In what could be a bid to turn down the holiday cheer a notch or two, Glasgwegian sad sacks Camera Obscura have decided to release a characteristically twee cover of the Jim Reeves downer classic The Blizzard as a single just in time for Christmas.
If you don't know the maudlin original that Reeves cut for his Tall Tales and Short Tempers (RCA) album back in 1961, I won't spoil the ending but at least Tracyanne Campbell doesn't ruin the mood by giggling on the version they recorded for 4AD as she did during a recent performance at Other Music in New York (see below). Fortunately she had the good sense to write out the lyrics.
The other day an old pal was asking if I'd heard any great new punk rock records coming outta Toronto lately. Well, it just so happens that City Sweethearts knocked out a super-socko seven for Red Lounge Records which is based way outside the GTA in Karlsruhe, Germany but I'd say their ace three-song EP still qualifies.
Don't be put off by the fact that the City Sweetheart front dude Vassil never really sang before and used to bash the drums for the Heart Attacks and Diemonds (after serving hard time in the Drum Shop at Steve's Music Store but that's another story) while guitarist Curtis was riffing for Sudbury hardcore hooligans Vicious Cycle, bassist Andy was in Action and drummer Ter hammered away with Riot99 – what they've come up with together doesn't sound like what you might expect from their prior offenses. Drop needle on the A-side's snarling scorcher I'm A Mess and you'll be taken back to the distorted delights of the Dead Boys at their Youngest, Loudest and Snottiest. Check it out for yourself on Red Lounge's MySpace page (link below).
The first time I heard it, I had to play it three more times and then plunked down my five bucks on the spot without even bothering to flip the thing over. The B-side's two tracks Timeless and Can't Stop Shaking aren't too shabby but I'm A Mess is definitely the business here. From the three newer tunes I've heard, it sounds like their forthcoming Sleeping Through Modern Times (p.trash) album due out in January could be a winner as long as they keep Andy away from the sitar and steer clear of those cheesy (UK) Monks covers.
It may be too early to start choosing 2009's most impressive reissue packages, but the Fire In My Bones: Rare + Raw + Otherworldly African-American Gospel 1944-2007 (Tompkins Square) collection of post-war spirituals is sure to appear on a few year end lists.
Compiled and annotated by Mike McGonigal, the founder of Yeti magazine, former editor of Chemical Imbalance and tireless evangelist of emotionally-charged music of all stripes, the fabulous three disc Fire In My Bones set sidesteps the popular golden era quartets well-represented elsewhere to uncover the amazing one-off regional chillers and thrillers that have too often been overlooked by gospel historians and anthologists. The strength of this compendium lies in it's diversity.
What you get is nearly four hours of powerfully shouting preachers, guitar-slashing street singers and the soul-stirring harmonies of amped-up congregations all high on the Lord. Even if you've never been to church and don't plan on it, you can't help but get caught up in the heartfelt passion of it all. It hits you hard. Remember, this music was made to move mountains, not to make money.
Because these uniquely gifted artists are largely unknown outside of their parish or city block and they're all thrown together out of chronological sequence, McGonigal is able to impart a small sense of that digger discovery excitement, the wonderful feeling you get when stumbling onto some amazing lost artifact that can make the long hours crawling on your hands and knees for one seven-inch seem entirely worthwhile.
Audiophiles should note that the sound quality varies from track to track and these are mostly DIY productions and field recordings – sometimes sourced from decades old records salvaged in less than pristine shape from dollar bins, yard sales, dusty basements and second-hand furniture shops – so you may hear some slight imperfections now and again.
Where Fire In My Bones comes up short is not in sound reproduction but the visual component. The package could've been made much more engrossing had a little more effort been put into enhancing the accompanying booklet with more artist photos, sleeve art and label images. Tossing in four measly label shots for an 80-track set doesn't really cut it. Of course that would've made the three-disc package more expensive than the incredible $14.98 it's selling for at Soundscapes in Toronto at the moment but I don't think most serious roots music fans would've balked at spending a couple of extra bucks if it meant getting proper documentation.
