Costa-Gravas, Costa Livin'

Sorry 'bout the potted intro, but (a shorter version of) this was for the
Collegetown paper; gotta clue in the newbies, hopefully no one else is turned off
by that, or anything else here:

COSTA-GRAVAS, COSTA LIVIN'
by Don Allred

In the early 1980s, Miles Davis came back from hiatus, but his music,
though engagingly quirky and rough-edged, no longer seemed innovative. And
post-Miles jazz-rock had hardened into fusion. Fusion was notorious for flashy
but ponderous displays of technique, like bad progressive rock. This resulted in
a throwback to 50s-style hard bop, the so-called Young Lions (or "jazz in
suits") movement, led by Wynton Marsalis.
But not all young jazz musicians were fusion heads or conservatives.
Drummer/composer Bobby Previte was well-schooled at The University Of Buffalo in
the 70s, where the music faculty included progressives like Lukas Foss,
trance poet Morton Feldman, and the anti-authoritarian authority on conceptualist
strategies, John Cage. Even earlier, Bobby P. was a underage soul/rock bar
band veteran, and both kinds of training served him well when he moved to New
York City in 1979, where he quickly became a leader in what was sometimes called
Downtown Jazz. Previte and his cohorts were as technically accomplished as
Marsalis and the fusion virtuosi, but they were also experimental, intent on
taking up where Miles had left off.
Previte's latest release, Coalition Of The Willing, is startlingly
fresh, despite familiar names, production elements, and political implications.
Trumpeter Steve Bernstein was the musical director of New York's post-punk
"fake jazz" rowdies, The Lounge Lizards, and is a key member of the calmly
audacious Sex Mob. Like Previte and others on Coalition, Bernstein doesn't let his
energy get in the way of thought or feeling: check his album Diaspora Soul,
which taps the improvisational and emotional resources of klezmer music. Stanton
Moore, who plays drum duets with Previte on several Coalition tracks, is also
a member of Galactic, a typically "fonky" New Orleans jam band, which
nevertheless rose to the occasion, when they got a chance to back Algerian exile
Rachid Taha, on his blisteringly defiant Made In Medina. (Songlines magazine
reviewer Nigel Williamson rightly considered this album to succeed, where Unledded,
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's album with North African musicians, failed.).
Multi-instrumentalist Skerik limits himself to subtle saxophone on Coalition,
but his more varied work with the sardonically moody Critters Buggin, especially
on their 1998 album Bumpa, might be a key precedent to Coalition. Toward the
end of Bumpa, there's a sense of looming enclosure, but it's an enclosure
that's made to resonate with deep, bending, metallic tones.
On Coalition, this kind of rebellious sound (with flickering treble
added, so it also evokes John McLauglin's eerie 1970 peak, Devotion) takes on a
political context. Not only does Coalition's title refer to the Iraq War, but
several tracks (like "The Ministry Of Truth") reference George Orwell's 1984.
(As a Vietnam War era album might have, of course.)
But Coalition doesn't rely on righteously retro rhetoric, or any other
kind of default setting. Stu Cutler adds occasional harmonica, minus blues
cliches. Charlie Hunter abstains from his Blue Note albums' eight-string guitar,
and from the effects box that makes him sound like a (so-so) organist. (Why
bother, when an actual organist, the judiciously theatrical Jamie Saft, who just
released an album of instrumental Dylan covers, is always lurking nearby, and
with his own guitar as well.) Here, Hunter plays incisive six-string
Telecaster, and a twelve-string guitar that sounds nothing like The Byrds: it chimes
like an evil, elegant parody of Big Ben. (Appropriately for Orwell's dystopian
England.) Previte's lean, hungry beats and bright tonal colors (keyed by
electronic touch pads) find their way through dark shifting backdrops and corridors.
Coalition's a thriller, tracked by really good, inescapable security cameras.

Caption For A Missing Photograph

Regarding ze topigoraphy ov Belgian Waffle Ironies, M. B0b Le Fl@neur sign@lz:
When I showed the attached photo to my flatmate Zuzana, she exclaimed "I know
that spot! That's where my friend got stabbed!"

The picture was taken at the point where the corporate alleyway of Boulevard
du Roi Albert II stops dead, three blocks east of the canal and one block west
of the Gare du Nord (and therefore two blocks away from the red light
district of Rue d'Aerschot and three away from one of Schaerbeek's heavily Turkish
neighborhoods).

The photograph doesn't do justice to the building at the right, the "Hotel
Husa President", which is nearly a block long. Architecturally, it might as
well be called the "Husak" -- it could have been a gift from any Warsaw Pact
nation and served as any provincial Party headquarters or workers' holiday housing.

The photograph was used as both front and back covers to a 2006 calendar
touting redevelopment in Brussels' Rue du Progrès area. Since then, a children's
playground has been put up there.

Liquor For The Soul

Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Best Off (ZE)

In 1979, NYC's ultrahip ZE Records issued Press Color, the debut album of
Parisienne expat painter et post-punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty good
punky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songs
invited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best Off, is the way their parsing paisley parsley
and bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean and
African elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. For instance, Best Off offers a
juicy slice of 1984's Soweto-collaborative, bollocks-to-apartheid Zulu Rock, which ZE
has also reissued, with several bonus tracks. Wherever
she goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's a
nervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests the
artist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplying
dimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the
90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even molds
bullets from samples of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's narcotic blue satori,
which remains undisturbed, of course. Opposites attract, eternally.(ZE site still
"under construction" last time I checked, so for instance see
http://www.forcedexposure.com) Don Allred

(update: in 2016, Pitchfork published Laura Snapes' informative,, insightful, incisive profile of LMD: http://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/)

small world, smaller country

Und now, L///ve, fr0m ze capital ov EUROPA, Monsieur BOb Le Fl@neur reportage:

This morning, in an attempt to find out how to get a work permit and/or
gainful employment, I was sent on a minor scavenger hunt through various
government offices ("a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour"). My final stop was with a
bureaucrat who happened to mention that her husband is American and a
musician.

I asked, and it turns out that the guy is Paul Zahl, drummer for The
Flamin' Groovies and TUXEDOMOON.

Tuxedomoon must have attained the status of local heroes here, because on
quite a few occasions by now I've gone into bars or restaurants and heard their
stuff being played. These places include my favorite lunch joint for street
people (for one euro you can get a usually filling plat du jour; quality is
touch-and-go but hey, that's also true of establishments where a meal costs 15
times as much) as well as my favorite bar, the Walvis
see:

http://www.CafeWalvis.be/
and

http://www.ebru.be/Cafes/CafWalvis.html/

The goof for me is that, back in Berkeley when I was buying up all the
Tuxedomoon I could find (including going to Peter Principle's NYC apartment to buy
solo CDs off him), little did I suspect that I too would decamp from the Bay
Area and eventually end up in Brussels.

btw I didn't ask the woman about Tuxedomoon's recent reunion-cum-tour
because I'll cover that topic on my next visit.

