and haven’t been released anywhere other than the 40th Deluxe reissue. The band’s setlist at the US Festival was nine out of the ten tracks from Shabooh Shoobah.
Here are the songs missing from this release based on the 40th Deluxe:
You Never Used To Cry – From the Australian limited edition two 7″ single set for “To Look At You.” Written and performed by Tim Farriss. Also used in the Jon Cryer 1984 film No Small Affair.
Space Shuttle – B-Side from “The One Thing” Australian 12″. A kind of dark new-wave track.
Any Day But Sunday – Tim Farriss track. Also from the No Small Affair soundtrack.
This release, while good-intentioned is disappointing because it doesn’t include all of the bonus tracks from the 40th Deluxe reissue. It’s also missing the extended version of “To Look At You” from the Dekadance EP (which is also included on the 40th Deluxe). Honestly, the US Festival tracks aren’t essential on vinyl, in my opinion, and I would have rather had all of the b-sides and “To Look At You” extended remix. I’ll still pick it up since I’m a big fan of INXS.
No single filmmaker captured the zeitgeist of the 1980’s better than John Hughes. His catalog of films loom large on the landscape of what we think of as 1980s culture with big blockbusters of the teen condition like “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Pretty In Pink” (1986) and the immensely quotable “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986).
Hughes wasn’t the only filmmaker making movies targeted at adolescents in the 1980s, but for that run of films he certainly set the standard for what they should be– heartfelt and funny, often involving a cross section of teen culture, which ultimately allowed those of us who were teenagers at the time the ability to see ourselves in the characters– even if it was largely a whitewashed one.
Hughes was more than his teen movies, however. He got his start writing for National Lampoon, and his first big hit was “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983). By 1987 he stepped away from teen films with the epic road adventure starring John Candy (with whom he would create a number of films) and Steve Martin “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” He would continue to make films through the early 1990’s before finally retiring from writing, producing and directing in 1994. Hughes passed away of a heart attack in 2009 while on a trip to New York City visiting his son James.
One constant through Hughes films was the placement of music and often the soundtrack albums were as popular as the films themselves. Like many, I found out about bands like The Psychedelic Firs (“Pretty In Pink”), New Order (“Shell Shock”), Kate Bush (“This Woman’s Work), Oingo Boingo (“Weird Science”), Simple Minds (“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”), Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (“If You Leave”) from these soundtracks. One beef I always had was that the soundtrack albums didn’t have all of the songs from the film on them or sometimes the album simply didn’t exist, or focused on the score. In most cases when the soundtrack did exist, they would include the most prominent songs, and albums for the soundtracks to “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty In Pink” and “She’s Having a Baby” are all great standalone listens.
Before record labels and rights holders got aggressive about takedowns in the early 2010’s, the collective efforts of soundtrack fans on the Internet would create comprehensive soundtracks for many films. One notable site that suffered the takedown fate was The Inferno Music Crypt, which started as a way to collect rare soundtracks to horror films which by and large may never have had a soundtrack release (these days this effort continues, and labels like the amazing Terror Vision label resuscitates lost music from bands like Tangerine Dream!). The Music Crypt complete version of the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Soundtrack had a few iterations before landing on the final version which had 320Kbps mp3’s of all of the songs as well as samples of film dialog and even alternative versions of some of the songs as bonus tracks (his version included the vocal version of The Dream Academy’s cover of The Smiths “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” for example). His version also included the Star Wars Theme (used when the parking attendants took the Ferrari for a spin), the “I Dream Of Jeanne” theme, and even parade songs: Wayne Newton’s “Danke Shoen” and The Beatles “Twist and Shout.”
So, when I heard about a massive box set of soundtrack songs from the John Hughes films titled Life Moves Pretty Fast : The John Hughes Mixtapes (out November 11th), I was really excited! Initially, the preorders were only from the UK– Demon Music Group, who produced this set, is run by the BBC, but now the compilation is available as a pre-order from Pop Market for around $142.00 as a 6-LP box set with book. There is also a CD box set which comes with a 14-track cassette and 7-inch, and a 2 LP version.
The compilation is curated by Tarquin Gotch who was Hughes’s primary music supervisor for his films. The compilation is presented as a mixtape of songs from all of the films, rather than in order of the soundtracks as a tribute to how Gotch and Hughes would collaborate on the music supervision.
“Back when we were working on these movie soundtracks, the best way to send music around the world was the cassette, by Fedex,” Gotch remembered in a statement. “We sent John cassettes of newly released music, of demos, of just finished mixes (and in return he would send VHS videos of the scenes that needed music).”
Presenting the songs this way makes the compilation more listenable, since Hughes had a tendency of jumping around stylistically as the scene demanded, plus even at 74 songs, this is far from comprehensive. Some films are only represented by one song, for example. The Breakfast Club is represented only by “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” (though arguably the most famous song from the film), Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” makes an appearance representing all of the various “Vacation” films (also a song that is sort of hard to find since Buckingham never seems to include it in any releases), Pop Will Eat Itself shows up for “The Great Outdoors” (an unmemorable soundtrack, honestly, and seemingly a way to pay licensing to “Elwood J. Blues” (aka Dan Akroyd) with no less than 5 songs (none of which are here).
