Fifteen Underappreciated Albums That Rocked 2013

The TL;DR version of all previous lists (see HERE) is: indie rock doesn't, so MRML vouches for the under-valued rocking and/or rolling albums of the year, based on our scatter-shot listening experience. Speaking of scatter-shot, there's an above average number of entries that straddle the years but that's just the nature of the fluid times we live in. For more musical awesomeness Follow @jeffen69 on Twitter

All artist name links go directly to a homepage - or some such place - for your further listening pleasure.)

1. M.O.T.O. - Pack Your Troubles In Dreams

Paul Caprino's one man assault on American mediocrity has taken on ever greater force recently. Sure the recording/release date of this album is a bit muddled but whatever their vintage, these songs are timeless, fire-breathing rock n' roll.

2. Dirt Box Disco - People Made of Paper
Attitude-driven British punk rock with both a metallic edge and a pop coating. Early Wildhearts or Troublegum-era Therapy? would be workable points of reference. I heard PMoP and the the late-2012 album Legends this year and both deserve your attention now!

3. The Connection - Let It Rock
If Nick Lowe ever took a pop-punk band under his tutelage,  Portsmouth, NH band The Connection ("garage rock for now people" as they put it) is exactly how they'd sound!

4.  Upset - She's Gone
This new L.A. band, featuring members of Vivian Girls, Best Coast and...Hole [!], got some decent indie-press for the their first K Records meets Lookout! Records retro-riot grrl sound but were soon ignored for more typical indie fare

5. Veronica Falls - Waiting for Something to Happen
Pretty, echoey second album by this British band who sound a lot like what would have happened if a C-86 band had stumbled into The Batcave.

6. Willie Nile - American Ride

The troubadour of New York, Willie Nile, has been putting out fantastic rootsy rock n ' roll albums records for years to wide acclaim but limited fame. I hope that's gonna change one day soon...

7. BarrenceWhitfield & The Savages - Dig Thy Savage Soul
Bostonian Barrence Whitfield has been showing off his explosive garage-rock/R&B amalgam for years but may just have perfected it with this record. 

8. First Base - S/T
As the tags have it; "rock, bubblegum, garage, lo-fi, pop punk, Toronto".

9. Bad Religion - True North

These veteran LA punks have never disappointed (hey, I heard "Into the Unknown ten years after the fact and was surprised at how much better it was than I'd been promised!) in their thirty years+ and this return to No Control era speed-rock kept their streak alive, especially the classic Mr. Brett style-song, "Robin Hood in Reverse".

10. Louise Distras - Dreams From The Factory Floor
Winner of this year's Dylan Was A Punk Award (Cate Blanchett Division), Londoner Louise Distras rocks an acoustic so forcefully that she's the very image of what the offspring of Joan Jett and TV Smith would be!
Sidenote: I first heard of Distras when she followed me on Twitter before unceremoniously dumping me but spite ain't enough to make me ignore this record! 

11. The Crunch - Busy Making Noise

Punk supergroups are justly viewed with suspicion butt this album, dominated by support players, Dave Tregenna of Sham 69 and The Lords of the New Church, Mick Geggus of the Cockney Rejects and Terry Chimes of The Clash is innocent of nostalgia-mongering. Rather the band works in subtly and powerfully in service of the songs by Sulo Karlsson of nineties Swedish rock band, Diamond Dogs.

12. John Moreland - In the Throes

Country album of the year (along with Kasey Musgraves more mainstream but justifiably celebrated, Same Trailer, Different Park) comes from this Oklahoma City singer-songwriter who's punk rock roots keep this album grounded and clear-eyed, as tracks like "Nobody Gives a Damn About Songs Anymore" prove.

13. Phil Odgers - The Godforsaken Voyage

Phil Odgers, founding member of The Men They Couldn't Hang" put out a historically and traditionally minded Brit-folk album that doesn't need loud guitars and bashing drums to keep moving.

14. Badger - Stars, Guitars and Motorcars

This rocking power-pop album by Norwegian band, Badger arrived late 2012 and is hence our Anachronism of the Year.
 

15. Undecided by Default - Totally Undecided 

While Holdover of the Year is not a tradition I want to start, this was the year that Undecided by Default's Totally Undecided  physically came out on CD and you should all go listen to this band as they show the fucking hipsters how the rocking is done!!

Fin

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THESE ALBUMS?

WHAT ARE YOUR UNDERAPPRECIATED ALBUMS THAT ROCKED 2013?