I suppose next I'll encounter a Moroccan confectionary salesman who turns out to be
an ex of Natacha Atlas ;-

__________________________________________________

I'm Telling You This For Your Own Good

A Mr. Le F. writes:
"The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe
in it. Further, the Lowest Ring in Hell is reserved for them that believe in
it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't."

--The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1,
from the Principia Discordia

(if you never got around to getting a copy or printing it off the Net, go
here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/principia/body.html , where you will stumble on
other wisdom such as the following:

"Did you know that there is a million bucks hidden in the house next
door?"
"But there is no house next door."
"No? Then let's go build one!"
-MARX
"There are trivial truths & there are great truths. The opposite of a
trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true."
-Neils Bohr
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.

The LAW OF NEGATIVE REVERSAL states that if something does not happen then
the exact opposite will happen, only in exactly the opposite manner from that
in which it did not happen.

(Honey Don't) Put The OO Back In Umlaut!

Shooter Jennings Makes Retro His Own Thing (tweaked a tad, 6/01) (and 6/05) (AND 7/01: The prefect ending?!) 

By Don Allred

 Waylon Albright Jennings, born in 1979, was spared a heavy "Jr." being forever hung around his neck. (Unlike Randall Hank Williams Jr., whose Papa Hiram was proud to choose his own handle once again.) Lil J's famous father slipped in a new middle name along with his own first name: Albright, was and is as in Richie, the veteran road warrior and drummer, of the elder Waylon's band. Fittingly, because wee "Shooter," as Daddy soon nicknamed him, hailed from a crib on his parents' tourbus. His Mom, Jessi Colter, was a co-star ,with Big Waylon, Willie Nelson, and Tompall Glaser , on an epochal compilation, Wanted: The Outlaws. Which, in the mid-70s, turned out to be country's surprisingly sucessful answer to marketshare-biting rivals over on the rising Southern Rock bandwagon. Which, by '79, had pretty much run out of gas, like Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane. Or so it seemed at the time, to us fashionable types. But country is always movin' kinda slow next to rock, thank goodness, so the migratory Jennings family was still layin' down the outlaw law, next to baby dawg. When in L.A., still-young Shooter finally laid Stargunn, his own conceptually-D.O.A. (to the surviving "trendsetting major" labels of rock) dreamboat ("Lynyrd Skynyrd mutating out of Guns N Roses":[and/or vice versa]: sure, keed, su-r-re) to rest, and headed back to Nashville, and sold Universal South his already completed debut country album, and titled it Put The O Back In Country, it was commonly assumed the O was for Outlaw. Why not? He was entitled, if anybody was. Although in at least one pre-release review, Shooter did say that was what it stood for, he has, many times, since denied it: "The Outlaw Movement was a movement in time…if you call yourself an outlaw now, your fly's unzipped." He's got plenty of other Os, after all: two in Shooter alone, so he can spare one for donation. As for the O-lessness of "Country", well, um, market research has indeed shown that most country consumers are female, and Shooter explains that he wants to make music for "young people," not for "adult women," not predominately, but y'all come too, y'hear? Just don't expect thangs in country to be all chick flick, not no more! On the other hand, his ladyfriend Drea Di Matteo, late of The Sopranos, and Joey, is an exceedingly well-preserved thirtysomething adult woman, and he credits her with prevailing on him to use Put The O Back In Country as album title, and theme song (written to the [credited] tune of Neil Young's "Are You Ready For The Country"). Shooter's re-tuning of this ancient toon bounces beats like basketballs, so the performance of the song seems even goofier (and much more likable) than its point, about the risky need to rock the country, as if "rebel" rock isn't a lucrative and established practice in country today. No need to sweat it, podner. But (just to prove me wrong) the starmaking machinery was a bit slow to crank up, and Put The O, finished in January of '04, wasn't released 'til March of '05. Meanwhile, Shooter had an encounter with another adult woman: his mother, Jessi. Although he has described recording rock experiments with his father (an album, with new backing tracks by Shooter and his current band, the 357s, will reportedly be released this fall), I haven't seen any mention of his musical relationship with his mother. Not, that is, until after his father's death in 2002. In 2004, Shooter and Jessi co-wrote and recorded a song. "Please Carry Me Home" is about sweating yourself dry of temptation's power, cold turkey, and step by bare step. (Shooter's drums count out the cost, slowly, mercilessly). It's a disturbing song, because it implies the risk of losing desire along with temptation. Not a good idea, because, Smokey Robinson put it, "If you can want, you can care," and then (maybe), as long lost Southern Rockers Hydra put it, you can "care enough to survive." But Shooter and Jessi know this, and hearing is believing: although "Please Carry" is the only track he appears on, it's a fittingly dramatic climax to Jessi's new Out Of The Ashes (Shout! Factory), her first album, except for a couple of kiddie-song sets, in over 20 years. Out Of the Ashes may well be the best country album of 2006, and the rumble and flow of Jessi's gospel-schooled, piano-driven twists and turns may well have provided some of the juice for Shooter's new Electric Rodeo, which he began building while Put The O was still unreleased. . The first album has a lot of good songs, but Shooter struggles with pacing and sequencing. How do you follow "4th Of July"? It's sort of early 70s Springsteen times early 80s Mellencamp (Chuck Eddy points out the latter), and both of them drive-by the Eagles' "Take It Easy," and ultimately all this (and more!) adds up to "4th" 's delivery of Put The O's most compelling/non-who-cares? evidence for SJ's need to git back. For instance, when he (in a shredded Mellensteen voice) demonstrates how "We sang 'Stranglehold' 'til the stereo couldn't take no more of that rock 'n' roll." Not only does he sound like he's in a stranglehold, but that song is, as Chuck also points out, by Ted Nugent. And I found it on the Dazed And Confused soundtrack. Which, as Robert Christgau points out, is a 70s hard rock utopia, except, to me, the Tedster's lyrics sound like ludicrously overachieving macho triumphalism. (He should have flash fwdd to Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now" to see how to do that rat). And indeed, maybe that's what Shooter really, ultimately didn't have the stomach for, rock 'n' roll-wise. He's got his complaints, but who doesn't. Plus, getting back to the c*y, ( already, on some Put, tracks, and much more on ER)he's let his voice relax and deepen a lot, plus he's (basically) not about geetar gymnastics, and Nuge is way ahead anyway. But, veering through "4th Of July," Shooter's snagging bits of rock utopia in his hair and beard, taking them back to Nashville, feeding and threading all his other tracks with 'em, and, though Put The O's wiring can look frayed, his piano (like Jessi's ,on her own album) does aid and abet the flow, though not as much it will on Electric Rodeo. He said in Harp magazine that his best songs were all written on one (piano, not a Harp). And Put The O 's "The Letter" is a swell but never swollen piano ballad, with humility and grace and scruffy frustration, and sort of a Leon Russell times Elton approach, and the basically similar unlisted track is good too. (Impulsive vocals at times, closer to Steven Tyler than Van Morrison [S.T. chatter and yowl on some other tracks too], but with some awesomely 80s movie lyrics, like "as you skate across the dance floor"!) But it seems redundant after "The Letter." And , after the git back "4th Of July," "Sweet Savannah" and "Southern Comfort" seem a bit redundant too. Especially the former, but, although "Southern Comfort" starts with him whining enjoyably about having to live in Hollyweird with that ol "SY yen tol oh gee," over equally petulant slide guitar and rhythm section, it eventually just creeps to a sluggish stop. And then of course the backup singers explode, and all but one fall away, and she does what she can and stops when signaled. On the other hand, "Daddy's Farm" creeps along 'til it gnarls just right. The lyrics are a bad ol' boy screenplay; not bad, but fairly generic. Yet he's expressing himself by experimenting with his own blend of the snakier aspects of yon Zep/Bad Co/early Aerosmith/Skynyrd approach. (Not to get too pianistic, but Billy Powell always was Lynyrd's secret weapon: those crucial accents under the final phase of guitar extravaganza put "Freebird" over the top.) So, how to you get to Electric Rodeo? Practice practice practice, but, beyond that, whether witnessing Jessi's accrual of accents into grooves into songs into implied narrative into an album put him over the top, or what, he's really tapped into a sharper sense of (and appetite for) pacing and transition, within and between tracks. Speaking of secret weapons, I was just thinking that ER's "Bad Magick" 's guitars (for he does indeed have them) weren't slamming me quite like they thought they were. Only to be curled into the undertow of keyboards, echoing through Davy Jones' Locker and the cosmic indigestion around kickdrums. Listen on headphones. But first, The preachy jive of Put The O's and Electric Rodeo's title tracks suddenly seem lived, in a song that sounds as gentle as the first album's "Lonesome Blues," 'til the pale chorus slips in: "When your heroes turn out to be assholes, and the light that you're chasing in the tunnel is a train. The singer's in key, the guitar's in tune, and the song is still slipping away." So he shrugs, means to refuel with some "Hair Of The Dog," but it doesn't rock him (or me) enough, so he chases that with "Little White Lines." Suddenly, he's bursting out with his Daddy's baritone and his Daddy's trademark "wun too, wun too" bass beats, now almost discofied, which is certainly drug- and decade- (and both of which are Daddy-) appropriate, while blaspheming against the kind of supposed cultural separatism that "Outlaw" signified for some. Which sardonic (and actually Waylonic) humor is both lightened and darkened by the George Clinton (and Tony Joe White)-worthy swamptoon of "Alligator Chomp (the Ballad Of Dr. Martin Luther Frog Jr.), As Told By Tony Joe White." Aw, you can figure out from the title how that ends, can't you. But the devil, like everything else, is still in a Shooterful of details. (Later: Okay okay, there's this one track that most everybody else felt compelled to mention, even though Shooter took it off the released version of ER, after many reviewers had already filed copy. Perhaps he finally gave into the irony of a clone-perfect cover of a song about the anxiety of influence and genetics; that would be Bocephus's "Living Proof." [Yeah, I know it's got Waylon's instrumental theme tagged onto the ending, but Hank Jr. could've done it that way, what with Waylon being an avuncular influence of sorts...] Or perhaps Shooter decided it was too far from or too close to his own POV. In any case, he made the last minute substitution of "It Ain't Easy," a polite tribute to Waylon I. Which just goes to show that references will will only take you so far; either that, or back to the drawing board, just like Daddy done ("Albright," alright).