What this compilation seems to try to do is walk the line between appeasing died-in-the-wool fans of the soundtracks of these films and also presenting a compilation of songs that general fans of the films would enjoy. In that regard, I think they might have gotten it right– particularly when you look at the 2 LP version. Clocking in at 25 tracks, it represents pretty much only the “big” songs from these soundtracks and is kind of a greatest hits of these. Most people would only be interested in getting this version, I expect.
The 6 LP/4 CD version is clearly targeted at the fans who already have the original soundtracks and want to get some of the songs that were skipped due to album length or licensing. If you already have The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Weird Science you won’t feel gipped here. Most of the songs on these soundtrack albums aren’t here.
Interestingly, we pretty much get all of the “missing” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Soundtrack in this collection. There was never an album release for this, though in 2016, LaLaLand Records put one together (still missing some tracks due to licensing), and it includes the Ira Newborn score which is pretty nice. We don’t get the parade “Danke Shoen/Twist And Shout” on Life Move Pretty Fast, and that’s likely due to licensing. Having “Beat City” by the Flowerpot Men, “Love Missile F-111” by Sigue Sigue Sputnik and “March of the Swivelheads” by The Beat (The English Beat in the U.S.) as well as “Oh Yeah” by Yello really captures this soundtrack’s big moments.
Life Moves Pretty Fast also makes up for the ridiculous attempt at a soundtrack album in 1984 for Sixteen Candles. The original release was an EP clocking in at around 16 minutes. In some regards, it was pretty much a way to prop up the brilliant “If You Were Here” by The Thompson Twins. We get 11 songs on this box set, which includes the aforementioned “If You Were Here,” but also includes some of the really on-point tracks from the wedding preparation, the Peter Gunn theme and “True” by Spandau Ballet. All we’re missing is the Stray Cats cover of “16 Candles, the Annie Golden track and “Geek Boogie” which was a song created for the film by Ira Newborn (a signature track that really should have been on here).
Quite a bit of the soundtrack to “She’s Having A Baby” is included here, both new songs and songs from the album. The key songs from the soundtrack album proper make it here, though sadly leaves off the awesome XTC song “Happy Families.” But, where it really hits are the “classic” songs that propped the film up, but weren’t licensed for the album: Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” Boston’s “More Than A Feeling,” and the use of “Music For A Found Harmonium” by Penguin Cafe Orchestra (which HAD to influence its inclusion in the post-dance scene in Napoleon Dynamite). The funny addition is the cover of the Gene Krupa track “Drummin’ Man” by Topper Headon, who was the original drummer for The Clash.
The original soundtrack album to Planes, Trains and Automobiles seems to lose any sort of cohesion from both not including some key songs from the film itself, and the fact that the songs don’t really fit together. Steve Earle’s cover of “Six Days on the Road” is fantastic, and really the only reason to have ever bought it (I had it on cassette…). Don’t even get me started with “I Can Take Anything” by E.T.A. which is a club track with samples from the film (sort of like “Batdance” from Batman I suppose). This, thankfully isn’t included on Life Moves Pretty Fast, but we get both Steve Earle songs: “Six Days on the Road” from the album as well as “Continental Trailways Blues.” Yello is back with “Lost Again” which originally appeared on their 1983 album Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess. To me it seems that by 1987, the soundtracks to the Hughes films had moved from being the leading edge of New Wave tastes, but that was probably also a symptom of Hughes moving from teen films. In that regard, this box set and album smartly leans heavily on those earlier films.
As someone who has been a big fan of the music in John Hughes’s films, this box set is a welcome release, and certainly a tribute like this has been long overdue. Since I already have some of these original soundtracks in my collection, this is a great companion to those (and I realize I need to get some of those on LP).
Click here to order the 6 LP red vinyl box from Pop Market (currently about $142 with free shipping)
Click here to order the 4 CD, 7″ and cassette box from Pop Market (currently about $120 with free shipping)
Click here to order the 2 LP black vinyl version from Pop Market (currently at $53.79 with free shipping)
Below is the tracklist for the 6 LP box set. I’ve added in bold the film the songs appeared in, and put an asterisk next to the songs that were on the original soundtrack albums.