WE LIVE AND DIE BY FEEDBACK HERE, SO PLEASE SAY YOUR PIECE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!!

 

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The Fastbacks: Tributes (1991-1998)

(A re-up for Eastvan)

One consequence of the CD glut of the nineties was the dawn of the so-called 'tribute album', in which a a range of modern exponents of a genre (especially underground ones) would record a cover from a formative artist like The Ramones or Nick Lowe or The Shaggs or what have you. Typically, the results of all this tributing varied all the way from mediocre to middling. No matter how good the original band and no matter how many good newer bands they'd cobbled together, most of these collections just came off as throwaways. (It's indicative that that the only CD I ever kept from this sub-heading was one called Tulare Dust which featured alt.country acts covering Merle Haggard).





One band who could always guarantee to liven up these dull albums was Seattle's The Fastbacks (more HERE). Partly it was that the band was just on a roll around the time these tributes began mushrooming up but mostly it was because, as a band who'd put out their first single in 1981, Kurt Bloch & co were a rocking link between the first wave of punk and the nineties underground explosion. Hence this MRML-compiled collection of Fastbacks covers, MOST of which are from some long out-of-print, fly-by-night label's half-baked tribute CD.

So, MRML readers, what's your favourite Fastbacks cover song? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
           
                                                     
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Wreckless Eric's Hitsville House Band (1994)

By 1994, Wreckelss Eric (more HERE) had created another short-lived ensemble, oddly named, the Hitsville House Band. There's no drastic change in the Wreckless one's sound on the group's lone album, 12:00 Stereo, other than Eric's delving deeper into American country music. Like his first producer, Nick Lowe, Eric's work has always been inflected with steely melodies and emotional nakedness of country song-writing. "Guitar-Shaped Swimming Pool" (with its tip of the Stetson to Webb Pierce) and "Friend's on the Floor" (which squashes most Nashville song-writing beneath it's heel) represent the gut-bucket country aspect of the album. While raw, primal rock n' country courses through the album's grooves, Eric hasn't stopped writing pop songs like, "The Girl With the Wandering Eye", a devastatingly melodic post-mortem on love lost.


 




The Hitsville House Band were, according, to the liner notes:

DENIS BAUDRILLART -- drumset and maracas
ERIC GOULDEN -- succession of crapped-out guitars and organs, vocal
FABRICE LOMBARDO -- double bass, bass guitar, Javanese toe flute
André Barreau -- extra guitars, harmony vocals
Michael Lembach -- trumpet
Christoph Linder -- tenor & baritone saxes





MRML Readers,whaddaya think of this particular phase in Eric's ever-shifting muddle!!


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If any readers have a copy of the HHB's sole single, see below, please let me know!!

'If It Ain't Stiff': Amazing BBC Doc on Britain's Greatest Label

The BBC got pretty much every surviving Stiff vet - The Damned, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Devo, Madness, The Pogues plus, of course, label honchos Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera - to talk up a storm for this hour-long doc.





Part two, part three, part four, part five, part six

The Fastbacks: Tributes (1991-1998)

One consequence of the CD glut of the nineties was the dawn of the so-called 'tribute album', in which a a range of modern exponents of a genre (especially underground ones) would record a cover from a formative artist like The Ramones or Nick Lowe or The Shaggs or what have you. Typically, the results of all this tributing varied all the way from mediocre to middling. No matter how good the original band and no matter how many good newer bands they'd cobbled together, most of these collections just came off as throwaways. (It's indicative that that the only CD I ever kept from this sub-heading was one called Tulare Dust which featured alt.country acts doing Merle Haggard).





One band who could always guarantee to liven up these dull albums was Seattle's The Fastbacks (more HERE). Partly it was that the band was just on a roll around the time these tributes began mushrooming up but mostly it was because, as a band who'd put out their first single in 1981, Kurt Bloch & co were a rocking link between the first wave of punk and the nineties underground explosion. Hence this MRML compiled collection of Fastbacks covers, MOST of which are from some long out-of-print, fly-by-night label's half-baked tribute CD.