Brie Larson Answers Our Questions

Teenpop singer and movie actress Brie Larson
(http://www.myspace.com/brielarsonmusic) answers questions from her fans
(the name of her album is "Out of P.E.," which will put one of her answers
here into perspective):

Q: 1. why are you so spectacular? 2. can you buy a private jet and save me
from florida? I think the elderly people are coming to get me.

A: 1.) i took classes from lindsay lohan. but they involved drugs and
drinking, so I failed. 2.) if I had a hammer, i'd hammer in the morning, i'd
hammer in the eve'nin, all over this land.

Q: Are you excited about turning 17 this year?

A: i'm more excited about not turning 16.

Q: Where do you get the inspiration to be a song-writer and by being an
artist (design)?

A: i dont get inspiration. I dont really know why I write about certain
things, or why I dont write about certain things. I dont really "write"
about anything. its all pish posh.

Q: So first of all i would like to ask. will you come to my house and disco
with me and my brother in the nude? Secondly. being serious and all. WHEN.
and i mean it. are you my dear, going to come to england.

A: I was in England yesterday! didnt you know? I was dressed as ringo star
and I yelled things like "NAY NAY NAY"

Q: will you sing happy birthday to me on friday? i'll be 19.

A: happy birthday Mr. president.

Q: Okay. i've got three questions. 1. do you have any pets? If so, what are
there and what are their names? 2. Have you ever watched Veronica Mars? If
not, you should. 3. Have you ever traveled overseas? if so, whats your fave
place you've been and why? p.s. Do you love it?

A: (uno) yes. simon's dawgs. and unicorn. (something) i lost my remote
(tres) i was riding on the mayflower, when I thought I spotted some land.

Q: brie!!!!!!!! will you come and chill with captain nicnic in hard rock
cafe london and bathe in baked beans? you know you wanna

A: YES YES YES.

Q: what is your fav. sport and why??

A: is that a trick question?

Q: have you ever wondered what your life would be like without the music,
the movies, and the fans?

A: yes. and then I remember that I would live the same life.

Q: 1. What is the best Bob Dylan CD? 2. Have you seen Transamerica? 3. Do
you think Reese Witherspoon should have got best actress?

A: 1.) my favorite is Highway 61 revisted. but they are all amazing. 2.)
nope. 3.) i thought she did win? am i going out of my mind? I saw walk the
line the day it came out, at midnight. LOVE IT.

Q: yes, she did win...my question is do you think she deserved it or should
someone else have got it. =]

Q: what is ur biggest wish??? :)

A: to be a character at disneyland. mostly Ariel.

Q: if you could live in any decade which decade would you choose?

A: SIMPLE. the 60s. no doubt.

Q: Do you remember going to a school called Pioneer Middle in South Florida
to talk about you're movie Hoot (April 3rd)?

A: PIONEER MIDDLE SCHOOL GIVES A HOOT. i hope cookies and cream/salt and
pepper have been feed lots of cheetos and crickets.

Q: Where'd you get your networking skills?

A: from many years of working in the netting industry.

Q: Do you want to go see the musical Wicked with me.

A: can I be in the musical?

Q: What event from your life would make the best cartoon scene? Pirates:
cool or overrated?

A: once I chased a road runner. i tried to drop an anvil on her head. but it
fell on me instead. i think that would work great as a cartoon. the best
part was that I was dressed as a coyote! how random right?! right. pirates
are overreated. I AM THE WARRIOR.

Q: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Why is
the sky blue?

A: those are highly controversial question. mostly ones I cannot answer. but
I will say this. "is it safe to say C'mon C'mon? was it right to leave?
c'mon c'mon. will I ever learn? c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon"

Q: do you like mooses? that is a weird word. mooses.

A: i once owned a bear that wore a dragon costume, named moose. so. to
answer your question. i hope mooses suck.