Still, it's an amazing archival study at a phenomenal price. If you buy one gospel release this year, make it Fire In My Bones – you'll thank G... er... you'll just be glad you did.
Perfectly timed for the start of the holiday shopping season, which officially begins on "Black" Friday (November 27), the UK-based Soul Jazz Records has put out Freedom Rhythm & Sound (SJR Publishing) a spectacular compendium of vintage sleeve images from some of the most prized spiritual and free jazz recordings ever released that's sure to delight the hardcore jazz fanatic on your gift-giving list.
The large format (30.8 cm x 30.8 cm) hardbound coffee-table book was authoritatively compiled by Soul Jazz boss Stuart Baker in conjunction with celebrity DJ Gilles Peterson presents a well-balanced selection of the most aesthetically pleasing, bizarre, obscure, creative and iconic sleeve art from LPs issued between the years 1965 and 1983, primarily on independently-owned operations and often in editions of 1,000 copies or less.
That includes the album sleeve designs associated with such revered figures as John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Sun Ra alongside lesser-known artists like The Frank Derrick Total Experience, Dadisi Komolafe and Lloyd McNeill. While the labels Strata-East, ESP-Disk', Tribe, Delmark, Nessa, Black Fire, BAG, El Saturn, Nimbus, Actuel/BYG, Perception, Im-Hotep, Baystate, Asha, Mustevic Sound are each well-represented, the one notable exception is Black Jazz. Whether or not this has anything to do with the dispute Black Jazz had with Soul Jazz over the Universal Sound sub-label release The Best Of Black Jazz Records (see link below), is difficult to say but their achetypal cover images are conspicuously absent.
Even though it would certainly have been a much more comprehensive overview had a sampling of the consistently dope designs of Black Jazz been included, the 179-page volume is still a worthwhile and wholly enjoyable document that doubles quite nicely as a collector's checklist.
As a musical companion, Baker has compiled a suitable survey of tunes from the albums depicted as the Freedom Rhythm & Sound 2CD set which ideally would've come attached to the inside of the book's back cover. But of course, this is a Soul Jazz release, not a lavish Numero Group production, so the double-CD package, with choice tracks from Steve Colson, Horace Tapscott, The Pharaohs, Philip Cohran, Roy Brooks & The Artistic Truth, Sun Ra, Oliver Lake, Ralph Thomas, Stanton Davis, Gary Bartz NTU Troop, Errol Parker, Joe McPhee and others, is being sold separately. No word as yet whether a vinyl version is planned.
It takes a special breed of record nut to operate a vinyl-only label at a time when the format is supposed to be obsolete. Rarer still is the sort with exceptionally good taste like Dominic Martin (of Earworm Records notoriety) whose UK-based Great Pop Supplement label has snuck out an impressive series of high quality artifacts presenting superb music by uniquely talented fringe artists in aesthetically dazzling packages – we're talking multi-fold handmade sleeves, embroidered bags, photo mounted envelopes, nut-bolted balsa wood, stickers, packets of seeds, the works.
So when you buy a GPS record, you don't just get to hear a couple of great songs by a Swedish one-man-band or a Japanese psych unit, you've also got a snazzy conversation piece to impress that friend who thinks they've got everything MV + EE and Jack Rose have ever done.
To mark the label's 50th release milestone, Dom has just issued a red wax split pairing an early demo version of Big City by Spacemen 3 with a fabulously fuzzed-up cover of the Playing With Fire album corker I Believe It courtesy of San Francisco's Wooden Shjips, perhaps the only currently active group who could do it justice. As a neat final touch, it comes housed in a sleeve created by Spacemen percussionist Natty Brooker. I'm getting a buzz just looking at it.
The good news is that instead of the typically miniscule pressings of say 111 or 220 copies which Great Pop Supplement have been known to drop in the past, gps 50 was reportedly issued in an edition of 1000. However, the bad news is that according to Dom, the entire run "literally vanished in an afternoon." But whatever the conventional vinyl vendors didn't stockpile for mailorder purposes was very likely hoovered up speculators hoping to quintuple their investment on eBay. So don't fret, you'll be seeing the single turning up online for months if not years to come.