Side A: Kajagoogoo – Kajagoogoo (Instrumental) – Sixteen Candles * Simple Minds – Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Breakfast Club * Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – If You Leave – Pretty In Pink * Oingo Boingo – Weird Science – Weird Science * Furniture – Brilliant Mind – Some Kind of Wonderful * Dave Wakeling – She’s Having a Baby – She’s Having A Baby
Side B: The Flowerpot Men – Beat City – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink – Pretty In Pink * Flesh for Lulu – I Go Crazy – Some Kind of Wonderful * Dr. Calculus – Full of Love – She’s Having A Baby * Lick the Tins – Can’t Help Falling in Love – Some Kind of Wonderful * Steve Earle & The Dukes – Six Days on the Road (Album Version) – Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Side C: * Kirsty MacColl – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby (Soundtrack Version) – She’s Having A Baby * Suzanne Vega & Joe Jackson – Left of Center – Pretty In Pink * Pete Shelley – Do Anything (Soundtrack Version) – Some Kind of Wonderful * Carmel – It’s All in the Game – She’s Having A Baby * The Dream Academy – Power to Believe (Instrumental) – Planes, Trains and Automobiles * Kate Bush – This Woman’s Work – She’s Having A Baby
Side D: The Beat – March of the Swivelheads (Rotating Heads – Dub Version) – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Nick Heyward – When It Started to Begin – Sixteen Candles Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Tesla Girls – Weird Science Big Audio Dynamite – BAD – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * Killing Joke – Eighties – Weird Science The Specials – Little Bitch – Sixteen Candles
Side E: * Gene Loves Jezebel – Desire (Come and Get It) (US Club Mix) – She’s Having A Baby Flesh for Lulu – Slide – Uncle Buck * Love and Rockets – Haunted When the Minutes Drag – She’s Having A Baby Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11 (Ultraviolence Mix) – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * Lords of the New Church – Method to My Madness – Weird Science
Side F: * The Jesus and Mary Chain – The Hardest Walk (Single Version) – Some Kind of Wonderful * Echo & the Bunnymen – Bring on the Dancing Horses – Pretty In Pink General Public – Tenderness – Weird Science The Blue Room – I’m Afraid – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * Belouis Some – Round, Round – Pretty In Pink * Thompson Twins – If You Were Here – Sixteen Candles The Dream Academy – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (Instrumental) – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Side G: Yello – Oh Yeah – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * Book of Love – Modigliani (Lost in Your Eyes) – Planes, Trains and Automobiles Otis Redding – Try a Little Tenderness – Pretty In Pink * Patti Smith – Gloria: In Excelsis Deo – Sixteen Candles * Westworld – Ba-Na-Na-Bam-Boo – Planes, Trains and Automobiles Divinyls – Ring Me Up – Sixteen Candles Topper Headon – Drummin’ Man – She’s Having A Baby
Side H: Billy Idol – Catch My Fall – Some Kind of Wonderful The Association – Cherish – Pretty In Pink Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Music for a Found Harmonium – She’s Having A Baby Zapp – Radio People – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off * The Blue Room – Cry Like This – Some Kind of Wonderful
Side I: Ray Charles – Mess Around – Planes, Trains and Automobiles Joe Turner – Lipstick, Powder and Paint – Uncle Buck Darlene Love – (Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry – Sixteen Candles Marvin Gaye – How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) – She’s Having A Baby Perry Como with Mitchell Ayres and His Orchestra and the Ray Charles Singers – Juke Box Baby – Uncle Buck The Chordettes – Mr. Sandman – Uncle Buck Ray Anthony and His Orchestra – The Peter Gunn Theme – Sixteen Candles
Side J: * Lindsey Buckingham – Holiday Road – National Lampoon’s Vacation * Emmylou Harris – Back in Baby’s Arms – Planes, Trains and Automobiles Hugh Harris – Rhythm of Life – Uncle Buck Spandau Ballet – True – Sixteen Candles Propaganda – Abuse – Here – Some Kind of Wonderful The Dream Academy – The Edge of Forever – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Side K: Yello – Lost Again (Album Version) – Planes, Trains and Automobiles * Bryan Ferry – Crazy Love – She’s Having A Baby The Rave-Ups – Positively Lost Me – Pretty In Pink Los Lobos – Don’t Worry Baby – Weird Science Steve Earle – Continental Trailways Blues (Album Version) – Planes, Trains and Automobiles The Revillos – Rev Up! – Sixteen Candles
Side L: Boston – More Than a Feeling – She’s Having A Baby * Balaam and the Angel – I’ll Show You Something Special – Planes, Trains and Automobiles The Rave-Ups – Rave Up / Shut Up – Pretty In Pink * Pop Will Eat Itself – Beaver Patrol – The Great Outdoors The Vapors – Turning Japanese – Sixteen Candles * Silicon Teens – Red River Rock – Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The national awareness of Athens, Georgia as a vibrant art and music scene in the 80’s was largely accomplished due to a plucky, quirky and loose 1986 documentary film by director Tony Gayton titled “Athens, GA: Inside/Out” and its associated soundtrack on I.R.S. Records, which at the time was R.E.M.’s label.
In many ways, the film happened at the right time: R.E.M.’s Document, their last and biggest album on I.R.S. Records would come out in Fall of 1987 and blow up with “The One I Love.” Fans like me who were hungry for everything related to R.E.M. ran out to pick up the VHS tape of the film and the soundtrack to hear and see the two R.E.M. tracks performed in the Seney-Stovall Chapel: acoustic versions of “Swan Swan H” from Lifes Rich Pageant and a cover of an Everly Brothers classic re-titled “(All I Have To Do Is) Dream.”
A side note: the legend of R.E.M. includes the fact that they lived in an abandoned church and their first concert was in this same church. Until today, I assumed that the performance in the film was in that church, but they really lived in St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which was demolished in 1990 by developers. The steeple still stands today as a landmark to R.E.M.