Q: How long does it take you to come up with all the banter you churn out? I
mean seriously, it has to be the most random irrelevant stuff I've ever
read. I guess though that is the mystery that is Brie Larson....

A: i bought the Do-it-yourself DVD.

Q: should my mum let me get my lip pierced?

A: YES. and it should be in the shape of the letter B.

Q: Do You Like Panic! at the disco? and do you think billie joe armstrong is
attractive?

A: i would say no, but only because when I hear their music or just their
name...I get this sudden urge to break my left arm and stick a fork in my
eye? billie joe armstrong is in green day. your answer is right there.

Q: What does celestial mean?

A: read a book. maybe its in there.

Postcard From Brussels

artbrussels2006

The eastern side of the ring of boulevards that encircle the Brussels center
is less of a matter of uphill vs. downhill than that of one long, genial tilt.
This applies analogously to the city's contemporary art scene where, rather
than ideology, Uptown and Downtown are considered more a question of rent,
altitude, and how much one feels the need to be close to the ever-glittering,
perennially posh Avenue Louise area. “It's all the same scene,” says Sébastien
Janssen, of Galerie Rodolphe Janssen. “It takes 10 minutes to get downtown by
car if you know the way.”

Thus, while one may see the work of Jan van Imschoot, to be shown at
Baronian-Francey's gallery during artbrussels2006, as being rooted in Flemish and
Spanish painting traditions and exhibiting a decidedly Uptown flavour, Mathias
Schaufler's delightfully fabular oils, downtown at dépendance, may be approached
in the same spirit.
artbrussels2006, whose 32,000 visitors will converge on the Brussels Expo
center for four days beginning April 20, is intended to fill a crying need in a
city where the museum establishment gives short shrift to contemporary art.
Moreover, in the same way that Brussels positions itself as the smallest and most
affordable European capital, the art fair's organizers hope to stimulate
canny Belgian collectors with an appealing price range of 1,000 to 100,000 euro.

According to Albert Baronian, one of two Brussels gallerists on the fair's
nine-member International Selection Committee, “If the world of art fairs is
football, divided into Division One and Division Two, then Brussels is the best
of Division Two.” Fair Exhibition Director Karen Renders concurs but adds,
“That's true if we assume that there are only four teams in Division One!” As
artbrussels' Unique Selling Proposition, both of them cite the fair's spirit of
familiarity, openness to new talent, and just the right proportion of Belgian
artists on view (roughly 25% of the total). And since the process of presenting
anywhere between 5 and 15 artists in a single 25-square-meter exhibition
booth may result in more of a mix-and-match feel than of unity and cohesion, when
seeking out exciting new developments one must give equal time to the various
exhibitors' galleries.

For example: Xavier Hufgens, former member of the fair's Selection Committee
and cited as a bellwether by many of his colleagues, will be showing the
disquieting photo(sur)realistic paintings of Cris Brodahl, a Belgian, while the
Taché-Lévy Gallery promises to provoke with the beguiling work of Sandrine
Pelletier. And on the one hand, in her exhibition booth equally high-profile
Catherine Bastide will feature Janaina Tschäpe's dreamlike photographic explorations
of the human body within its contexts, alongside Catherine Sullivan's
theatre-derived photos and Belgian Monique van Genderen's spare, elegant Klee-like
drawings. On the other hand, in her gallery Bastide will host the obsessively
fecund Josh Smith and his gleefully trashy oil-and-collage paintings, presumably
to include several more visual remixes of his name.

Galerie Meert Rihoux, which most recently presented the latest and greatest
of John Baldessari's recent oeuvre (monocolour tinted movie stills accompanied
by lists of applicable adjectives), has scheduled the intriguing juxtaposition
of two sets of photographs: Thomas Struth's vast urban structures and spaces
with Louise Lawler's wry constructions, in which the settings of familiar
objects and images comment on underlying strategies and contexts.

Those who have already made the move uptown claim that as of around 1999,
that became the new growth trend. However, those who remain down below in the
St.Catherine district, which extends west from the church of that name to the
canal, point out that hardly a week goes by without a new night shop, call shop,
restaurant, or art gallery springing up somewhere around Rue Antoine Dansaert.
Any responsible tour of art in the neighborhood would also have to include
Crown Gallery; Erna Hécey; the Contemporary Center for Non-Objective Art (with
their au courant audio installation series); the Galerie les filles du
calvaire, located in the venerable Kanal 20 complex; and Jan Mot, who has recently
devoted much attention to Spanish expat and current Brussels resident Dora Garcia
and her installations and performances.

The Alice Gallery, who recently celebrated their first anniversary, add a
particularly Belgian approach to the downtown scene. For one thing, in a nation
of two peoples and a city of two languages, they see no reason why Brussels
shouldn't have two galleries of the same name – and cheerfully create confusion
with far more established Alice Day. In the case of the young upstarts, the
name isn't even that of a person, but an acronym for “Artists Living In Constant
Elevation” (presumably their mission statement). Moreover, in an instance of
the same good-natured self-defeatism by which the Galerie Rodolphe Janssen
recently opened a view-only 'vitrine' space downtown and called it “Sorry We're
Closed”, Alice have largely escaped the notice of their older competitors by
locating their exhibition space behind their store, which offers not only a hip
selection of books, but T-shirts and street wear. The visitor is thus faced
with an interesting paradox: in order to reach the underground, activist,
would-be non-commercial art, one must politely wend one's way through the
in-your-face retail space.

Regarding exposure, at the fair Alice are poised to make up for lost time:
they'll be spotlighting Belgian rap singer and graffiti artist Pablo Sozyone
Gonzalez, with the entire outside of their booth to be taken up with one single
gritty red-and-black cartoon drawing, while the inside will feature not just
Sozyone, but the work of his like-minded posse and hiphop crew, the Overlords.
Meanwhile, back at the gallery, Alice have invited long-awaited Dave Kinsey,
who starting April 7 will fill the staid brick underground space with his
installations, assemblages, and angst-ridden cartoon visages. Showing Gonzalez and
Kinsey at the same time is quite felicitous: taken together, the two come off
as long-lost progeny of Gary Panter, with his bugged-out Jimbo character. And
stylistically, the work of the two is most appropriate for an art fair in
Belgium, with its long tradition of and respect accorded to comic strip art.

- John W (16.02.2006)

The Sorceress's Apprentice

by Don Allred
As he told it to his Goldmine Magazine interviewer Bill DeYoung in '96:

One August night in '72, young Rodney Crowell arrived in Nashville, with
$15.00 to his name, eagerly obeying Jim Duff, the mentor who had bid him leave his
native Port Houston 's canal bar, rodeo dancehall, and Holiday Inn music
scene, thence to sign with Columbia Records and tour with Kenny Rogers &
the First Edition. Although Duff had already sold off the publishing rights to
Rodney's demo tape, and vamoosed back to Texas, things turned out okay. Rodney stole
his demo back from the publisher's office, and started playing for tips at a
Nashville oasis, Bishop's Pub. Which was also frequented by other resourceful, restive
songwriters, including Texas expats Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.
This fecund scene is pungently preserved in the 1976 documentary, Heartworn
Highways. A remarkable "companion album" (with more music than made it onto
the screen) will be released on March 15: it includes "Bluebird Wine," which
Rodney says is the first of his songs that Guy ever approved.