So, MRML readers, what's your favourite Fastbacks cover song? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
           
                                                     
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Chuck Prophet: Live in Norderstedt (2012-04-20)

If you were to invite me to your abode, dear MRML reader, you can probably can ascertain from what you've read in these pages these four years past what would be my first order of business; going through your CD's/Records/Tapes/8-Tracks and your what-have-you's. Now, former Green On Red guitarist and current under-recognized singer-rock-song-writer Chuck Prophet has yet to honour me with an invite to his place of dwelling, yet I have some idle speculations about some of the items I would find, were I allowed to flip through his milk-crates of un-alphebetized, well-worn vinyl L.P':

The Rolling Stone: Exile on Main St.
Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde, Desire
The Modern Lovers: Self-Titled
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust
Graham Parker: Squeezing Out Sparks
X: Los Angeles
Bill Anderson: His Greatest Hits (2XLP)# 
Hank Williams: 40 Greatest Hits
The Only Ones: Special View*
Flamin' Groovies: Shake Some Action
The Kinks: Village Green Preservation Society
Nick Lowe: Pure Pop For Now People
Glen Campbell: Greatest Hits 
Elvis Costello: My Aim is True plus at least one more, say Taking Liberties
Lou Reed: Everything up until Mistrial (possibly minus Metal Machine Music and Coney Island Baby)

Sure my guesses are based mostly on listening to a lot of Chuck's new album, Temple Beautiful but I can't be all wrong. Can I?

* For some reason I imagine that Chuck would have the American versions...





So are takeaways from today are; Chuck Prophet has a great set of influences, his new album Temple Beautiful is one of the year's must-purchases and that the man is a great live performer as this excellent-quality soundboard recording from earlier this year proves.

CD 1 = Set 1

01. intro (Miro Berbig) -> Fear Is A Mans Best Friend
02. Just To See You Smile
03. Storm Across The Sea
04. Balinese Dancer
05. Look Both Ways
06. Castro Halloween
07. The Left Hand And The Right Hand
08. Willie Mays Is Up At Bat
09. White Night, Big City


CD 2 = Set 2

01. Credit
02. Sonny Liston's Blues
03. Temple Beautiful
04. Hot Talk
05. Automatic Blues
06. American Man -> band intro
07. Count The Days (Stephanie Finch)
08. Would You Love Me?
09./10. Summertime Thing
11. Little Girl, Little Boy
12. You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)
13. I'm Not Talking (Yardbirds)
14. Always A Friend
15. Shake Some Action (Flamin' Groovies)






Leave us your take of Mr. Prophet and his work in the COMMENTS section (where you'll find BOTH parts of Live in Norderstedt)

Behead Chuck Prophet No Lord Shall Live

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Kurt Baker: Why you Gotta Lie (2012)

Sniff N' The Tears, Peter Frampton Uriah Heap, E.L.O and Olivia Newton-John all get name-dropped by the faux-Brit host of the faux-show Tip of the Tops but on the wonderful "Why You Gotta Lie" Kurt Baker's not paying homage to those seventies artists but rather their nemeses; Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson et al.





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All the Small Things: Best Singles + E.P.'s of 2011

So there's lots to talk about in 2011 but I've got to break it down to avoid overwhelming anyone, including yours truly. The usual warning I offer is that this is a stylistically-narrow list chosen by a biased (and rapidly-aging) amateur musical historian who only listens to a very humble fraction of what's released in a year. Take it as a set of recommendations, rather then as a pronouncements heavy with the stench of omniscient authority (Pitchfuck, I'm looking at you!)

Our first entry in the best-of-the-year derby, is a list of all those things whose brevity disqualifies them from our forthcoming "Best Underappreciated Albums That Rocked 2011". This list is a bit pop-punk heavy, partly because the best pop-punk of the year seemed to come in small packages

1. Jimmy Cliff: Sacred Fire EP
A reggae pioneer enters a potential late-career Renaissance courtesy of producer Tim Armstrong, who sets up Mr.Cliff with one of his Rancid tunes, as well as a Clash song and a Bob Dylan one.

(Listen HERE)

2. Kurt Baker: Rockin For a Livin' EP
With every album Baker did with The Leftovers, he brought the band closer to a classic late seventies power-pop sound but now that he's gone solo he's fully embraced the skinny tie!

(Listen HERE)

3. The New Rochelles: It's New EP
The best new pop-punk band I've heard in years, one that loves love the Ramones, Screeching Weasel, Teenage Bottlerocket but also Green Day (and even Blink 182!)

(Listen HERE)

4. Wilco: I Might 7"
The fuzzy-garage-pop sound of the A-side, sounds great when backed with a rockin' cover of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label".

(Listen HERE)

5. Adjusters:  Wrong Plae, Wrong Time 7"
To quote myself, "Another shot of backwards-looking, striped-shirt rock n' roll from a set of young lads from the North West of England.
 (Listen HERE)

6. OFF!: Compared to What/Rotten Apples 7"

SoCal punk vet Keith Morris is cranky, stuck in the past and burning like a motherfucker!
 (Listen HERE)

7. Chixdiggit: Safeways Here We Come EP

Calgary's kings of pop-punk aren't kids anymore (kids don't write songs about friendships ruined by dogs!) but they still sound as irrepressible as ever!

