This Week's Purchases (08/06/2012)

The CH 3 shirt was bought at the show for a mere $12.00. I'm not big on rock shirts but I was planning on getting something and it's a pretty cool number. (Speaking of which at The Zoo show it was amusing how every old guy tried to pull out his 'unassailably cool rock T-shirt" - Jesus Lizard. D.O.A., Ramones, Cro-Mags et al).

Steve Earle's I Feel Alright was purchased alongside Weddings. Parties, Anything's The Big Don't Argue, The  Men They Couldn't Hang's Silver Town, Three O-'Clock Train's Anthology (coming soon!) and  John Wesley Harding's Why We Fight for $20.00 at Entertainment Exchanges under their 'buy four - get one free' deal (thanks, Chris!)

Uncle Tupelo's No Depression and Steve Earle's Sideways were whisked out of Music Trader's used bin for about $8.00 apiece, while the the two TV Smith albums (Last Words of the Great Explorer and Channel 5) were taken out of the 'new punk section for a reasonably $18.00 a piece. (That whole deal cost me only a few dollars cash of course, thanks to my vinyl trade!)

 And to close off here's a shot of CH 3 rocking the Punk Douglas Club!

(And you wonder why I don't have a Tumblr for my photography!)

Did you buy anything this week?
Let us know in the COMMENTS Section - let us know what sort of CD's/LP's/MP3's etc you're buying to support the artists you love!!

Steve Earle: Live at the Cotton Club, 1988 (FM Broadcast)

At the conclusion of Hardcore Troubador: The Life and Near-Death of Steve Earle, author Lauren St. John references Guy Clark's warning that "song-writing is not a competitive sport". That's a necessary reminder in these hyper-competitive times but I'm still gonna nominate Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" as the greatest narrative song of the last twenty-five years.





Narrative song-wring isn't as dominant a force in rock and pop as it is in hip-hop, folk and country. Since Earle has his boots planted in both folk and country, it's no wonder he's so beholden to the power of narrative. And fucking hell does "Copperhead Road" deliver a taut, cinematic story of a family's long tradition of trafficking. Ironically, the literal-minded music video (don't miss the lingering shot of a birthday cake that accompanies the line "volunteered for the army on my birthday" line) does the song no favours. Of course, that video's short-comings leave the field open for a feature-length movie based on the song - hell, it'd have to be better then the one based on "Harper Valley PTA".






Steve Earle and the Dukes
Live at the Cotton Club, Atlanta, GA
17th December 1988

1.  Copperhead Road
2.  Good Ol' Boy (Getting' Tough)
3.  The Rain Came Down
4.  San Antonio Girl
5.  Even When I'm Blue
6.  Someday
7.  The Devil's Right Hand
8.  Fearless Heart
9.  Snake Oil
10. Back to the Wall
11. I Ain't Ever Satisfied
12. Johnny Come Lately
13. Nothing But a Child
14. The Week of Living Dangerously
15. Waiting on You
16. You Belong to Me
17. I Love You Too Much

Encores

18. Dead Flowers
19. Guitar Town
20. No. 29*
21. My Baby Worships Me*
22. It's All Up to You*

*With Jeff Healey

Let us know what you think of Steve Earle in general and "Copperhead Road" in specific in the COMMENTS section.

Steve Earle Hompeage

Channel 3: How Do You Open the Damn Thing? (1994)

So Channel 3 (more HERE) kicked Winnipeg's collective ass two nights in a fuckin' row. For those stubborn enough to get shit-kicked twice, the bar show at The Zoo on Friday and the all-ages show at the Punk Douglas Club on Saturday featured two pretty different sets. The first show was in singer Mike Magrann's words "the 'Vegas set" and the second the more raging full-on set. Friday's set varied the pace a bit - hell they started out with the mid-tempo "Indian Summer" and encored with "One More Time For All My True Friends" (thanks, Mike). The booze-friendly set also included a hell of a lot of stage banter - "Once the hair got bigger and the cowboy boots got taller, we started getting more pussy than Frank Sinatra" Magrann quipped before playing their hair-metal track, "Last Time I Drank".





Saturday's set started out like a beach-storming firefight but moved in some surprising directions including the band's heart-felt cover of The Nils "Scratches and Needles", a surprising decision to play "Airborne" a song they hadn't played in years (watching each member of the band gradually, grudgingly agree to play along was priceless!) and a gender-bender take on "You Make Me Fee Cheap". I'm gonna give the Saturday show the edge but you needed both to see just how much this endlessly self-deprecating band is capable of.

This long-out-of-print live album How Do You Open the Damn Thing? has a set list not unlike what we Winnipeggers with a brain in our head saw this weekend. Enjoy and if you get a chance go see the damn band!

1.     Separate Peace
2.     You Make Me Feel Cheap
3.     Out of Control
4.     Wet Spots
5.     You Lie / Mannequin
6.     Indian Summer
7.     Last Time I Drank
8.     No Love
9.     I Didn't Know
10.     Waiting In the Wings
11.     I Wanna Know Why
12.     Nothing Like This
13.     Catholic Boy
14.     I Got a Gun
15.     Manzanar  

 Alright MRML readers, whadaya make of the long-running phenomenon that is CH 3? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!

Support the Band!

Homepage

iTunes

Amazon

Facebook

Mike's Blog

MySpace

V.A. The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore (2012)

When I tried to order The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore from my local workers-collective-anarcho-metal-punk store, War On Music, the man who does the orders (not to be confused with the man who gives the orders!) said "Oh, I never even saw that, I always just skip over the Various Artists section in the catalogs".

Let's let's not fiddle-di-di, it's the nineties what caused that sort of antipathy towards the initials V. A. The once venerable reputation of the underground compilation album (see wordy defense HERE) plummeted in that decade, when ever-lowering production costs led every label in the world to flood the markets with cheap sampler CD's and ill-themed collections.

The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore is a 2012 pop-punk compilation L.P. put together by the Lookout Records (lots more HERE) founder of the title put together at the behest of Adeline Records head (and Green Day dude) Billie-Joe Armstrong.





The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore is the best compilation of the century and it pantses every Lookout compilation. I mean, really try to listen to The Thing That Ate Floyd or Can of Pork without skipping multiple tracks. One could argue that those compilations featured a greater variety of styles then this one does. However, consistency has its rewards and the fact there's no cheap filler here is an achievement. Part of thre greateness herein is that Livermore has lined up the relatively obvious choices like The Copyrights, Houseboat, Night Birds and the Dopeamines. But Livermore, with help from the denizens of the Pop-Punk Message Board, has also chosen some impressive lesser-known (to me) like Emily's Amy, Mixtapes and The Weekend Dads.





So fuck all that Epit-Fat-Hopeless-Tooth'n'Nail landfill from the nineties and chow down on The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore!


Adeline Records

Chick-Fill-o Nuts

If you cozy up to the power of the state to legally deny equal rights to a persecuted minority based on a strictly literal interpretation of the Old Testament, you're not a Christian, you're a Pharisee*.

* I use 'Pharisee' in the sense that it is used in the Christan tradition and not in its strictly historical sense.