 (The late great, feted and fated, standard-setting outcat
Townes was a harder sell.) Guy has denied wanting to be a taskmaster
or teacher of Rodney, who he's said taught him a thing or two Rodney.

 But Rodney seems
always to have felt the urge to both learn from and prove himself to some magical
figure. "Bluebird Wine" euphorically celebrates being discovered by a woman
who provides wine and creative inspiration.
Soon after writing "Blueberry Wine," he met Emmylou Harris, who had been
discovered and mentored by another late great, Gram Parsons (nickname all too appropriate). 

In Rodney, still
known to few in Nashville, she found her own private Gram, her secret stash of
soulful, song-filled, ceaseless striving.
Eventually, Rodney pushed himself out of what he's called "the Great School
of Emmylou," and spent several frustrating years as a solo artist (he did have
hits, but usually when other people covered his songs: the stash wasn't secret
any more.) In the early 80s, he found himself schooling (and being schooled
by) Johnny Cash's young daughter, Rosanne. He helped her have hits, and he
even, finally, had five number one hits off his own album, Diamonds And Dust. This
strange winning streak proved to be a fluke, although he tried to come up
with a winning formula (like he and Rosanne were experimenting with in her product).
They both became sick of the grind. They drove themselves and
each other to push beyond safe songwriting, and eventually they had to do that,
trying to make sense of their marriage's shipwreck.
In 2001, Rodney made an album with his own money, rather than feel compelled
to try and please a major label  one more time, with what he's called his "sharecropper mentality," a biz-reinforced bit of his citybilly heritage. He cannily shopped
it to a well-heeled, intelligent indie label, Sugar Hill. This album's title
was his old nickname, The Houston Kid, but it was really a mix of his own
early close calls, with some of the lives he saw to the end: in his neighborhood,
and his own likely (and immediate) future, if music hadn't provided some kind
of stability.

 (Not like the "stability" of his mercurial, dogged father, who shied

 away from Nashville, hewing to the aforementioned Houston  dive bar zones,

 at times with a very underage Rodney on drums

--for novelty appeal, the fortunate son speculates.)

 The Houston Kid was highly acclaimed and deservedly so. It was
masterful, with no sense of anxiously overselling good material, as he'd tended
to do previously. In 2003, he released Fate's Right Hand, in which he tries to
provide solace and sense to troubled friends, while struggling with the
paranoid compulsions of "The Man In Me." (Def. not Dylan's "la, la, la,
la"-inclusive song of the same name, and R.C.'s own Man feels closer to Hyde than one
inclined to "hide to keep from being seen," like Mr. D.'s
supposedly/redundantly is.)
2005's The Outsider is more overtly political, to put it mildly, but
certainly redeems the cliché aspect of "the personal is political." Viewpoints shift, and fall away, but the people in these
songs are connected , whether they want to be or not. The first track, "Say
You Love Me," is a raw-eyed ("up all night and the night before," and the
beat's still up), alternate-futures-riffing prequel to several songs to come.
Already, he's getting in bar brawls with bigots. Whereas in "Don't Get Me Started,"
he's already started, but keeps barely pulling back from the brink of his soapbox.
And the slightly creepy china doll imagery of that "Glasgow Girl" (to come) gets graphic here.
"Say you love me!" he barks, leading right into the "Give it to me" of "The
Obscenity Prayer," and keeping its greedy yuppie from seeming too 2-D,
even if his partay platform's not as enlightened as Rodney's (or yours or
mine, of course). "The Outsider" has many a quirky, riddle-me-this lyrical phrase,
which could be irritating, if they weren't seen and raised 'round ever
corner by the music, in a Princely way. "Beautiful Despair" is another peak: he
raises a glass, up a lattice scale, to his sense of sub-Dylanness, his minor yet faithful
muse. But , despite the consolations and vitamins of philosophy (Epictetus, and even or especially an Epicurean poptaste),there's plenty outcroppings and undertoads of not-so-beautiful lowercase
despair, frustration, headbutting, buttbutting limitations (his and everybody's),
overshadowed by the Situation. This really comes through in (after repeated
listenings to the whole album) in the chorus of "Ignorance Is The Enemy,"
despite the gratingly recited verses, which are more like Public Service
Announcements. The chorus is more like a sooty "Rose In Spanish Harlem," crossed with
Gram Parsons' "In My Time Of Darkness," although Rodney's not seconding GP's
call for vision and speed; he's got all he can handle.
Rodney's mellifluous Everlys to Beatles twang is as reliable as ever, which
helps make the Visitor to his reworking of "Shelter From The Storm" even more
startling (in the context of the album), than it is amidst the middleaged haze
of Triple A radio. "Shelter"'s words have always seemed to flirt, if not
dally, with grandiose self-pity, but suddenly here's Dylan's fantasy sorceress in
the eerie flesh: none other than Emmylou Harris, now trading verses with
Rodney. He sounds a bit spooked, understandably (she keeps changing keys on him,
yet they can still harmonize!) You can tell he couldn't stop singing if he
tried, and he doesn't. (P.S.: I'm told that the reissued version of the Heartworn
Highways DVD includes a song not on the CD: it's actually "Rachel," although
the mistitle, "A Young Girl's Hungry Eyes," is certainly appropriate, cos
although Rachel is "the woman behind her man," while Rodney is but "a child behind
the wire," when she gets him behind closed doors, it's like it says on the DVD.
You can also hear this on Gary Stewart's Out Of Hand/Your Place Or Mine
twofer CD, along with some other good early-Crowell covers: Gary adds a little
forced gasp to the end of each line of this un', but he's ably supported by Rodney
and yes Emmylou, and "Rachel" is hungry still.)

Umkay?

Aight, so one last list, done for a newspaper which didn't print it( or
anybody else's): this is written in my version of newspaperese, which some may
prefer to my usual blogifactions (which also means this is a lot shorter than
recent). Please support these worthy albums! Don Allred

One Last (05) List!

