I have started on an email reply to your massive missive of yesterday

More plates o' shrimp, amigo, I was just coming to tell you that I forgot to mention that I also included the Hank Jones/Charlie Haden collaboration Steal Away, which was played on Fresh Air today & which you can hear here. And apropos of that, here's Mr. Terry Gross's Trane-centric review of Monk at Carnegie Hall. (I don't know if Davis has a role in programming music for the show, but it usually has interesting music. It's clear from her interviews that Terry loves music. Don't know how interested she was in jazz before marrying a critic, but she's pretty knowlegeable.)

Also forgot to mention that I saw Tom Verlaine. I've now seen him twice, both times at the Strand. He was heading out as I was heading in. Had I not cleaned out my backpack before leaving the house I would have had the Television article I read the day before.

Trudy! I owe you an email. I've been working, working, working for the past few months. Late, weekends, you name it. Got your email while working on deadline & it got lost in the shuffle. My apologies. Speaking of work, I'd better quit ignoring it because it doesn't care, just keeps piling up.

I have fallen in love all over again with a song and I felt I had to share. It's on it's way up to buffistarawk

The song is called "One Day the Warner" and it's a countryish number by Al Tuck & No Action. Al's a incredibly talented singer/songwriter/player in Halifax who's famous for not getting famous. He suffers terribly from stage fright and sometimes booze, and often flames out on stage. (It's so awful to watch, I don't even try to see him live anymore.) He's hugely influenced by Dylan and and the blues. This song was originally released on Sloan's murderrecords as a cassette only. Last spring it was finally rereleased on CD, it was like finding a long lost friend.

Do y'all ever check out Agony Shorthand?

It's an excellent music blog by one of the Lost In The Grooves contributors. He's got some cool reviews up now.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS: “AMERICAN PRIMITIVE, VOL. 2 : PRE-WAR REVENANTS (1897-1939)” 2xCD

In 1997-98 I got really wound up about REVENANT RECORDS thanks to the wondrous bounty of music they unveiled their first year of existence. These included archival releases to beat the proverbial band from DOCK BOGGS, CHARLIE FEATHERS, The STANLEY BROTHERS and JENKS “TEX” CARMEN. The whole “raw musics” thing struck a deep nerve, as I’ve long felt the same sort of primal thrill from hearing pre-WWII deep-blues and mountain 78s as I do from 1976-78 punk and 1964-67 garage rock of all stripes. It’s the same friggin’ root bark. I contacted Dean Blackwell, the label’s true founder, and he signed up to do a cover story/interview for the never-to-appear 9th issue of Superdope, but I subsequently abandoned the print form and disappeared into music-writing Siberia for a couple years. But Revenant’s still been there year-in, year-out, with one blockbuster package after another. Their pace appears to have slowed to roughly one really big project per year, but wow – the projects are legendary, not the least of which are the CAPTAIN BEEFHEART and CHARLEY PATTON box sets.

This year brings the follow-up collection to one of the label’s very best, the jaw-dropping 1997 collection of rare pre-WWII gospel, blues and country “American Primitive, Volume 1” (mostly gospel as they’re all pretty much Jesus songs of one form or another). This time Our Lord Jesus takes a back seat to secular pleasures and laments in most cases, and there are some real dillys to be found. Why this label matters more than some of the others goes far beyond their award-winning packaging prowess – but hey, for the music dork, that’s almost enough. No, it’s the fact that you’d have thought that you’d have already heard every first-rate blues singer, even the one-78 wonders, and yet, unless you’re a died-in-the-wool collector/archivist, some of this stuff unearthed by Revenant this time is going to blow you clean away. For instance – MATTIE MAY THOMAS. This acapella moaner is maybe the most chilling female blues singer I’ve ever heard, period. Her vocal chords should be bronzed and held up in a giant trophy for all those who wax lyrical about slave songs and the purity of downtrodden cotton-field singers – this woman’s hard luck-n-trouble warbling puts anyone else’s to shame. She’s got 4 short tracks, every one a wonder. And GEESHIE WILEY, where have you been all my life? Well, unlike Thomas, she’s been comped a-plenty, but her “Last Kind Word Blues” is nearly as dark and haunted and weirdly-tuned as SKIP JAMES’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” and I’m just hearing it for the first time this month. Wow. And that’s just the ladies.

