Yow! More than a year has gone by since my last posting on this page! Well, I now have hi-speed internet at home (thanks Provincial Mandate!), so here's some new old stuff I've been grooving on these days...
SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET : Honkey Blues
White Tex-Mex soul singer hides out in 1968 Haight-Asbury and, well, this is what you get. A soulful, bluesy, psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper gone to San Antone...raw and jazzy, dry and swampy, bluesy and spacey...a poor old Texas boy in the big old freaky city...nothing else quite like this!
FUNKADELIC : Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
How far out do you wanna go? Jimi Hendrix a bit too tame for you? George Clinton and Co. back in the early 70's were anything but slick...this is raw, high volume, PSYCHO-DELIC funk at its freaky extreme...wear ear protection! Eddie Hazel's guitar is a relentless swirl of wah, fuzz, and echo, the beats are hard and funky, and the songs are joyfully sexy and relentlessly astute (FUNKY DOLLAR BILL should be the American national anthem)...this record is not for the conservative or tender-hearted!
LOUVIN BROTHERS : When I Stop Dreaming (Best Of)
Bridging the high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe and the pre-Beatles pop of the Everlies, Ira and Charlie Louvin mine old folk ballads, gospel, and "modern topical" ("Great Atomic Power") to forge a curious and sometimes frightening musical landscape. The music is proto-country, with mandolin, upright bass, and achingly perfect harmonies, but an apocalyptic darkness lurks in the corners: murder and Satan, blood and guilt and punishment, as well as the H-bomb, are almost ecstatically embraced, underscoring the inherent sociopathy of country music: happy toe-tappin' major chord tunes topped with lyrics seething with catastrophe and sin. Good stuff to listen to as you walk to the electric chair.
in