Tag: Muddy Waters

Favourite “New” Music – August 2022

Yep, still here. I just paid for another year of this domain name, so I’m not going away just yet. Like all hobbies, writing a blog sometimes has to take a back seat to other things in life that need to be prioritised, or just going through periods where you need to step away to refresh. My paying gig is 90% reading and writing or talking about the things I’ve read/written or will read/write, and there are many days when writing for another hour – even something I enjoy as much as doing this blog – is the last thing I want to do. But I am back to pontificate some more.

I’ve been listening to a lot of 1950s rock lately, thanks to a playlist (prepared by someone with Job-level commitment) compiling the almost 150 hours of music referred to in Bob Stanley’s fantastic book “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé”, so naturally there was a good chunk dedicated to the works of Elvis Presley. It didn’t just stick to the 1950s, so the journey passed through the godawful low of “Yoga is as Yoga Does”. Elvis’ career in the 1960s was a series of bad movies with soundtracks that would have been even worse but for The King’s splendid instrument. “Yoga is as Yoga Does” fits the mould, coming from a 1967 film called “Easy Come, Easy Go”. Bonus points if you know it: the song is so obscure that the biggest Elvis fan I know had never heard of it. That obscurity is well-deserved.

The movies don’t get a lot of attention in Baz Luhrmann’s film “Elvis”, which strikes me as a better creative choice than Presley made in appearing in them. The film is both an indelible portrait of what made Elvis great, and a reminder of how often he failed to honour his prodigious talents. It does a great job of showing the force of nature that Elvis was at his peak. Those powers never went away, even when Elvis misused or abused them, and his fans somehow kept that idealised image in their heads, so that when he lifted himself out of the muck and gave the world art again in something like the 1968 television special, there was always a parched desert of believers eagerly waiting to drink. His career was an endless series of failures to be great, yet the highs are so powerful and the hits so unforgettable that he remained great in spite of making bad choice after worse choice.

That the film works is thanks to star Austin Butler, a Disney/Nickelodeon kid now grown up and kicking ass. (Next up: picking up (not literally, I hope) Sting’s codpiece for “Dune”.) Playing such an icon is a tall order, but if you don’t buy Butler as Presley, you didn’t see the same movie I saw. The film is cheesy and campy – it is a Baz Luhrmann film, after all – and a lot of fun until it isn’t. Tom Hanks is sort of over the top as Colonel Tom Parker, and other than the young fellow playing Little Richard and the Butler lookalike playing the juvenile Elvis, I barely remember the rest of the cast. But Butler makes it worth your time.

• • •

And now, to my favourite listens of August 2022.

  • The Ronettes – Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes featuring Veronica (1964)
  • Fred Neil – Fred Neil (1966)
  • Muddy Waters – Electric Mud (1968) (Blues purists hate this album. It’s that lack of purity that I love.)
  • Fleetwood Mac – Mystery to Me (1973) (I was never much of a Mac fan, and definitely didn’t pay attention to the pre Nicks/Buckingham incarnations. This album comes from when Bob Welch was the dominant creative force, and the poppy brilliance that later gave the world “Ebony Eyes” and “Sentimental Lady” is on display, along with Christine McVie’s prodigious talents. So good, I played most of it back-to-back.)
  • AC/DC – Back in Black (1980)
  • The dB’s – Like This (1984)
  • Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction (1987) (These guys really were (are?) a significant cut above other hard rock bands of their time, weren’t they? (Of course, I had this same thought an hour later about “Back in Black” era AC/DC, so either (1) I’m an unaware hard rock fan or (2) I need to listen to more hard rock so I can actually develop a coherent opinion about this stuff before I make more such comments.))
  • Del the Funky Homosapien – I Wish My Brother George Was Here (1991) (Spotify claimed that my friends were listening to this. I must meet these “friends”.)
  • Kathy McCarty – Dead Dog’s Eyeball (1994)
  • The Jayhawks – Tomorrow the Green Grass (1995)
  • STRFKR – Vault Vol. 1 (2017)
  • Austin Jenckes – If You Grew Up Like I Did (2019)
  • Jeremy Ivey – Invisible Pictures (2022)
  • Flo Milli – You Still Here, Ho? (2022)
  • Maggie Rogers – Surrender (2022)
  • Megan Thee Stallion – Traumazine (2022)
  • Fireboy DML – Playboy (2022)
  • Horace Andy – Midnight Rocker (2022) (The search for reggae that I enjoy finds a place to land.)
  • Sun’s Signature – Sun’s Signature (2022) (If you’ve been missing Cocteau Twins, and assuming you’re a little less depressed now than you were from 1982 to 1996, this could be your new favourite band.)
  • Jeshi – Universal Credit (2022)