As someone growing up in a very small midwestern town in the 1980’s, I had very limited access to underground non-Top 40 music. I didn’t even have MTV! So, the soundtrack and filmed performances in “Athens, Ga : Inside/Out” were eye-opening experiences! In many ways this soundtrack defined the music I would follow for many years. As a compilation, the songs and bands are all over the map: soon-to-be radio darlings R.E.M., twitchy frenetic post punk of Pylon (who recently got their much-deserved recognition in a boxset I covered here.), the instrumental workings of Love Tractor (the use of “Fun To Be Happy” as the opening music was brilliant and set the tone for the film), moody guitar rock of “Dreams So Real” (whose major label debut Rough Night in Jericho disappointingly made them sound like The BoDeans and not like the moody and beautiful “Golden”), The B-52’s were included in the film, but not the soundtrack, the hardcore punk of Bar-B-Q Killers, the hyper retro two-piece rockabilly of The Flat Duo Jets (who are obvious influences on The White Stripes). The thoughts of these bands playing bars and stages in Athens was breathtaking, and my friends and I all wanted to make a trip there. (It’s still on my bucket list of places to visit)
Squalls perform “Na Nanana” in Athens, Ga: Inside/Out
Out of all of those bands on the soundtrack, the ones that really stood out for me (and are favorites to this day) were Pylon, Love Tractor and Squalls. Squalls had two songs on the soundtrack, their big hit (such as it was) “Na Nanana” and “Elephant Radio.” Both of these songs were on their debut self-released EP from 1984, and by 1986, when this film came out, they were regarded as one of the bands who deserved to make it to the national spotlight. The Squalls mix of epic harmonies and melodies combined with smart and sometimes progressive rhythms to me makes them a shoo in for a band that could follow in the footsteps of bands like Talking Heads and Adrian Belew.
Squalls
The Squalls were signed to R.E.M. manager Jefferson Holt‘s label Dog Gone Records, and released two albums there before the band hung it up in 1989.
On August 19th, the band is releasing a compilation of live recordings made over five dates made at the legendary Athens, GA bar The 40-Watt Club between 1983 and 1985 (predating the performances in the film). These performances were recorded by 40-Watt soundman T. Patton Biddle. Titled Live from the 40 Watt, the songs span the EP and the two albums and are a great representation of the band’s body of work. Here is the tracklist, with my notes of performance date and what album the songs come from. I’ve also provided links to the tracks that have been released for streaming.
Bride Of Frankenstein (8/2/1985) from No Time and “Crickets” 7″
The striking thing about this compilation is how much unreleased music is included! I exchanged messages with Bob Hay, the principle songwriter in Squalls whether this release was indicative of the live sets from this pre-Dog Gone era of the band, or whether he was attempting to get these unreleased songs released formally. He said:
It’s kind of both. On “LIVE” I wanted to include every song that was released on vinyl before 1986. (8 songs – the EP and the single.) and also rescue from the sands of time a bunch of songs that were staples of our live shows in those days and a few that we played only a few times but are too good to be forgotten. We were primarily a live dance band and played live for almost three years before we set foot in a studio.
Facebook chat 7/10/22
The idea of a band packing bars playing all original songs seems foreign, if not kind of quaint these days. Bob sent me a scan of the show calendar for The 40-Watt Club from February, 1986: the month that they filmed the performances for Athens, GA: Inside/Out. I commented about the incredible lineup of bands that were playing that month– (not to mention all of the bands who were in the film)– Alex Chilton played a Thursday night show, The Georgia Satellites and the Del Fuegos (who would share a tour with Tom Petty the next year), Giant Sand, and Jason and the Scorchers played a three night stand. Bob replied, “I tell you, it was something during that time.”
In addition to capturing a wildly creative time for Squalls, Live from the 40-Watt also is a reminder that Athens was (and still is) a very special place where bands were drawn to be more free creatively and where audiences were excited to hear new music. The recordings show a band wide-eyed and excited to bring their art to the world.
Live From The 40-Watt will be released on August, 19th, 2020 and will be available on beautiful 2 LP blue vinyl, CD or digital. Click here to order from Strolling Bones records site, or you can order it from Bandcamp.
At some point I found a copy of She’s The One in a CD cutout bin not too long after the album was released in 1996. From a Tom Petty fan perspective, ironically, I heard this before I ever heard Wildflowers completely. 1995 and 1996 were years of exploration for me musically. I was living in Minneapolis (Eagan, specifically) and my ears were filled with the alternative nation of REV-105 and I was discovering new bands and music every day it seemed and I wasn’t focused on classic rock. I missed the Wildflowers release completely and ended up picking up its neglected sibling purely coincidentally. The irony being that She’s The One became the home for tracks that were lopped off Wildflowers when Warner Brothers suggested it be a single album rather than Petty’s original vision of a double.
As much as I have come to love Wildflowers and its 2020 bloated retort to the eternal Pettyfan joke “When is Wildflowers going to be reissued?”, Wildflowers… And All The Rest gave us nearly every minute of tape we could stand of the album, with every possible session that could be considered related to Wildflowers proper, I still hold a fondness for She’s The One, the quirky non-sequitur of songs collected spanning incidental music, covers and multiple takes.