(Listen HERE)

8. The Cry: E.P.
Snotty AM-radio fed punk rock that swaggers!
 (Listen HERE)

9. Sharp Objects: 5 Song EP

Catchy-as-fuck blasts of SoCal Punk Roq with with lots of oozin' and aaah's.
 (Listen HERE)

10. Naked Raygun 7" series
Chicago hardcore legends have returned with their final, and underrated, line up to liven up the singles market.

 (Hompeage HERE)
 

Whaddya mak-a da list? Did you hear anything you dug? Did we miss something that might've fit? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!!!!!!

John Wesley Harding: The Sound of His Own Voice (2011)

 

"Bob Dylan is my father, Joan Baez is my mother"
And I'm their bastard son."

John Wesley Harding, "Bastard Son"

While English singer-songwriter-novelist John Wesley Harding ever plays down his Bob Dylan affection, after all he did take his stage name from Dylan's 1968 album, his critics have charged that he's so obsessed with Elvis Costello that he should have called himself Myaim Istrue. Well Wes' latest album The Sound of His Own Voice (Yep Roc, 2011), recorded with backing assistance from the Decemberists, Peter Buck, Rosanne Cash amongst others, doesn't so much end the debate on his influences, as make the entire question irrelevant. On this album, Harding's written and recorded what may be the cleverest, most tuneful batch of songs songs in a long, clever and tuneful career. Whether you hear strains of R.E.M., John Prine, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, Nick Lowe, Billy Bragg, Robyn Hitchcock or even Costello and Dylan here, songs like "There's A Starbucks Where the Starbucks Used To Be" or "Sing Your Own Song" are bursting with a joyous originality all their own.









HOMEPAGE


And check out this radio interview with Wes done by The Pop Culturalist.

Graham Parker and The Rumour Reunion Show Oct. 21st 2010

(Photo by Geoff Kessell)

Billed as the Kippington Lodge* Social Club, Graham Parker And The Rumour* played a a reunion show at the Lakeside Lounge New York on October 21, 2010

The line-up (*minus two original Rumours) was:
Graham Parker - guitar, vocals, harmonica, kazoo
Bob Andrews - keyboards, vocals
Steve Goulding - drums, vocals
Martin Belmont - guitar, vocals
Jeremy Chatzky - bass

The Set list included:

Before I Grow Too Old
Get Rhythm
Shame Shame Shame
Chills and Fever
Folsom Prison Blues
Point of No Return

With GP- The LipiTour

Instrumental
It’s My Party
White Honey
Lady Doctor
Fool’s Gold
Stealin’
Seven Nights To Rock
In the Midnight Hour
--
I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass*
Kansas City

Download link for GP and The Rumour Reunion Show 2010 is in the comments.

* That's two Nick Lowe references for those keeping score.

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Doug and the Slugs: Slugcology 101(1979-1988) Plus the Entire Discography! (almost)

Last week I spent $2.00 at flea market for a copy of Doug and The Slugs greatest hits, a.k.a. Slugcology 101. And it wasn't just for a quick post material either; since I've started this series the band is the highest it's been in my regard since 1980 when I heard a radio concert where Doug did a long monologue about how he was accosted by a mysterious stranger in a bar who told him he had to become the greatest rock singer of all time (the memories are pretty dim, I confess).

Doug never did fulfill that mission. Despite being a lyricist who could combine Elvis Costello's angry acuity with Dashiell Hammit's obsession with sleazy-living and leading a band that, when not showing off for American radio, will remind you of some of those other Pub Rock vets turned New Wave aggregation like Nick Lowe's Rockpile or Graham Parker's Rumour.

Still, some might resent Doug and The Slugs for profiting from the New Wave, while fellow Vancouver-ites of the era, like Art Bergmann, D.O.A., The Pointed Sticks et al, never got their due. But that sick injustice does not diminish these clever, catchy, well-crafted songs (even those late eighties hits, which sound much better when jumbled up non-chronologically on Slugcology). And if any one thinks a band selling 50,000 copies of their hit records and being on the Meatballs II soundtrack back in the eighties had it made, they should read this quote from Doug Benet buried in in the Slugcology liner notes: "Thanks to...our children to whom Dad was often 'that guy with the funny hair who's always away or asleep."

