Lowe-Fi: The Production Genius of Nick Lowe

(Picture property of Getty Images)

"As a producer, my biggest break came during working on "Watching the Detectives" and I discovered where the echo button was on the tape machine."
Nick Lowe

Despite being a fabulous song-writer, a smart quipper and passably handsome, Nick Lowe never hit stardom. Part of the reason might be that Nick, a long-time bass player, never loved the spotlight quite enough. From Kippington Lodge to Brinsley Scwharz, to Rockpile to Noise-to-Go and Little Village (and those are just the more famous ones) Nick always seemed to want to be part of, not just a band, but a team of equals. He used to seem a bit like a McCartney in search of his Lennon.

Further proof of his knack for team-work is the number of classics for which he's sat in the producers chair. Despite a catalog stacked with witty pop songs, more people probably own a song that Nick Lowe (more here) produced than one he performed. In interviews he often expresses amazement about this, as he believes he's no whiz at the mixing board. And certainly he's no sonic architect like Phil Spector or (shudder) Mutt Lange. After all, he earned his nick-name, Basher, for his recording philosophy of "bash it out now - tart it up later". But that gut-level style fit the times so perfectly and even when times changed and things got electronic ("Any barnyard horse can kick a synth" he once said) Nick always kept the songs and the people who played them right up front.

1. Graham Parker Back to Schooldays
Nick's first gig at the controls was this album, where much of his former band, Brinsley Schwarz, were now backing up this fiery little British soul-punk under the name the Rumour.



2. The Damned New Rose
Nick also produced what is commonly called the first punk rock single (which contained a love song and a Beatles cover - hmmm).



3. Snuff Rock Gobbing on Life
C.P. Lee (of Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias who deserve a post of their own) strikes again with first punk piss-take, which mocks the Pistols, the Damned and the Clash in a few short minutes.



4. Wreckless Eric Whole Wide World
Lowe's only production for Eric was this single, but it's a monster that will never die.



5. Elvis Costello Watching the Detectives
Lowe and Costello's partnership is another example of his ability to draw out the best in others, I mean how else can you explain how Nick produced Elvis Costello doing what many consider the definitive version of Nick's own "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding"?



6. Dr. Feelgood She's a Wind-Up
The Feelgoods may be the very embodiment of pub-rock and they certainly cranked up the tempo and the volume of what began a a bit of a laid-back movement.



7. Carlene Carter Baby Ride Easy
Johnny Cash's step-daughter (and child of country legends, June Carter and Carl Smith) married Nick Lowe who produced some hit-an-miss albums for her. Strangely, her move to Nashville, thankfully accompanied by her husband (and Tom Petty sideman), the late Howie Epstein, began her prime period.

Video here.

8. Mickey Jupp Old Rock n' Roller
Jupp is another lesser pub rock vet (he did write "Switchboard Susan", which got covered by both Nick himself and the Searchers when they recorded at Dave Edmunds' Rockfield studios).



9. The Pretenders Stop Your Sobbing
I suppose there are more popular nominees for the absolute zenith of Chrissie Hynde's catalog but I'd say she's made a fine, storied career out of never quite topping this one.




10. Richard Hell Kid With the Replaceable Head
Nick produced Hell? Yup, again just the once. (The 'video' is for the Destiny Street version produced by Alan Betrock and Hell.)



11. John Hiatt Love That Harms
Nick's would have a strong hand in bringing Hiatt's taut song-writing to a broader audience but not just yet.



12. Johnny Cash Without Love
When Johnny Cash is your step-father-in-law you better write him a damn good song, you better play on it and produce it in your basement. Much later, Nick's "The Beast in Me" became the linchpin in both his and Johnny's mid-nineties comebacks.



13. Fabulous Thuderbirds Diddy
The fun-loving, crowd-pleasing retro-minded music the Brit's cheerfully call "pub rock", North Americans derisively refer to as "bar rock". This is probably because while the back-to-basics movement Nick and his contemporaries built was vital and alive, sometimes the North American equivalent sounded like paint-by-numbers boogie even when, in the Fabulous Thunderbirds case, they have Stevie Ray Vaughn's brother in the band and had some middling eighties hits.

14. Paul Carrack Don't Give My Heart a Break
It's Lowe's song-writing and production (alongside Carrack's warm vocals) that keeps this from descending into tinky eighties pop.

15. Moonlighters I Feel Like a Motor
Austin De Lone, from Eggs Over Easy, was the Yankee in pub rock's court and even in his next band, the Moonlighters, he kept a vigil for the sounds of '75.

16. The Redskins Keep on Keepin' On
Their goal was,"To sing like the Supremes and walk like the Clash" and Nick's job was to keep them from sounding like a Trotskyist version of the Commitments.