One of the criticisms put forth about Wildflowers… And All The Rest was that it didn’t include any of the at-the-time new songs from She’s The One. Most people looked at She’s The One as kind of an extension of Wildflowers— particularly since the soundtrack benefitted by the inclusion of four very strong songs from those sessions: “Climb That Hill,” “Hung Up And Overdue,” “California,” and “Hope You Never.” The rest of the original soundtrack was new material recorded specifically for the film including two songs which would become important songs in Petty’s catalog, “Walls” with its amazing chorus “‘Cause you’ve got a heart so big/ it could crush this town/And I can’t hold out forever/Even walls fall down” and Petty’s tribute to his future second wife Dana, “Angel Dream” which became a staple in later live shows.
Amidst all of the personal turmoil in Petty’s life including the firing of drummer Stan Lynch from the Heartbreakers, divorce from his wife of 22 years Jane and the beginning of a heroin addiction that was hidden from public view until Warren Zanes’ “Petty” biography came out in 2015, he was approached to curate the soundtrack for the Ed Burns film She’s The One. Quoted in “Petty,” he says about the project, “I was approached about putting together a soundtrack for the movie. I liked what I’d seen of Ed Burns’s work. But, when I took the job I didn’t think it through. I wound up in a situation where they wanted different artists for a soundtrack. They had a few, but they wanted me to call more artists.” Eventually he called his manager Tony Dimitriades and told him he couldn’t do this. Dimitriades suggested that he should do the soundtrack himself, “like Paul Simon did for The Graduate.”
Ultimately, it was a failure on many levels. Petty was forced to rush to meet a deadline, “I was completely off my game.” he says in his biography, “I was doing something that was against my grain.” The film’s release was pushed back six months, leaving the soundtrack to appear to be a Heartbreakers album, “Some people thought I was following up Wildflowers… My record came out with no movie, I was so depressed– that just made me more depressed.” The album sold only 490,000 copies and ultimately went gold, but marks the sole disappointment in his catalog.
I would say that the 1996 version of She’s The One suffers from being a somewhat literal listing of the songs included in the soundtrack. We get two versions of “Walls”: one version is what was the single (“Walls (Circus)” and the other is “Walls (No. 3)” apparently created to satisfy Burns’s request of having a different one for the closing credits. We get two versions of “Angel Dream” as well and things cap off with a 57-second bouncy piano/organ instrumental “Airport.” The strings/piano/guitar instrumental arrangement of “Hope On Board” is positively breathtaking and too short. Another complicating factor are the two cover songs, which Petty typically didn’t include on proper albums. The resulting release comes off as kind of a cast-off in that regard, and if anything a bit unbalanced particularly considering the usually careful sequencing on Petty albums.
What the team ultimately settled on is now titled Angel Dream: Songs and Music from The Motion Picture ‘She’s The One’ and capitalizes on the great songs included on She’s The One: “Walls,” “Grew Up Fast” (a personal favorite), “Zero From Outer Space,” the Lucinda Williams cover “Change The Locks” (a typo according to Dana Petty in her interview with David Fricke on SiriusXM since the correct title is “Changed The Locks”) the Beck cover “Asshole,” “Supernatural Radio” (which is presented now as an extended take) and adds two songs recorded in July 1993 (in the middle of the sessions for Wildflowers, incidentally) during the sessions that produced “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” for the Greatest Hits album (“Something’s In The Air,” the other new track, was recorded in February that year). These songs are notable as having Stan Lynch on drums. None of the songs on the original Wildflowers nor the original She’s The One had him on them. These songs are a JJ Cale cover “Thirteen Days” (recorded on July 22, 1993, this shows up in a photo of a proposed tracklist for Wildflowers included in the box set), “105 Degrees” (recorded on July 23, 1993) and “One Of Life’s Little Mysteries” (the earliest track, recorded on August 4, 1992). We also get an instrumental reworking of “Angel Dream” titled “French Disconnection.”
blurry picture of 25 song sequence of Wildflowers from the box set showing “13 Days” being considered
It’s interesting to note that the song “Lonesome Dave” from the Wildflowers sessions which was included in the An American Treasure box set and not in the …All The Rest boxset was recorded on July 23 as well. In the “Petty” biography by Zanes, George Drakoulias remembers cutting many more tracks than “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” and we’re getting a bit of a peek into those sessions with Stan Lynch with the posthumous releases.
“…The idea behind Angel Dream was to make it a tighter album, and something that would make sense with this music after the three original Wildflowers tracks were taken off of it (for inclusion on Wildflowers All The Rest). It was important to have a really tight set of songs, sequenced in a way that honors Tom’s sense of how important albums are, in the story that they can tell. (This logic is behind the decision to leave certain songs off of the original Wildflowers, as McCool discussed in his earlier post.)
For Angel Dream the decision was made to not include the second versions of two songs (Walls and Angel Dream) that are on the She’s The One soundtrack, and also to not include the music cues that related more to the film. This was reconfigured to be a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album, not a film soundtrack album. Since we needed more material to fill out the album, we went back to three tracks that were recorded during the Wildflowers sessions, and an unreleased instrumental track.”
