Review: New Stuff … Just In Time for Holiday Shopping!

Guess this is the sort of stuff you will find under the tree this Christmas – if you have been bad.  I’d rather have a gift card, you know?  Anyway – here are some new efforts from Big Superstars who are still trying to get your hard-earned money this holiday season, although you need it way more than they do.

Norah Jones has sold a zillion albums but she has really put out only four, and The Fall is certainly her liveliest album to date.  She’s kinda wanting to put that “chick with the smoky voice sitting at the piano plunking out ballads” thing behind her but on The Fall she only halfway manages that.  This stuff doesn’t rock, not by a long shot, but “Stuck” starts out with a guitar plucked from Neil Young (or John Lennon) and finds Norah kinda cranky about breaking up with her boyfriend (she really did, with songwriting collaborator and bass player Lee Alexander – make that former collaborator and bass player).  “You Ruined Me” has a nice little country skip, and “Man Of The Hour” closes everything out with Norah’s best vocal yet.  Nice, especially if you’re a fan, but nothing really revolutionary.

MP3: “Stuck” by Norah Jones

When I saw the cover of John Mayer’s Battle Studies I thought for moment he was a young Morrissey.   And that’s who he kinda sounds like here: the fadeup into the first song “Heartbreak Warfare” lets you know you’re in for tough sledding through 11 slabs of Mayer-iffic mood mud.   It’s all pretty much like the John Mayer boilerplate stuff we’ve heard before, with maybe a few more Dave Matthews rips tossed in.  Mayer even tries a cover of “Crossroads” (using the Cream model) but that’s pretty namby-pamby too – if this guy would just cut loose on guitar he might be pretty great.  The obligatory big single, “Half Of My Heart,” a duet with flavor-of-the-month Taylor Swift, is OK but instantly forgettable and “War Of My Life” sounds like it was recorded right after John listened to a U2 album.

MP3: “Half Of My Heart” by John Mayer w/Taylor Swift

Your Sister’s (Record) Rack: The Guess Who

The other day my sister brought home one of her friends from the fast-food place where she works.  Betty is her name, and she and my sister went out in the back yard to get some sun.  I really like the way Betty wears a bikini, and I really like her taste in music: while they were out in the sun I “borrowed” one of Betty’s albums that she brought over, Road Food by the Guess Who.

The Guess Who are those Canadian boys who had all the hits back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  You know, “Share the Land,” “Undun,” “No Time” and of course, “American Woman.”  They were not so well known for their albums, but I don’t know why.  There’s a lot of good stuff on Road Food, which is from 1974.  The Guess Who had been goin’ for a while, since the early 1960s, and had a handful of hits by the early 1970s.  Keyboardist Burton Cummings, who sang on most of these, had actually joined the band after original lead singers Chad Allan and Bob Ashley left.  Cummings wrote most of those late 60s-early 70s hits with guitarist Randy Bachman, but by the time of Road Food Bachman had left (to start Bachman-Turner Overdrive) and was replaced by guitarist Kurt Winter.

“Must Be Christmas,” Bob Dylan’s Having A Party!

“Must Be Christmas” is the new Christmas polka from Bob Dylan, off his album Christmas From The Heart.  It kind of shows what happens when Bob hosts a wild party at his house and everyone gets a little drunk.  In the video, Dylan is dressed up like Tom Petty for Halloween … it’s still pretty damn funny.  And Bob has agreed to donate every penny he makes off the Christmas album to charities that will feed hungry families over the holidays. This is, incidentally, one of the greatest Christmas songs ever: listen closely, and as Bob is reeling off names of Santa’s reindeer he throws in some U.S. presidents too.

Bob Dylan official website

Lost Classics! – “The Buddy Holly Story”

At age 14 I was a huge Paul McCartney fan and would always here him talk about how he idolized a guy named Buddy Holly. I had no idea who Holly was or where he was from. Then in 1978, The Buddy Holly Story hit theaters with Gary Busey in the title role. I remember seeing Busey in the goofball cross-country comedy “The Gumball Rally” and thought I would give the movie a shot. 

Pearl Jam Time Lapse

This is a time-lapse of Pearl Jam performing for an “Austin City Limits” taping on Oct. 3.  The episode premieres Saturday, Nov. 21.

This time-lapse was created from photographs taken every 6 seconds from 9:09AM – 11:29PM.  More than 10,000 images were taken to create the video.  If you notice Eddie Vedder performing on stage before they seem to begin the actual show, that is during rehearsal. They rehearsed for about an hour. Yes, that is Ben Harper with him.

Check your local listings for “Austin City Limits” on PBS.

more about “Pearl Jam Time Lapse“, posted with vodpod

Ballad of the Unknown Urban Cowboy: Isaac Payton Sweat Part 2

Isaac Payton Sweat, far right, at the Winchester Club

In the mid-1960s I had a paper route in my hometown of Groves, Texas, and every day it took me past this two-story, tar-papered building with a sign saying “The Black Kat Club.”  Some days I’d hear loud, raucous music coming out of the wide-open second story windows.  Sometimes it was the blues, sometimes it was a cover of a pop song, it always sounded great.  One day I came by with my newspapers and the musicians were outside smoking cigarettes.  One of them asked me if I would give him a newspaper, and I did.