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2005 

1. BOB DYLAN: The Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home (The Soundtrack) (Columbia/Legacy) Twenty-eight tracks, all but two previously unissued. From 1959's unaffected warmth to 1966's brittle vibrancy, his vocals are as prodigiously agile as his songwriting; meanwhile, the playing moves from living room to garage to the highway to the stage, bringing his punky, psychedelic proclivities further into the spotlight, and over the moon, but never far from the blues (or rap). 2. JAMES CARTER, CYRUS CHESNUT, ALI JACKSON, REGINALD VEAL: Gold Sounds (Brown Brothers ) Saxologist James Carter, and his fellow mellow mad scientists of jazz, alchemize light from the guardedly festive tunes of alternative rock icons Pavement (sans sometimes cryptic, sidewalk graffiti lyrics). 3. JASON MORAN: Same Mothers (Blue Note) Unlike many young jazz pianists, Jason Moran is less influenced by the emphatic lyricism of McCoy Tyner than the mercurial speculations of Andrew Hill, who also co-composed some of the tracks on this album. Here, hellhound-chasin' Jason introduces his agile (and hip-hop savvy) trio to the acoustic and electric blues guitars of Marvin Sewell (previously and more sedately employed by Cassandra Wilson). 4. DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER: J'ai Deux Amours (Sovereign Artists) Jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater's Deux Amours are her birthplace, America, and her "healing place," France. Despite recent disputes over Iraq, she tempts both loves to get back together, over a sumptuous repast of French songs (mostly untranslated, but you'll read her lips). 5. SHELLY FAIRCHILD: Ride (Sony) Country newcomer Shelly Fairchild shows us her hope chest, which is full of soul, but some folks don't think she's enough of a lady. Mercy! 6. THE HOLD STEADY: Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss) Blame NAFTA, CAFTA, bad schools, and/or Classic Rock radio, but here's a concept album, maybe even a rock opera, about young lives lived in retro. Of course, all kids tend to think their problems are new, but on Separation Sunday they get to squawk about the same old dramas (and get me trotting after the pack-a-day narrator), in brilliantly grubby musical cartoons, drawn from the ink of The Who, early Bruce Springsteen, primetime Replacements, Lifter Puller(?), and others.

7. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Sony) Next to Shelly's, country debut of the year. Anyone who looks like that can't be getting *all* her well-utilized songwriting scenarios from her private detective parents' files, Ah feel sure. 8. SLUNT: Get A Load Of This (Repossession) Certain punks once ranted about the "female rule" of Thatcherized Britain. Wonder if they've since gotten a load of Slunt, who (like Sleater-Kinney) state the "female rule" of the best recent punk: Mother knows best, and Abby Gennett's got a lot of cunning stunts to prove it, and here she lets favorite son Pat Harrington play state of the art guitar, on a long (enough) leash. 9. PATRICIA VONNE: Guitars And Castanets (Bandalera) Despite the title, the flamenco bits are interludes between songs often best described as firecrackers tossed into a Southwestern quarry from a runaway orecart. Appropriately, Patricia is the lil sister of Robert Rodriguez, director of El Mariachi and Desperado. 10.SANSO EXTRO: Sentimentalist (Type) I'm tempted to say that "Sanso-Extro (AKA Melissa Agate) is the Madame Curie of laptop electronica." But Madame only discovered radium, while Xantro-Extro's eerie microscopic sounds behave more like some kind of musical lifeforms, fed by all kinds of instruments, acoustic as well as electronic.

20 Lbs of Headlights, Stickynote To His Chest

Don Allred's Pazz & Jop 2005 Ballot & Comments 

Albums: 

1. Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home (The Soundtrack) (Columbia/Legacy) 

2. Insect Trust: Hoboken Saturday Night (Collector's Choice) 

3. Jason Moran: Same Mother (Blue Note) 

4. James Carter, Cyrus Chesnut, Ali Jackson, Reginald Veal: Gold Sounds (Brown Brothers) 

5. Benny Lackner Trio: Not The Same (Nagel Heyer) 

6. Dee Dee Bridgewater: J'ai Deux Amours (Sovereign Artists) 

7. Shelly Fairchild: Ride (Sony) 

8. Slunt: Get A Load Of This (Repossession) 

9. Wide Right: Sleeping On The Couch (Widerightmusic) 

10. Sanso-Xtro: Sentimentalist (Type)

 Singles:

 1. Aaron Neville: "Louisiana 1927"(live version) (no label) 

2.Victoria: "Mister Let Me Go" (Shadoks) 

3. Dorothy: "Softness" (Crippled Dick Hot Wax) 

4. Mary J. Blige with U2: "One"(live version )(no label) 

5. Cobra Verde: "I Feel Love" 

6. Cobra Verde: "So Long Marianne" 

7. Billy Joe Shaver with Big & Rich: "Live Forever"(Compadre) 

8. Emmanuel Jal/Abdul: "Gua"(Riverboat) 

9. Blind Arvella Gray: "Arvella's Work Song"(Conjuroo) 

10. Fiery Furnaces: "Rehearsing My Choir" (Rough Trade) 

COMMENTS: NO DIRECTION HOME (THE SOUNDTRACK) suggests that Bob Dylan was always electric. The '59 track, "When I Got Troubles," includes a stop/start passage in the overall groove; already he's slipping a little rockabilly into his bluesy folkiness, a little cumulative mashup. (He already had what Frank Kogan called "the mind of a DJ", re LOVE AND THEFT). It's not a static groove, there's a sense of momentum, of a vehicle sweeping up things it finds along the road, things blowin' in the wind and rattling around the margins. "Rambler, Gambler" further highlights degrees of force and delicacy, detail and pattern: waves and cycles of elements rising and falling in the mix. This can be fluid, and mild or powerful (depending on the size of the wave, the surge of the urge). It can be, by the time of the next (only the third!) track, "Dink's Song," notes gouged from passing, and often painful, insights, impulses. Here, and in "I Was Young When I Left Home," is emotional roller derby, as the narrator sometimes has to deal with isolation, fear, guilt (he's way out/in here; lost, fleeing, drifting, stuck inside a mobile), contradictions that send him crashing into his limitations, and boucing, pulled back into his cycles, in his lot full of his stuff. (Ditto what happens to Wide Right's Leah Archibald, in her hot little apartment, with that damn couch she can't get somebody onto and somebody else off of; ditto the Fiery Furnaces' Grandma Olga, on the train of thought and manic munday transit, spinning yarns of seemingly stranded strands, sics, tics, non seqs, whirlwinds that sort into detail and pattern, stories within stories, memories in their clashy mesh and meshy clash. Like No Direction's Dylan and The Hold Steady's ramblin' urban hicks, runaway pilgrimettes, she's purposefully wandering, off to visit her family plot, its storied, dented inner surface she can't help but fill in with memory's riffing ritual. This process is served). "Masters Of War" shines a harsh, steady light, a backdrop as he calls into the shadows. "Hard Rain's" lighting gets even more theatrical, with the voice getting spiky already, jabbing and wired, seaching the shadows and portents of his profuse imagery, but posing too. "When The Ship Comes In" 's imagery is buggin', its wires raise rocks to stand proud, and everything in it is juiced with poison visions of vengeful victory. "Mr. Tambourine Man" indicates self-awareness of the previously over amped ampitheatre of his mynd. His lot, full of his stuff, while "meantime life outside goes on all around you."But where would we or he be, if, to some degree, he hadn't bought "Advertising signs they con you into thinking YOU'RE the One"? (And also he's got me thinking if Insect Trust created their uniquely, perculiarly satisfying HOBOKEN SATURDAY NIGHT, while destroying themselves as a group: busy being born *and* busy dying, rather than the choices Mr. D. decrees we must make. But then he's got me mixing in "though neither is to be what they claim," from NDH's Disc 2's vibrantly brittle "Desolation Row," speaking of insight gouging notes and ticks and moments). "It's Alright, Ma," source of previously mentioned decrees, isn't on here, but NO DIRECTION's narrative groove leads me through it, through insights and bouncebacks, flux and clues, glimpsed by "Chimes Of Freedom flashing," as the jingle jangle morning becomes more and more electric, and Baby Blue's reindeer armies roll down all roads to Mr. Jones' rolling stoned mirror, and vice versa. 