Steve Hoffman Forums post 6/15/2021
Ulyate touches on the inclusion of the new songs, “Can songs that were not recorded at the same time as others live on the same album? Yes they can, if they fit into the “vibe”. Without Tom there will always be second-guessing, but please know we did our best.”
The album is a really good listen and while I question the absolute necessity of its existence, it’s a record I’ll play frequently. The idea is that this is the version that will “replace” the original album in the new cataloging of Petty, though the original 1996 version (which was remastered in 2018) will continue to be available as a download.
Angel Dream Tracklist with my notes (special thanks to Mark Felsot for corrections):
Side 1:
Angel Dream (No. 2) from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Grew Up Fast from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Change The Locks (Lucinda Williams cover) from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Zero From Outer Space from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Asshole (Beck cover) from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Side 2:
One of Life’s Little Mysteries new track recorded August 4, 1992 with Stan Lynch
Walls (No. 3) from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Thirteen Days (JJ Cale cover) new track recorded July 23, 1993 with Stan Lynch
105 Degrees new track recorded July 24, 1993 with Stan Lynch
Climb That Hill from original 1996 soundtrack, remixed for this release
Supernatural Radio (extended version) new version recorded June 4, 1996
French Disconnection (Instrumental) new track recorded April 11, 1996
Cover Art for the 20th Anniversary Reissue of Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2
I’m a sucker for earnest songs about heartbreak. Clearly.
When I watched Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Magnolia, I was struck by the songs from Aimee Mann. Like many, I was familiar with her band, the MTV darlings Til Tuesday, but I hadn’t really kept up. Though, there wasn’t much to keep up with. The classic yarn of a band breakup followed by a couple of brilliant solo albums that her label didn’t know what to do with caused her to crash land in 1999 with no label and a record in the can that wouldn’t be released.
As the story goes, Paul Thomas Anderson was moved enough by the demos of this album to craft Magnolia around it and get some more songs from her. He connected to Mann through her husband Michael Penn who scored Anderson’s first two films. She got an Oscar nom for “Save Me” (a song that was written for the film).
I rewatched Magnolia recently. A horrific storm called a “derecho” blew 130+ MPH winds across Iowa, removing over 65% of the tree cover of Cedar Rapids and knocking power out for days and cell service and internet for weeks. Once power was restored, my wife and I still didn’t have internet and cell service was spotty, so we took to digging through our sadly-neglected collection of DVD’s and Blu-Rays for stuff to watch. We hadn’t seen it probably since I bought the DVD when it came out in 2000. The film’s three hours is not an easy watch, and twenty years later the heavy-handedness of the story arc and plot devices seems almost dated. Considering this was Anderson’s carte blanche film following the breakout success of Boogie Nights, it’s apparent he was pulling out all of his directorial tools for this. The soundtrack and score of the film end up being an essential part of the narrative with songs belonging to the characters, the culmination of which is when the film pauses for the characters to sing “Wise Up.”
This part of the film was a real lump-in-the-throat moment for me and how I became a fan of this soundtrack and Bachelor No. 2. I wrote an article back in 2008 proposing a mix people could make of the two CD’s to make a perfect version of the album.
Bachelor No. 2 was released in May 2000 on Mann’s own record label Super-Ego Records. It included “How Am I Different,” “Deathly,” and “You Do” from Magnolia. “Nothing Is Good Enough” appears on the soundtrack as an instrumental. Interestingly, “Wise Up” was originally intended for the film Jerry McGuire. A really great article breaking down the soundtrack by A/VClub by Alex McLevy makes the observation that in a literal sense the song says that the film “is not going to stop” until the characters wise up. Certainly the scene in the film where the characters sing “Wise Up” is a point of inflection.
In 2006, Mobile Fidelity Soundlab corrected sin of this album not existing on vinyl by pressing a limited run of 200g half-speed mastered LP’s based on the original US CD (which means it doesn’t have “Save Me” on it in place of “Driving Sideways” as the UK version did). These days copies of this are running around $200 and I was keeping an eye out to see if any might show up for a deal.
Thankfully, Aimee Mann is reissuing Bachelor No. 2 for its 20th anniversary for Black Friday Record Store Day as a 2 LP expanded version taking the original album and adding the Magnolia songs at the end. (this approach makes sense since it is a reissue of Bachelor No 2 primarily, but I think my mix is more fun) as well as a re-recorded version of “Wise Up.” Looking at Amoeba’s website, it will be priced at a reasonable $34.98. This is being touted as an “RSD First” which means that it will be generally available after RSD, though it’s hard to tell if the 4000 copies they’re showing is the total of all of the pressings or just what is available for RSD.
It will be interesting to hear that new version of “Wise Up.” If I had to guess, it probably removes the drum machine. In the press release she mentions that she “used a lot of drum loops” and nowhere is it more apparent than on “Wise Up.” Though for me, that works great.
The packaging is really nice with what appears to be a version of the cover art that looks like someone practicing calligraphy over it. The green vinyl and labels are gorgeous.
For the uninitiated, Pylon was a band from Athens, GA that started in the late 70’s by some art school students at the University of Georgia. For context in the larger history of Athens bands, they’re post-B-52’s and contemporaries of R.E.M. Their distinctively angular and beat-heavy sound would be described as post-punk and follows a path blazed by New York City bands like Talking Heads and Television.