Favourite ”New” Music – May 2022

I spent a chunk of May checking out music that came up in “Major Labels”, a fantastic book by Kelefa Sanneh that I was reading, and a few of them ended up on the list below. Sanneh does a sort of history of seven major genres: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance and pop. I say “sort of” because it takes a lot of pruning to survey such a topic in under 500 pages, but also because the book is as much about the author’s journey through the music he loves (and loathes) as the music itself. A writer after my own heart.

There’s a fantastic quote in the introduction that shapes much of what is to follow:

  • But even those of us who are nominally grown-ups may find that we never quite outgrow the sense that there is something profoundly good about the music we like, something profoundly bad about the music we don’t, and something profoundly wrong with everyone who doesn’t agree.

I’m on record as saying there is no such thing as bad music, and I stand by that. But I think Sanneh is spot on here. It makes sense that we would have difficulty understanding others’ tastes. What are these people hearing in Ariana Grande that I’m missing? Or why don’t they get how fantastic Fountains of Wayne were? We like what we like, and are confused that everyone else doesn’t hear what we hear. Sanneh tries to make sense of that dynamic. I highly recommend it to any music lover.

To my amazement, this month’s list (21 albums again – I just couldn’t bring myself to make that last cut) does not include the new Kendrick Lamar record, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”. I expect I will listen to this multiple times over the year to come, and perhaps it will rise in my estimation. But after the majesty of “DAMN.”, I just wasn’t feeling this one after two plays. Which means that anyone paying attention to this list might get a chance to find something else new and exciting, which is why I do this every month anyway. Sorry, Kendrick. (He’ll be fine without me.)

  • Muddy Waters – At Newport 1960 (1960)
  • Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (1973) (I don’t understand why Vince doesn’t get more love as one of the giants of his era.)
  • Waylon Jennings – Honky Tonk Heroes (1973) (Probably my favourite lyric in a while, from “Black Rose”: “Well, the devil made me do it the first time / The second time I done it on my own”.)
  • Cristina – Sleep It Off (1984) (An amazing dance-pop record from one of the earliest arts world victims of COVID-19.)
  • Black Sheep – A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (1991)
  • Dr. Octagon – Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996)
  • The Darkness – Permission to Land (2003) (I totally slept on these guys when they had their brief moment as stars – there is much more to them than just “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”.)
  • Free Cake for Every Creature – Talking Quietly of Anything With You (2016)
  • The Obsessives – The Obsessives (2017)
  • She Drew the Gun – Revolution of Mind (2018) (Updated mid-60s psych pop with a danceable vibe.)
  • Sir Chloe – Party Favors (2020) (Bristling alt pop with a punkish flare and a keen sense of when to turn it up to 11.)
  • Miranda Lambert – Palomino (2022)
  • Sunflower Bean – Headful of Sugar (2022)
  • Let’s Eat Grandma – Two Ribbons (2022)
  • Arcade Fire – WE (2022) (Not understanding some of the negative press for this – sure, it’s no “The Suburbs”, but it’s hardly fair to expect that from anyone.)
  • Yard Act – The Overload (2022)
  • The Juliana Theory – Still the Same Kids Pt. 1 (2022)
  • Say Sue Me – The Last Thing Left (2022)
  • Phelimuncasi – Ama Gogela (2022)
  • Pastor Champion – I Just Want to Be a Good Man (2022) (Uncomplicated songs of faith, sung with conviction.)
  • Barrie – Barbara (2022)