As I handed it to him, I noticed this guy was the whitest man I had ever seen.  His skin, his hair, his eyelashes, everything was pure white.  There was another guy who looked just like him, too.  “They’re albinos,” said one of the band members, “they’re okay.  What’s your name, my name is I.P. Sweat.”  To a 10-year-old kid, that name was even funnier than the two albino brothers named Johnny and Edgar.

Almost 20 years later, I would meet up with Isaac Payton Sweat again.  He had tasted fame – but not fortune – with his regionally popular recording “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”  Sweat really had not come far from the Black Kat Club near Port Arthur;  he was a popular guy in Houston dancehalls but no place else.  “Cotton-Eyed Joe” had only earned Sweat a few hundred dollars in royalties, so he sued his former manager.  That case didn’t work out, and neither did the nightclub Sweat opened, “I.P. Sweat’s Cotton-Eyed Joe Club.”

Ballad of the Unknown Urban Cowboy: Isaac Payton Sweat Part 1

I.P. Sweat

In June 1980, the beautiful and the glamorous made their unlikely way to the sprawling Gilley’s honky tonk in Pasadena, Texas, to attend the premiere party for the movie Urban Cowboy.  New York socialites squeezed into tight jeans and Hollywood types wore western shirts with silk scarves around their necks, and everyone spilled out onto the hardwood floor to dance.  Many times that night, Gilley’s Urban Cowboy Band played the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” and people shuffled their boots along the floor and yelled “BULL SHIT!”

Good times, but one thing was wrong with that picture.  The guy who should have been singing the “Cotton-Eyed Joe” was nowhere to be found.  Where was Isaac Payton Sweat?

In the early 1980s, Isaac Payton Sweat was known as the “King Of the Cotton-Eyed Joe.”  He certainly had the biggest hit with the old song – whenever it was played, people from El Paso to Orange would shuffle out onto the dance floor.  In the days after disco, the song would point the way to the next big fad that Urban Cowboy would embody.  At the Winchester Club in Houston Sweat, with his Sweat Band (later called the Cadillac Cowboys), reigned as one of the city’s most popular performers.

Who’s going to play at the Super Bowl? Right!

According to published reports, the Who will perform at Super Bowl XLIV, marking the British band’s first performance in North America since 2008.  According to the Sports Illustrated website, the veteran band will take the stage during halftime of the 2010 National Football League championship game, scheduled for Feb. 7 in Miami.

The NFL has yet to officially confirm the report, saying, “When we have something to announce, we’ll announce it.”

During a recent stop on his “Use It or Lose It” solo tour, frontman Roger Daltrey told Billboard.com that he and bandmate/composer Pete Townshend were working on new material for the Who’s followup to 2006’s Endless Wire.  “Hopefully if this tour has done its job, I’ll be in really good form as a vocalist,” said Daltrey. “And who knows, we might make our best work.”

Townshend has acknowledged working on two projects — a new musical called “Floss” and the Who’s next album, which he has said will include some pieces from the “Floss” project.

Willie and the Wheel – This Weekend on “Austin City Limits”

Willie Nelson joins Asleep at the Wheel on this weekend’s episode of “Austin City Limits.”  Check your local listings, etc.

Lost Classics! The Greatest Blues Album in the World

In 2003, acclaimed movie director Martin Scorcese produced a series of seven films, each created by another acclaimed director, and they called the whole thing “Martin Scorcese Presents The Blues.”  The series aired on PBS and my favorite episode was “Godfathers and Sons,” directed by Marc Levin (not the idiot right-wing talk radio guy).

Levin paired Public Enemy rapper Chuck D with Marshall Chess, son of Leonard Chess and heir to the Chess Records legacy, in Chicago and the film followed them as they produced an album combining contemporary hip-hop musicians with veteran blues and jazz players.  But along the way the film explored the rich history of Chicago blues as recorded by Chess Records, and there was great footage of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Bo Diddley and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, along with original performances by Koko Taylor, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, Ike Turner and Sam Lay.

As good as the film was, the soundtrack CD is even better: it could be the greatest blues album ever released.  Among the 22 tracks are a couple of hip-hoppers and white boys, but when I’m playing the blues I always seem to gravitate back to this album.  There’s a couple of genuflections each to the two gods of Chicago blues – Muddy Waters is represented by “Mannish Boy” and “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man,” while Howlin’ Wolf checks in with “Spoonful” and “Little Red Rooster,” classics all.  And the killer lineup includes Koko Taylor with “Wang Dang Doodle,” Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, Magic Slim, Little Walter and Jimmy Reed performing their best-known songs.   And what would a Chess anthology be without the late, great Bo Diddley – he could fill an album all by himself but here he’s represented by “Diddley Daddy.”