Disc 2 starts with the immaculately rowdy "Maggie's Farm" (hard to imagine why some, not all, at Newport found it so immaculately frightful).Almost too hip, "Desolation Row"(with guitars and hardassed attitude carving graffiti chronicles in the near hopelessly sere surface of the costly, protectively low Row) and some others don't quite have words and/or vocal nuance (yet) to match their music. And by "music," I mean to include the sheer crackling resonance of Dylan's stalwart to stoic voice, but "Visions of Johanna," in particular, lacks the master take's intimacy and shading: it seems too brash, yet Dyl's force pokes holes in his cool mask (he knows he needs 'em), letting more light, closer listening into the music's fever sheen. "Inside the museum, infinity goes up on trial," and he seems ready to judge, strutting with his unmellow fellows, brushing sparks from the exhibits, still under construction in his scrawled halls. Manchester '66's "Ballad Of A Thin Man" (only the last two tracks have previously been issued; legitimately, anyway)is as triumphantly derisive as the studio master take, but also already becoming as self-mocking as Before The Flood's '74 comeback tour performance is wrenchingly, wretchingly purgative. Here, he's persecutor and lost victim, O'Brien ("he was obviously quite mad") and Winston Smith, both occupants of Orwell's Room 101, and what a workout band the 101ers are. "Like A Rolling Stone" celebrates its Titantic infinity, electocuties parading an anthem no scarier than anyone born to sing it, and who isn't? "How does it feeeluhhl," comin' round the swaying, plugged in mountain again.

So: 2005.

supposed to be in bed right now but I can't sleep
supposed to have something profound to say about 2005 but I don't
it's like high school graduation, I was class president and was supposed to make some big welcoming funny speech but I punted and said "I just wanna sit with my class and graduate with all these wonderful people"
anyway I'm bad at wrapups and larger statements, I think 2005 was a fine year for music and all the trends have been written about so much that they're not interesting anymore anyway, plus I hated just about all of them, whatever they were
if any of my comments were any good you'll see them in the Voice

also, I didn't save my yearend P & J list, nor my comments
I know I had Superaquello's Bien Gorgeous at #2, probably also should have had their La Emergencia but only had one spot for that great band from Puerto Rico
Shakira's second album was #4, I think, and probably the Kahil El'Zabar at #3, that was a last-second change I'm really happy about
Mannie Fresh at #5, maybe, or maybe that was Missy Elliott, these were the two most anarchic hip-hop records of the year, I'm all about the unpredictable beats and lines now, too many straight lines will ruin yr day
also top ten: Brooke Valentine, Natalia y la Forquetina, Marty Stuart's gospel record, Curumin too.

runners-up this year were many, here they are: Cuizinier, the other Shakira, the other Superaquello, Stevie Wonder, A.R. Rahman's score for Bose, the Forgotten Hero, Tony Touch, Cuong Vu, Heloisa Fernandes, Ezequiel Pena, a bunch more, sorry, I'm exhausted.
also would have included Bersuit Vergabarat's Testosterona and Vladimir Vaclavek's Ingwe if I'd heard them in time, but sadly no

for real though my favorite album of the year was P.Funk All-Stars' How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?. nothing else that happened this year was huger than George Clinton busting out with one of the ten best records he ever made, and you KNOW I'm serious about that comment because I'm serious about my P.Funk. all them old dudes cold nailed it, everything from spacey doo-wop to...y'know what, I'll do this in another post, need more time and more of a brain

good night you wonderful people, all four of you or whatever

Country Ballot 2005

COUNTRY MUSIC CRITICS POLL BALLOT 2005
Don Allred
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005
1. Shelly Fairchild Ride (Sony)*
2. Freakwater: Thinking Of You (Thrill Jockey)**
3.. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Sony)
4. Codetalkers Featuring Col. Bruce Hampton:
Deluxe Edition (Pesky Pole)
5. The Waifs: A Brief History (Compass)
6. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
7. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
8. Jon Nicholson: A Lil Sump'm Sump'm (Warner Bros.) *
9. Nickel Creek: Why Must The Fire Die?(Sugar Hill)**
10. Big & Rich: Comin' To Your City (Warner Bros.)
TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005
1. Dixie Chicks with Robert Randolph: "I Hope"
(Sony/Monument/Open Wide)
2. Alan Jackson: "Talkin' Song Repair Blues" (Arista)
3. Miranda Lambert: "Kerosene" (Sony)
4. Billy Joe Shaver with Big & Rich: "Live Forever" (Compadre)
5. Cowboy Troy: "I Played Chicken With The Train" (Warner Bros.) **
6. Jo Dee Messina: "Delicious Surprise (I Believe It)" (Curb)
7. George Jones and Dolly Parton: "The Bluesman"
8. Brad Paisley: "Alcohol"(Arista)
9. Audioslave: "Doesn't Remind Me"(Interscope)
10. Hot Apple Pie: "Easy Does It" (MCA) **
TOP FIVE (actually just three)COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2005
1. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Shout Factory/Hacktone)
2. Blind Arvella Gray: The Singing Drifter (Conjuroo) *
3. Big Kenny: Live A Little (Hollywood) *
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:
1. George Jones
2. Gary Allan
3. David Allan Coe
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2005
1. Dolly Parton
2. Shelly Fairchild
3. Miranda Lambert

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2005

1. Dolly Parton
2. Campbell Brothers with Mavis Staples
3. Alvin Youngblood Hart

COUNRTY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2005

1. Cathy Irwin (Freakwater)
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Waifs

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2005:
1. Freakwater
2. Codetalkers feat. Col. Bruce Hampton
3. Dixie Chicks
COUNRTY MUSIC'S THREE BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS OF 2005
1. Robert Randolph
2. Steve Nathan
3. Stuart Duncan
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2005
1. Shelly Fairchild
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Hope Partlow (great crossover potential so far; hope Nashville notes she needs a new label)
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2005:
1. Dolly Parton
2. Shelly Fairchild
3. Gary Allan

Hon Mentions: Marty Stuart, Deana Carter, Dierks Bentley, Beth Nielsen
Chapman, Hot Apple Pie, Patricia Vonne, many others.