The first phase of their career started in 1978 and after two albums on the now-defunct label DB Recs Gyrate and Chomp and enjoying some well-deserved exposure supporting bands like R.E.M. U2 and Mission of Burma on tours, they split up in late 1983.
Pylon would have just been a footnote in the history of the Athens music scene if it hadn’t been for the 1987 documentary “Athens, GA Inside/Out” which turned leagues of R.E.M. fans like myself on to the band. R.E.M. also recorded a cover of the Pylon song “Crazy” and released it as a b-side to “Driver 8” and it was the first track on Dead Letter Office, a collection of outtakes and b-sides. Peter Buck said in the liner notes, “I remember hearing their version on the radio the day that Chronic Town came out and being suddenly depressed by how much better it was than our record.”
The jittery energy of the live version of “Stop It!” with the militant growled vocals by Vanessa Hey was like nothing I’d ever heard before and even though it was the R.E.M. songs that drew me to the film and soundtrack, it was the Pylon track that ended up being my favorite part of that soundtrack. (Honestly, I always kind of felt like R.E.M. sort of phoned in their contribution with that Everly Brothers cover…)
Pylon reunited and in 1989 released a compilation called Hits which had notable tracks from the two albums as well as some tracks from singles. In 1990 they released another studio album Chain.on Sky Records. They went on tour with R.E.M. and then split up again in 1991. The band reunited for shows sporadically over the years that followed until they finally broke up for good after guitarist Randy Bewley passed away in 2009. Vanessa Briscoe Hay fronts a Pylon tribute band “Pylon Reenactment Society” along with members of other area bands and have even recorded a couple new songs.
In 2007 DFA Records, owned by Tim Goldsworthy of UNKLE and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem reissued Chomp and Gyrate on CD with bonus tracks . Titled Gyrate Plus and Chomp More, they went immediately out-of-print and the CD’s are now super-expensive in the secondary market. So, clearly there is demand for this catalog to be reissued again.
For Black Friday Record Store Day in 2019, New West Records sort of tipped their hand in the matter by reissuing Pylon’s debut single “Cool”/”Dub.” I reached out to the label about whether they were going to reissue the albums and at the time they confirmed it, but weren’t going to announce anything for a few months. Then COVID happened which messed up record manufacturing, so I’m guessing that’s why the announcement happened much later for the albums and the box set.
The box set comes in two versions, black vinyl and a limited-to-500 colored vinyl version. Four 140g LP’s include new remasters of Gyrate and Chomp, an LP of Extras which include singles, b-sides and other rarities, and Razz Tape, which is a recording of the band which pre-dates their 1979 debut single recorded in their practice space by Chris Razz. 47 tracks total with 18 of them unreleased.
Since they aren’t also reissuing the 1989 compilation Hits which also included some non-album tracks and there were extra tracks on the DFA releases, how do the tracks compare and what are we missing with the box set?
We’ve seen “Cool,” “Dub,” “Crazy” single mix and the “Danger!!” remix from the !! import EP on Hits and the DFA reissues as I indicate below. We have two completely new songs “Untitled” and “3×3” plus a couple of new mixes of “Danger III” and “Spiders.” Not to mention all of the new versions and tracks on the Chris Razz tape.
Notably missing are some tracks included on the DFA reissues. “Crazy (Original Version)” on the Chomp More reissue seems to also be referred to as the single version. “Yo-Yo (Pylon Mix)” or “Male version” (it has slowed-down versions of the vocals) and “Gyrate (Pylon Mix) are two versions that were recorded during the tracks that were recorded at Mitch Easter’s Drive-In, but the versions that were used on the album came from the sessions at Channel One. We’re also missing the 6-minute version of “Beep” that is called “Four Minutes.”
Interestingly, “Functionality” was listed on the Gyrate Plus reissue as a “Studio Demo.” But the liner notes say it was recorded in 1979 in their practice space in Athens, GA, so that is from the Razz tape.
Here are all the tracks for the boxset and the breakdown of where the Extras have been released before:
Gyrate LP
Volume 04:13
Feast On My Heart 03:35
Precaution 02:48
Weather Radio 02:16
The Human Body 03:11
Read A Book 02:02
Driving School 03:53
Gravity 02:37
Danger 05:38
Working Is No Problem 03:29
Stop It 03:06
Chomp LP
K 04:32
Yo-Yo 04:14
Beep 03:23
Italian Movie Theme 02:01
Crazy 03:13
M-Train 03:48
Buzz 02:58
No Clocks 02:57
Reptiles 03:56
Spider 03:58
Gyrate 04:06
Altitude 03:19
Extras LP
Untitled – New track
Cool – from Cool/Dub debut single, also Gyrate Plus and Hits
Dub – from Cool/Dub debut single, also Gyrate Plus and Hits
Recent Title – from Hits
Danger!! (Danger Remix) – from !! EP also Gyrate Plus
Crazy (Single Mix) – from “Crazy” single and Hits and probably Chomp More.