Other standouts are liberally spread throughout the two CDs; only a handful can be heard on easily-found CDs from Yazoo or Document. Once you buy this package, head straight for WALTER TAYLOR’s zippy “Deal Rag”; the terrific blues instrumentals from BAYLESS ROSE; a wild breakdown from TWO POOR BOYS called “Old Hen Cackle”, and the two near-comedy blues from (RED HOT) OLD MOSE, especially the joyous “Shrimp Man”. This guy just loves his shrimp. There are a few groaners that test the limits of patience for sure, most notably ranting acapella preacher MOSES MASON – but then, I’m not a god kind of guy. I also think the liner notes, which are beautifully written and incredibly informative, still lean a mite too heavily on the spiritual/higher nature hokum of the Greil Marcus school of writing – the kind that treats these original pluckers and fiddlers as beyond-holy ghosts and phantoms whose everlasting spirits still hover among us today. But there’s truly no need to quibble (it’s just my nature). “American Primitive, Volume 2” is an honest-to-god event worth celebrating and rewarding with immediate purchase, and another deep (continued...)

( continues...) belt-notch for a label that’s just about run out of room on the belt. posted by Jay at 9:51 AM

BUZZCOCKS : "TIME'S UP" LP.....

There was this guy Chris Nevis who I went to college with in the 80s & who DJed at KCSB-FM Santa Barbara the same time I did. He got into and out of punk rock in world record time, one day announcing out of the blue that he was immediately selling off his excellent record collection that he’d built up only within the previous 2 years. I don’t even think a girlfriend was involved. He let them go at fire sale prices, and that’s where I picked up this album, the first non-CRAMPS bootleg I ever owned. My copy of “Time’s Up”, unlike the one pictured here, has a black cover, but the photo is still the same. Some people think this is one of the greatest punk records of all time, and I am very sympathetic to the argument – it’s certainly my favorite BUZZCOCKS record of all time, though I’ve got no problem with the three official ones that followed it, despite not having listened to them in a coon’s age. “Time’s Up” features the original line-up the recorded the “Spiral Scratch” EP, one of the first 5-10 “punk” records as popularly defined, most notably the vocalist Howard Devoto. You think Pete Shelley had an unusual voice; where his falsetto was jarring enough, Devoto’s slurred slush approximates a developmentally delayed individual attempting to do tricks with vocal modulation. It’s great.

Beyond the top early versions of early hits like “Boredom” and “Orgasm Addict”, the real pleasures are found in two hard-charging, completely unreleased tracks that are as smoking as those from any KBD perennial: “Time’s Up” and “A Drop In The Ocean”. These are both slashing, echoey killers that are super tough, & that belie the general pop, harmony-laden trend the Buzzcocks followed on almost everything that followed this session. The band even tackles a BEEFHEART cover (“I Love You You Big Dummy”) and the TROGGS’ “I Can’t Control Myself” (still love the original line in this song – “Your slacks are low and your hips are showing”. Your slacks!). The band is young and hungry and intent on coming off as snotty as possible, which makes for fine listening. No need to hunt down the LP nor raid someone’s collection; it’s easily obtainable on CD here and here as well. - posted by Jay at 8:25 AM

I'm really not here, I swear. But I wanted to share that the WFMU blog has a link to The Fall's 2005 performance on Later With Jools Holland today.

Volume TWO!?! Praise be. Thanks for the heads-up, Hec!

The Globe and Mail gave Aerial, the new Kate Bush album, 3 and a half stars. [link]

This sentence almost made me hyperventilate:

There's the song in which Pi is sung to more than 100 decimal places, and the one about the washing machine.

I've been trying not to get excited by this album, after The Red Shoes was so disappointing, but now I cannot wait!

I just saw Bei Ling cover "Like a Virgin" on VH1 (I almost typed "like a version", heh).

Anyone have any spare brain-scrubbers?

Um...the Lords of the New Church version of the same song?

I have Teenage Fanclub doing a cover of it somewhere...