17. His Latest Flame Somebody's Gonna Get Hurt
A pretty, if lushly melodramatic, pop song that bears little evidence of Nick's tricks.

The Men They Couldn't Hang Greenback Dollar
Sure TMTCH were Pouges-ian but what a ripping version of this Hoyt Axton-via-the Kingston Trio song.

18. Katydids Lights Out (Read My Lips)
An Anglo-American folk-pop band, to whom Nick gave a bright sound, to no commercial avail.

19. Rain A Taste of Rain
Liverpudlian jangle, probably owned a lot of the same records as the guys in R.E.M.

20. Mavericks Blue Moon
The Mavericks, not a name you'd want to be pallin' around with in these post-Sarah Palin times, played country with a keen sense of history, which made them a perfect choice to do one song (again) with Nick.




Nick hasn't produced much in recent years. Since the nineties, he's focused on his ideal micro-niche as a writer and performer of tightly focused soul-country-pop songs over a four album Brentford Trilogy.



 

"It's either this or the biscuit factory, really."
Nick Lowe on his career

Nick Lowe: So It Goes (First Stiff)

(A-side matrix "Earthlings Awake")

This month (August the fourteenth, to be precise) marks the thirty-third anniversary of the debut of Stiff Records, the most bizarre, wildly-inconsistent yet brilliantly prescient labels of all time. The fiercely idiosyncratic British label promised a future in the music world for renegades and miscreants. The label was founded by industry vets (Dave Robinson and Andrew Jakeman) and initially stocked by eccentric cast-offs (Nick Lowe, Pink Fairies et al.) before they signed (then) up-and-comers like The Damned and Elvis Costello. The history of Stiff is well learned elsewhere but, for something less seen, here is a list of thirty-four blunt yet witty Stiff slogans:

(From The Book of Rock Lists and scanned by CallPastorBob)

The label debuted (prefixed Buy 1) with a single , the jaw-dropping Nick Lowe solo debut on which Nick plays everything but the drums. While Stiff's quality level pitched wildly (the less said about Buy 3, the turgid Roogalator single, the better) this maiden release is forty-five revolutions per minute of wild genius.

"So It Goes" brought power-pop out of the doldrums by not only paying homage (and/or nicking ideas from) that crisp British Invasion guitar-pop but also by updating said sound with a slicing wit. Underneath that snappy tune, this is a brutal song, one which moves from a grisly loss of limb, to threat of violence in a large crowd, to the warring of nations. Nick chronicles all this ugliness in an off-handed manner, even ending the song off on a note of unrequited lust. And so it goes...

So It Goes
I remember the night the kid cut off his right arm
In a fit to save a bit of power
He got fifty thousand watts
In a big acoustic tower
Security's so tight tonight
Woh they're ready for a tussle
You better keep your backstage passes
'Cause the promoter had the muscle

Chorus:
And so it goes and so it goes
And so it goes and so it goes
But where it’s going, no one knows

In the tall building
sit the head of all nations
Worthy men from Spain and Siam
Al1 day discussions with the Russians
But they still went ahead
and vetoed the plan
Now up jumped the U.S. representative
He's the one with the tired eyes
747 put him in that condition
Flyin' back from a peace keepin' mission

Chorus

In the air there is after shave lotion
in the wake of a snake hip Persian
On his arm there's a skin tight vision
Wonder why she ain’t mine and she’s his and……..

"Heart of the City" is the more ragin' full-on rock n' roll track. The guitars are amped-up, the tempo races and the hook, while still fully-formed, is more staccato. Lyrically the cynical wit (Lowe now refers to it as "callow") continues, here delineating urban malaise in the form of sex, violence and an over-abundance of guitars.

(B-side Matrix, "Three Chord Trick, yeh")


{MRML Readers: More Lowe? Write a comment to lemme know!}

Download So It Goes/Heart of the City 7"


You need more Lowe. If you enjoy this single you need to buy his first album Jesus of Cool and/or his new compilation Quiet Please. Don't delay, your life is poorer for it's lack of Nick.



Next: Twee psychedelic pop?

V.A. A Bunch of Stiffs (1977)

Speaking of Stiff Records, their second L.P. release, after Damned, Damned, Damned, A Bunch of Stiffs emphasizes the lark-ish side of the label. The hits here are Wreckless Eric's "Whole Wide World", Elvis Costello's "Less Than Zero", "Back to Schooldays" by Graham Parker and Motorhead's "White Line Fever" (officially released on Chiswick). Then the going gets weird. Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" works as a laugh and a song, Dave Edmunds' cover of Jo Jo Gunne fulfills the rock n' roll quotient and, predating Dewey Cox by thirty years, we have "Food" by the Takeaways with a Mystery Guest you're all supposed to hope is Bob Dylan. As if, deep into his mystic-poet guise (not his best but far from his worst) between Desire and Street Legal, Dylan did boozy self-parody.

