What I’ve Been Spinning… 4/24/08
My Morning Jacket – Highly Suspicious – The most warped, twisted, Prince-aping funk jam off of Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket. Jim James sings in an impossibly high falsetto, and you think that during psycho-giggling pre solo, some P.Y.T. may be playing with that scruffy beard of his.
Billy Bragg – A New England – At this point in time, I’ve only heard about a dozen Billy Bragg songs. I can safely say I like all of them. This one, however, is particularly poignant: “I was twenty one years when I wrote this song/I’m twenty two now, but I wont be for long/People ask when will you grow up to be a man..”..Yeah.
Tom Waits – Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis – Everyone says it, mainly because it’s true. You can’t really go wrong with Tom Waits, and this one – a plaintive piano ballad is a good choice for today.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Fucking. Love. Billy. Bragg. “Cold and Bitter Tears” by” Ted Hawkins. There’s a live duet with Billy off the “Must I Paint You a Picture” box set (I think) on disc 3. Make that one #13 on your list if you haven’t already cause that version is still on a three-legged race in my head with Dylan and Cash’s live cover of “That’s Alright Mama” for the title of “Best Live Duet Cover by Two Guys Trying Not to Let the Bitterness Rot Them From the Inside Out”. Ted Hawkins being dead kinda makes it a one-sided affair though. Also for the love of GOD tell me you know about Mermaid Avenue volume I & II where Mr. Bragg and Wilco write songs using archived lyrics by Woody Guthrie at the behest of his daughter. Oh and fucking Ted Leo’s cover of “Between the Wars”, that shit is classy and can be located here:
http://www.archive.org/details/tedleo2002-07-04.dcrtrv330.flac16
April 25th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Oh shit, those phantom pangs of pain when I drink whiskey just reminded me that Johnny Cash was dead. My bad, it’s a dead heat on the account that Hawkins died in 1995 but Bragg being in great health compared to Mr. Zimmerman.