Call me mushy-headed but I think it's Slug Time!

 
Slugcology 101 is now available at iTunes


Biopunk commented "I had no idea you posted so much Doug and the Slugs! " and in case anyone wants to know just how much, here's their entire discography (minus their less-known 1992 album Tales From Terminal City, for which I would require a rip n 'scans from some generous reader). Just click on the links provided and you'll get a slug!

Cognac and Bologna is here











Wrap It! is here











Music for the Hard of Thinking is here











Popaganda is here












Doug Bennett's Solo album, Animato, is here.











Tomcat Prowl is here.











And, by the way, ViaComClosedMeDown... over at Down Underground has posted a cassette rip of a strange looking Doug and the Slugs release (likely a repackage) here.

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D.I.Y. - Teenage Kicks: UK Pop I (1976-1979)

The two volumes of UK Pop are, in my estimation, the D.I.Y. series' apex. With such a rich vein of music to mine, this volume doesn't comes up short, even with its errors of omission (The Chords, Elvis Costello, The Flys) and its errors of commission (two of the first three songs are Nick Lowe - I'm a devout Nick fan but that's an awkward start to a various artists compilation). Whatever my nit-picks, it plays amazingly well. How could it not with all of this:

Eddie and the Hot Rods

The Motors

Tom Robinson Band

Squeeze

XTC

The Boys

The Rezillos

Rich Kids

The Yachts

The Pleasers

The Skids

Another fixed Teenage Kicks link is in the comments.

Twenty-Three Risky Covers by Johnny Cash

(If you want to hear Rollins' story about this shot - go here)

“I tell people if they are interested that they should listen to Johnny on his Sun records and reject all that notorious low-grade stuff he did in his later years. It can’t hold a candlelight to the frightening depth of the man that you hear on his early records. That’s the only way he should be remembered.”

Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone 2009

There's a slow-building Johnny Cash backlash coming. After fifteen years of near-unanimous praise for his six American Recordings albums recorded with producer Rick Rubin between 1994 and Cash' s death in 2003, the snark levels are rising.

“I find it horrible they way they’ve made money out of him releasing all these maudlin recordings. Give me early Cash any day.”

Mark E Smith, The Renegade, 2008

To give the snarky their due, most of these albums do contain novelty filler, such as Depeche Mode's near-tuneless "Personal Jesus", most of which can't just be chalked up to Rubin's influence either. In fact, Rubin was just canny at picking elements of the multitudes that Cash contained to emphasize. Not only did Rubin play up Cash's long-standing morbidity, he also encouraged Cash's love of risky covers, songs who by virtue of their authors, their accompanists or the context they were performed in, challenged Cash's own limitations. Sometimes the results ended up sounding forced and awkward but other times they kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile. Whether they all fully paid off or not, these risky covers are a great part of what makes Cash compelling, even from beyond the grave.


So now, in celebration of Cash's 78th birthday and the release of his 'final' album, American VI: Ain't No Grave, here are twenty-three intriguing, unexpected or just plain odd Cash covers. This mixed bag of songs prove that Cash, a skilled song-writer himself, could be a daring interpreter of others' work. It's sometimes said that Cash, over the course of his career, and in particular on his old TV show, helped bridge the gap between left and right, urban and rural, black and white, old and young. If that sounds a bit much, just put on his version of June Carter and Merle Kilgore's "Ring of Fire" in mixed company and watch.

1. In his Sun Records days of the mid-fifties, Cash did a raw version of folk legend Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" with none of the gloss that The Weavers, Frank Sinatra or even Ernest Tubb had slathered on, in fact it sounds not unlike an American Recordings song.



2. In the early sixties Cash championed Dylan in print ("Shut Up and Let Him Sing") and on record, as evidenced repeatedly over the following years but especially on 1963's Orange Blossom Special which included three Dylan songs, including a growling take on "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright".



3. As folk turned to protest music, Cash helped it along by bringing Native American singer and activist Peter Lafarge's brutal, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" to number three on on the ever-conservative country charts in 1964 and, a few years later, to Richard Nixon's White House, even though the President is said to have asked for Merle Haggard's redneck anthem, "Okie From Muskogee".



4. Another folk-jazz poet (oh wait...) that Johnny supported before it seemed like the most country thing to do was the brilliant Shel Silverstein, whom Johnny helped make world-famous with "A Boy Named Sue" four years after he recorded the literally gallows-humoured, "25 Minutes To Go".