(Badges courtesy of Buy the Hour)

I Love My Label - Nick Lowe
Go The Whole Wide World - Wreckless Eric
White Line Fever - Motörhead
Less Than Zero - Elvis Costello
Little By Little - Magic Michael
Back To Schooldays - Graham Parker (uncredited)

Jump For Joy - Stones Masonry
Maybe - Jill Read
Jo Jo Gunne - Dave Edmunds
The Young Lords - Tyla Gang
Food - The Takeaways


This post owes some inspiration to Bert Muirhead's Stiff: the Story of a Record Label. After a little more digging I found this on some other blogs (including one of the first, and still one of the best, music blogs, Power-Pop Criminals). I was in too deep to stop, so to add some value (the book sells for almost a hundred bucks on eBay), here's its gossipy entry on this album:

A 'cash-in' record all the acts here were old friends of (Stiff founders) Jake (Robinson) or Dave (Rivera). The album worked well considering the ragbag of demos and finished articles from which it was compiled. The blend of heavy metal, rock and roll and new pop combined to make a potent album. Certainly, when the word punk was on everyone's lips and there was little of it in the shops, it helped fill the void.

Only the Costello and Wreckless tracks had been issued as singles and Motorhead's would have been if they had not signed to Bronze. Of the rest, "I Love My Label" was a typical Nick Lowe ditty (co-written with Jake). Magic Micheal was well-known on the benefit concert scene and was on the first Greasy Truckers album. GP's track was uncredited as he'd just signed with Phonogram but was still managed by Dave Robinson. Stones Masonry featured Martin Stone and postdated his spells with Mighty Baby and Chilli Willli (famous Jake connection). Jill Read was in fact Dave Edmunds. (Sean) Tyla was also part of the pre-Stiff crowd. The Takeaways were a studio band comprised of Lowe, Edmunds, and Larry Wallis. The nasal intonations are probably* Tyla imitating Dylan. Recording costs were minimal and the profits were probably high as the album sold like hot cakes.

* According to roberto (and backed up by the authoritative 45 Revolutions) the faux-Dylan was in fact C.P. Lee, head of faux-punk band Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias and author of the definitive Stiff slogan, "If it Ain't Stiff, it Ain't Worth a Fuck".

* C.P. Lee dropped by to give some excellent detail, "It was me - It was the second take - the first take was done in the 'style' of Brian Ferry - Jake and Nick asked if I could do Dylan - I did and got £25, a free copy of the album and a night out at The Marquee - Vive Le Rock!!" Bless you, C.P.

(Image courtesy of fredpopdom)

A Bunch of Stiffs L.P.

Live Stiffs

"Sex,Drugs, Rock n' Roll and Chaos" is the (bastardized) title of the final track on this L.P , featuring Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis and Ian Dury) and it's a pretty damn good summary of the whole enterprise. The enterprise was to gather the eminent Stiff artists of 1977 and send 'em off all together on a package tour like Motown did with its stars back in the sixties.



Those Motown shows were, witnesses say, professional, polished performances whereas the Stiff shows were, often, a shambles albeit a glorious shambles. Look at those lovable losers grinning out at you from the cover, as if to say, "We were third tier sloggers but now we've got a shot at the top." Sure enough, everyone of those grinners, save Wallis, took a serious shot at the pop charts, all with some, if varying, levels of success.



Nick Lowe's was long known for his love of just bashing the music out (hence that "Basher' nick name). That reckless spirit, which made Nick a conduit between the old pubsters and the angry kids, permeates this record. Nick's prominent on both versions of the cover (with poor E.C. hiding at the back). Nick's tunes here include his best released version of "I Knew the Bride" and a fun obscurity, "Let's Eat", Wreckelss Eric's songs - "Reconez Cherie" and "Semaphore Signals" are a bloody mess (and bloody good - much more here) while Elvis C. and the Attraction attack "Miracle Man" and, shades of Imperial Bedroom, cover Bacharch-David's "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". Larry Wallis only gets to play his best song ("Police Car") so that polio survivor and funky eccentric Ian Dury can get three songs (counting that pile-on version of "Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll" that ends the album). Enjoy this raw document because it seems impossible to imagine prominent label nowadays with a roster of such resolute individuals surviving.



Download Life Stiffs L.P.

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?


Support Johnny Cash's legacy!

Cash @ Amazon

Cash @ iTunes

Cash @ MySpace

Cash's Hompage

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.

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

Support the artist

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Homepage


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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!!!!!!

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!!

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.

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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