* see reviews of these , archived at http://MyVil.blogspot.com/

**discussed in some of my previous (relatively recent, for Mentalizm) posts on this site: See "Howdy, Ma'am" for Hot Apple Pie; "Louisville Lip" for Freakwater; "Gone With The Vroom" for Cowboy Troy," etc. David Allan Coe and the Codetalkers will get their own piece soon, but meanwhile see Codetalkers as one of the bonus tracks in these Comments:

Country comments so far (a few more tweaks recently):
I like the way Audioslave likes some stuff because it "Doesn't re, mind me,
of any, thing": we should let all associative piles, like autumn leaves, be gone
(rather than get real gone) some time. Although it does remind me of John
Contemporary Country Mellentemplate showing Pat Green and many others how to do it
y'all. Otherwise, blues rock guitar has become Bluespolitan Country, allowing me
to waltz right through the triumphant pile of ironies from which Brad Paisley
makes "Alcohol." Triumphantly, because this substance goes James Brown's "King
Heroin" one better: listing the good as well as bad thangs it will do to you.
Or that's the way I hear it, in my ol' white blues bliss. Of course, irony
will only get you so far, so I also like to raise that Paisley placebo one
better, by slipping through Hot Apple Pie's "Hillbillies." "Hey!
Hillbill-ies!" As in "Hey! Bo Diddley!" Has its own associative placebo, which locates my
recessive 'billy gene, so I can go whoopin' round the mountain with Bugs
Bunny and Dolly Parton. Beats the generic drugs, where I stop listening soon's I
recognize the pattern. "Country music station plays soft, but there's really
nothing to turn off." He didn't mean it like that; it's just my 'ssociation.

More shades of bluescountrypolitan: Frank Kogan has compared Keith Urban to Lindsay Buckingham, but I think Lindsay's a lot more obsesso. Keith has his concerns, but his presentation is more basic: the reassuring whitebread balancing a wailin' axe,though not enough of it, on most of the Keith tracks I've heard.(Which might be mainstream smoothie John Mayer's thought too, thus his own recently beefed up whitebread.). Keith's playing, when I can hear it, does suit me better than Harry Connick Jr.'s, Peter Cincotti's, or John Pizzarelli's (although John can be good when picking with dad Bucky), but not so well as Chet Baker's. (Baker sounded even better after dealer's goons tried to ruin his embouchure, literally bust his chops, but succeeded only in putting, or accentuating, a gentle simpleton's lisp in his croon. Dues paid.) Meanwhile, back in Nashville, another dead Chet's fingers might be getting itchy about now, to chicken-pick along with the jazzbluespolitan which has recently started popping like corn, if not quite Hot Buttered Soul, from my local "Smooth Jazz and Mellow Vocals" station. (What's going on?) Also, I guess Hot Apple Pie, and even the discreetly grooveriding Billy Currington, are on the streetier side of bluescountrypolitan., these days--and nights. (See previous post, "Howdy, Ma'am.")

Childish Things: James McMurtry's bent, scorched, barb-wire guitar, especially on "We Can't Make It Any More," isn't charred, done, reduced, like a truly crispy critter. It pulls the shrinking, reductively raging range of the lyrics (which don't include the *mixture* of America, the good and bad stuff tangled up) through the fire. And then their pulled-forward rage pushes the rest of the music past (or much further into) the expected display of countryoid boogiestentialism. (With a Reedy harmonic wrinkle or two.) I associate this grim lil pill's process with the way the bad, reduced/reductive American stuff can work with the good, for the better. Not that this happens very often, so when it does , it's Top Ten! (Especially for those of missing our Drive-By Truckers fix this year.)
The Waifs' A Brief History: bass, rubbing all up under the shivery: "You see
mee, all of the toiyiiime."(Of Oz they are.) So time to demand: "And I say, hey.
Hey! Throw me a line!" Waify, but not wispy.And despite the title (one of the
few sung by the good male guitarist, rather than the two good female
guitarists),not a reissue, but a live overview, a good intro for Americans. "A Brief History" is a hip hop generation band memoir, an updated "Creeque Alley."
(Remember that, Mama and Papa? "John and Mitchy, were getting' kinda itchy, to leave
folk music behind.")This is itchy enough to get around Australia and Memphis,
but also relaxed, enough flexible, slippery, juicy, husky, a little hoarse,
that tight Aussie jaw in there too, like old country music (without either's
expected nasality, though). The album's not brief, but the songs are succinct,
the picking too, over that aforementioned bass, and some drums, some harmonica,
like on the bluesy stomp of their (not Ozzy's) "Crazy Train." And some more
harp when they remind "Papa" that Granpa cried, but now he's "bone," so better
come see her 'fore you're bone too. Two girls, women really: not so very waify
in the feckless girly sense, though they like sounding young and oh wow,
despite the (good) Ani-ish newsflash of "Haircut". They got trouble too, on "The
River," but being a country girl in the city is not a calamity, nor is being a
waitress, but look out, city guys. Yet they must remain travellers, aye, and
might be found under a "Willow Tree, " expecting your return, despite the big
fight. As well they might, if I were you, ooh ooh. Does this (and the summons
to Papa) make them Princessy? "My head was heavy and my clothes was tore, I
never felt like a princess before" that "Sunflower Man" dropped his big sunflower
in the busking cup, and brought them into the sunshine of yon "Spotlight."
"I'll come home when I die," they promise, but also confess to a "Shiny Apple,"
"I feel so helpless standing here, watching you decay." It's alright Babes,
you "just need a little company."(I'll stop it now, cept to say Disc 2 is more
serious, with further outbreaks of busky hip hop.)Takes the Deana slot, cause
better dynamics overall, and more variety, while being waify enough,
oowee.(Also as folkie related as can please those who like the Beatley/Everlysish aspect
of Deana's better songs.) (She good, don't get me wrong, but her waifiness can be worked a little too consistently, like a morning-associated mist that clings to you all day long.)

As for La Womack's hallowed There's More Where That
Came From, there isn't that much more, beyond the title track, which I wrote
about LAST YEAR; oh Music Row, movin' kinda slow, and slower. Yes, I have
heard that most men live lives of quiet desperation, and I guess it's rubbed off
on women, but here the desperation get so faux retro (no sick strings, sure no
Outlaw daring not too have those; no daring, period), so carefully refined and
sealed over, it's hard to hear it as "anything but mined," as Professor
Chesney might almost put it.(Yet some of the songs are underexploited, so maybe
smart cookie will bite them right someday, after a decent interval, once this
album has become the kind of Classic nobody takes off the shelf
anymore.(Shouldn't take much longer.)

The Codetalkers: Bobby Lee Roberts' desperate characters aren't quiet, but they are carefully composed, and his dark humor is deadpan. And his bluegrass-related cadence, even or especially on rocktop electric guitar, flows so steady, he could lack impact, possibly. He could be taken for granted, and so could the rhythm section, despite their intensity, because they all fit together so well. But Col. Bruce's fuzzy sustain keeps nosing around, grazing in the steely ripples and tiny bubbles, and he rolls out Skip James' "I'm So Glad," like a cannonball coming downstairs, and his own patented holey yarns splatter the windshield, and he and Bobby get some sustained guitar searchlights, or anyway flashlights, to track "your Saturn 'round the bend."

PS: Gary Allan can even redeem Vertical Horizon's "Best I Ever Had": "It's not so b-a-a-ad," he's just being so brave that he's gotten a little green around the gills.. Multitracked Garys waft over the waves behind solitary Gary; he's his own Greek chorus, whoopee. (Sounds great, Gary, if that's any consolation. Of course it is, that's how we're keeping him going, thorugh yet another bright, bright, bright morning of recuperation.) Good (favorable, well-written) Edd S.Hurt review of Gary's album Tough All Over, in the Village Voice.