Reptiles (Channel One Version) – New version
No Clocks (Channel One Version) – New version
Spider (Alternative Mix) – New version
3 x 3 (Live) 02:19 – New track
Danger III (Live) – New track
Razz Tape LP – all new tracks except “Functionality”
The Human Body 03:08
Modern Day Fashion Woman (Version 1)
Read A Book (Instrumental)
Working Is No Problem
Precaution
Cool
Functionality – from Gyrate Plus
Efficiency
Information
Dub
Modern Day Fashion Woman (Version 2)
Danger
Feast On My Heart (Working Version)
Pre-order the box set from New West Records HERE or at their Bandcamp site (where you can stream some of the tracks).
News of a new Hiss Golden Messenger release was nestled discretely in a new interview with frontman M.C. Taylor in The Atlantic today. The article mentioned that he’s also working on a new album, keeping up with the nearly-yearly release schedule he’s been maintaining. The article is a nice snapshot of where he is these days, balancing the demands of home life and working musician. The article provides a quick history of Taylor’s career, which is probably new information for many who are only familiar with his recent releases.
This blog started around the time of his previous band The Court & Spark’s last release Hearts in 2006. In fact, I think my review of it might have been the first or second review I did. Just over a year later the band called it quits and Taylor and Scott Hirsch started working on the nascent version of Hiss Golden Messenger. At the time I was exchanging messages on MySpace with Taylor and he sent me rough mixes for what would be the first studio release Country Hai East Cotton. The article in the Atlantic describes it as “[not] bad, just listless.” When I was still in regular communication with Taylor, I used to suggest that he resurrect those songs live, but it was clear he was drawing a line in the sand of his catalog. His 2010 release Bad Debt represented a reboot of his songwriting. He’s quoted in the article: “I had to figure out how to sing a song that I meant, that I could carry around every night for months or years. I didn’t have that when I was in my late teens. I sure as shit didn’t have it in my 20s,” he says. “When I made Bad Debt it felt like I wrote the book of my life. I had never had that feeling creating music before.”
So, this is where the new boxset from Merge Records Devotion: Songs About Rivers and Spirits and Children starts. Due out 11/2, it is a gorgeously appointed package with the three main Hiss Golden Messenger releases that were released on the Paradise of Bachelors label (Bad Debt (2010), Poor Moon (2011), and Haw (2013)) plus a collection of rarities called Virgo Fool. The three albums have been out of print for a while and are now remastered for this box set and will be offered also as regular releases in the Merge catalog with new similarly-themed cover art. Here is what Merge says about the box:
“Individually numbered in a one-time pressing of 2,200 of each format, the four-album set is housed in a beautiful cloth-wrapped slipcase with three-color foil detailing and includes an exclusive foldout poster. Each CD is packaged with liner notes and complete lyrics inside a mini-gatefold wallet with a debossed cover. Each LP, pressed on black vinyl, includes a two-sided insert with liner notes and full lyrics plus a download card, all inside a heavyweight jacket with a debossed cover.”
For the ardent HGM collectors among us, the chance to get the rarities on one LP is worth the price of admission– it is only available in physical format in the box sets. Here is the track list for Virgo Fool along with where the tracks came from:
1. Rock Holy – From the Merge Records 25th Anniversary 7-inch box set Or Thousands of Prizes
2. Black Country Woman – Led Zeppelin cover from the Mojo Magazine compilation Mojo Presents Physical Graffiti Redrawn
3. Joyce & Joel – previously unreleased, but “Joyce & Joel Martin” are credited as being the house where “Brother Do You Know the Road” was recorded.
4. Lion/Lamb – Not sure if this will be the same version, but this song was included on the Root Work, Live on WFMU LP.
5. Father Sky – From the 2012 compilation of outtakes called Lord, I Love The Rain.
6. Issa – Haw outtake included in the digital only Glad EP. We’re missing the other original song “Roll River Roll” from that collection.
7. Back to the River Again – previously unreleased
8. Tell Everyone – Ronnie Lane cover from Lord, I Love The Rain.
9. Karen’s Blues – from Lord, I Love The Rain
10. The Revenant – Michael Hurley cover from Lord, I Love The Rain
11. Hard Promises – previously unreleased
Not one to give it all away, we’re missing a few rarities that maybe we’ll see collected in the future:
“Shiloh Town” : a Tim Hardin cover that was included on a split 7″ with Moviola. RSD 2012 limited to 200.
“Fennario” : a Michael Chapman cover which was included in the tribute album Oh Michael, Look What You’ve Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman. Was also included in the Glad digital EP.
“Brown Eyed Women” from the Day of the Dead Grateful Dead tribute.
“Lion of Judah” : a cover of Clive’s Original Band song. Included on the Glad digital EP.
“The Beast and Dragon, Adored” : Spoon cover from the digital only Or Thousands of Prizes covers collection.
“My Cousin’s King” – Elephant Micah cover from the shared split 7″
“I Wish I Had Not Said That” (JJ Cale cover), “Still Life Blues” (Elephant Micah cover), “Smoke Rings” (David Wiffen cover) from the Three-Lobed Recordings split LP with Michael Chapman as part of their Parallelogram series of collaborative releases.