The day after publication of my less-than-glowing review of Willie Nelson's Countryman disc – a high concept Willie-goes-reggae scheme from 2005 – the album's proud producer Don Was decided to ring me up for good old fashioned dressing down. The call came as a complete surprise since I'd never had any prior contact with Was and it's not typically the producer of an album who takes the initiative to hunt down a writer and angrily voice a complaint. That's typically handled by a publicist, someone from the artist's label, management or immediate family – right Mrs. Millan? Producers are usually too busy working on their next project to concern themselves with personally sorting out a critic who may have a conflicting opinion about a previous release. Not Was, oh no.
After he finished shouting up a storm in a lengthy rant about how music critics know nothing about the difficult task of making albums, he growled about hoping to run into me some day. When I responded without hesitation that I'd very much look forward to a meeting, he grunted "Huh?" apparently aback by my interest in a face-to-face confrontation. "You know that Chris Gaines album you produced with Garth Brooks in a wig? I've always wanted to find out what the fuck you guys were thinking." Click. Dial tone.
It appears that I'm not the only one to be honoured with a cold call from Mr. Was. Also receiving a similar call from Was out of the blue was Pieta Brown, the Iowa-based singer/songwriter sidekick of guitar slinger supreme Bo Ramsey, only I'm guessing there was a lot less cursing involved in hers.
So the story goes, our man Was just happened to be listening to radio station KCRW in Los Angeles when he heard an amazing voice that stopped him dead in his tracks. He phoned into the station to find out the name of the singer, then traced her to Iowa and called her up at home to proposed a recording session. That might sound like some slick record label PR crap to hype the resulting Shimmer (Red House) CD but based on my own Was experience, I'd say the entire scenario is entirely plausible.
There have been some questionable choices made by Was in the studio over the years, not confined to the aforementioned Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks head scratchers, but he gets it right with Shimmer, wisely paring down the instrumentation to just Ramsey on guitar with himself on bass – no drums – to keep the focus on Brown's bluesy crooning, giving her all the room she needs to vocally stretch out and work her seductive charms. The other sharp move here was to cut Brown's vocals dry, almost completely free of reverb on the majority of tracks, which gives her singing a wonderfully intimate pillow-talk quality that's immediate striking since most recorded voices you hear today are saturated in reverb and heavily filtered. Shimmer's only shortcoming is that it contains only seven songs but don't worry, you'll definitely be hearing more from Brown.
Despite the dearth of advance press, Andre Williams' post-rehab return to Toronto's Legendary Horseshoe Tavern with the Sadies last night turned out to be a spectacular triple-bill triumph to the delirious delight of the packed house.
Resplendent in red, the 73-year-old mack daddy of raunchy R&B shook, shimmied and shouted in tip-top condition suggesting that performing alongside two gorgeous go-go gals like Vivian and Veronica Verre (pictured) was a much safer and perhaps even more effective stimulant than booze or blow. Even though the Sadies had only a 45-minute rehearsal with Williams to pick out appropriate songs for the night, you'd never know it from the seamless, well-paced set that built beautifully to a storming crescendo with a raging rip through Bad Motherfucker that had the whole brew-hoisting crowd shouting the tag-line in unison.
Silly grins could be seen pasted on people's faces all over the club, including those of local celebs in attendance Ron Sexsmith, Dan Burke, Craig Daniels, producer Peter Moore, OPM label boss Jan Haust, Neil Young's brother Bob Young (who was climbing on the railing to get a better view) and ace shutterbug Shadowy Don Pyle who took time out from assembling his highly-anticipated book of punk-era photographs to document the memorable event. You can thank Don for kindly supplying the snazzy accompanying image above.
Can't wait for Andre's new album with the Sadies and Heavy Trash which, from all reports, is gonna be a doozy. In the meantime, check out Andre's new work of fiction Sweets And Other Stories (Kicks Books) which you can read all about in the post from Satuday (November 14).
Here's a clip of Andre and the Sadies performing a magnificently menacing version of I Can Tell at the Casbah in Hamilton, Ontario on the following night.
Andre Williams w/ The Sadies @ the Casbah 11/20/09