5. One of the charming facets of the oft-overbearing film, Walk the Line, was how candidly it dealt with the thorny issue of June Carter's voice, which shows up in all its acquired-taste glory in this brave-but-flawed 1967 version of Ray Charles' R & B masterwork, "I Got A Woman".



6. In 1969, Cash and Dylan recorded a session that, with with the exception of "Girl From the North Country" remains officially unreleased for some valid reasons, despite some highlights such as their takes on Dylan's hard-to-fuck-up, "One Too Many Mornings".



7. In 1970 Cash recorded the pastoral (and grating to a good many) "If I Was A Carpenter" by singer-songwriter Tim Hardin, which tried to apply some sentimentality to mend the rift between the Woodstock Nation and the Silent Majority.



8. In 1973 Cash recorded a box of tapes he labeled Personal File which was a proto-American Recordings selection of songs featuring just the man and his guitar covering the breadth of American music and including John Prine's inconceivably good,"Paradise (of which Bill Monroe said, "I thought that was a song I overlooked from the 20s") from his 1971 debut.




9. in 1975 Cash covered The Band's monumental historical ballad, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".



10. In 1978 Johnny found some sympathy for the country in the Rolling Stones repertoire and did a ripping version of "No Expectations".



11. Nick Lowe, like Dylan he makes the list twice, not only married Cash's step-daughter, Carlene Carter but he showed Cash the country/rockabilly side of new wave by giving him the bright, tuneful "Without Love" in 1979 and introducing him to Elvis Costello.



12. When Johnny finally covered Springsteen in 1983, he chose to do not one but two songs ("Highway Patrolman" is stunning but "Johny 99" is almost as good) from Springsteen's bleak but beautiful solo acoustic album, Nebraska.



13. In 1985, perhaps the height of the Reagan era, Cash collaborated with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson (himself a possible entry on this list) and Willie Nelson on a leftist legend Woody Guthrie's (and Martin Hoffman's) anti-xenophobic ballad, "Deportees" and they even got Johnny Rodriguez to sing along.



14. While Mercury Records surely saddled him with some Nash-Trash material on his three albums for that label, Cash also got to do versions of Elvis Costello's "The Big Light" in 1987 and "Hidden Shame" in 1990.



15. In 1991 at what may have been the nadir of his career, Cash now without a major label deal, recorded a duet with Texas Christian punk-metal band One Bad Pig (doing his own "Man in Black") - appreciation levels will vary widely but it is proof positive of Cash's utter fearlessness.



16. Cash's re-ascendancy begins with this U2 song from 1993's Zooropa, which Cash smokes despite the band being at a bit of an artistic low themselves.



17. Risky cover sources become legion when Rubin jump-started Cash's career with the bare-bones American Recordings album in 1994 but his brutal take on Nick Lowe's "The Best in Me" is worth highlighting as it helped reinvigorate both men's careers.



18. A few of the grunge-era covers work better then they should (i.e. "Rusty Cage" as rockabilly number) but this Beck song from 1996's American II, with lines like, "Dog food on the floor/And I've been like this before", seems a pretty natural fit.





19. Willie Nelson's "Time of the Preacherman" gets a roughed-up treatment with Cash backed by Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Nirvana's bassist Krist Novaselic, and Alice in Chains' dummer Sean Kinney from the 1996 compilation, Twisted Wilie.



20. The fact that Rubin and Cash didn't search out more underground (call 'em alt. country if you must) writers like Will Oldham, whose magnificent "I See a Darkness" from 2000's American III makes for a haunting duet, instead of dredging up worn-out standards like, "Bridge over Troubled Water" is one of the nagging deficiencies of their collaboration.



21. Cash had Neil Young on his TV show back in '71 and even duetted with him on a painful version of "The Little Drummer Boy" much later on but you have to dig through the the outtakes compiled on Unearthed boxset to find his covers of Young's "Heart of Gold" and "Pocahontas", the latter of which works well despite Cash's known weakness in handling more abstract lyrics.



22. If AA is to be believed that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results then Rubin and Cash were plumb loco to stick to the somber, minimalist alterna-rock covers for five albums until this indisputably stirring version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" from 2002's American IV blew up.



23. While "Hurt" was, in some senses, Cash's crowning achievement, we'll leave you with a possibly more poignant finale; shortly before they each died, nine months apart, Cash and former Clash frontman Joe Strummer duetted on their own death song, a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song".



So don't buy into the Cash-lash, all artists are flawed but the greatest ones, the real risk-takers, leave behind a permanent trace of glory.

Now what do you think of these choices for unusual Johnny Cash cover songs?


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