Shelter From The Storm

Songwriters are a funny bunch. Lord knows I know I lot of them. I can divide successful songwriters into three categories: 1. pure songwriters who don’t aspire to a “recording” and/or “performing” career, they’re happy “just” writing songs; 2. artists who have a viable recording/performing career and also write their own material; 3. songwriters who are not content with just writing the songs, they also want to be performers and make albums, but they never really make much progress along those lines. The third category is by far the largest. There seem to be very, very few songwriters who are happy just to write the songs (and hits) that others record. They do exist, though it seems they were far more plentiful back in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Those were the times when professional songwriters would write the songs and the labels and producers would find suitable artists to record the songs. It was a very honorable profession. There are still some songwriters like that around, but not many. It seems these days that everyone who writes songs wants to also perform and record. I think we can blame this “evolution” on two things: 1. Carole King, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka and others from the 60s who started out as professional songwriters, had big success, but then went on to have even bigger success performing and recording their own material; 2. Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and a dozen other songwriters from the 70s who wrote, performed and recorded their own songs and became superstars doing so. Hey, it’s certainly not for me to say who should aspire to more than simply writing songs. All I know is that I’ve seen a lot (and I mean a lot) of songwriters who would be a lot happier if they would simply stick to what they do best, which is write songs. But almost every single one of them wants to be a star. They get sucked into that shadow dream. The reality is that for every one musical artist that succeeds there are hundreds, if not thousands of others out there struggling to find what most sane people would consider even the modest success. The used record store bins are littered with their CDs.  And let me also say this, so I’m not misunderstood by my songwriting friends. I have countless albums that I love and treasure recorded by little or completely unknown songwriters. I’m very, very happy these albums were made even though they were not commercial successes. But for everyone of those there are a lot more albums of total drivel recorded by people who should never have been given the chance or opportunity to walk into a recording studio. I’m just saying I think the world could use a lot more pure songwriters. Those that I’ve known who are content to write songs and don’t give a hoot about making albums and playing concerts seem to be the happiest. There’s a lot to be said for knowing what you’re good at and sticking to that. And some of them even make a album now then just for the hell of it, but they have nothing invested in the success of said albums. And sometimes those are the best.

Craig Fuller/Eric Kaz was released in 1978 when the singer-songwriter “movement” was in full bloom. It seemed that anyone who had even the most minor success as a songwriter could get a record deal and many of them did. Many are best forgotten. But, some truly great artists also came to our attention (if not fortune and fame) this way. Karla Bonoff and Warren Zevon are shining examples. This was nothing new. Artists like Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell were able to make their own records after others had recorded their songs and championed them to record labels. It just seems like it got a little out of control in the late 70s as every label searched for that next big superstar singer-songwriter. It didn’t last long. Once the punks and new wavers hit the scene the singer-songwriters became to drop like flies.

Eric Kaz found considerable success as a songwriter with “Love Has No Pride” (co-written with Libby Titus) which has been recorded by everyone from Johnny Cash to Bonnie Raitt to Linda Rondstadt to dozens of others. He also wrote “Cry Like A Rainstorm” which Bonnie and Linda (among others) also recorded, “I’m Blowing Away” and “Mother Earth.” He was a member of The Blues Magoos and he made two solo albums for Atlantic (Eric Kaz in 1972 and Cul-De-Sac in 1974) which went absolutely nowhere. Craig Fuller was one of the original members of Pure Prairie League who had a huge hit with his song “Amie” on their terrific Bustin’ Out album in 1975. He left the group after that hit single and hooked up with Eric Kaz, Doug Yule and Steve Katz to form American Flyer. They made two albums for United Artists (American Flyer in 1976 and Spirit Of A Woman in 1977), both of which should have been much better than they actual were based on the talent of those involved. But Fuller and Kaz soldiered on to make a duet album together and with it they finally hit pay dirt. Well, maybe not in terms of commercial success as I don’t think this album sold much at all. But in artistic terms this album is, to me at least, the highlight of their respective careers. If I had to pick one single out of print album that I could magically have appear on CD this might be the one. 

Produced by Val Garay (who produced Kim Carnes’ huge Mistaken Identity album with “Bette Davis Eyes” a few years later – to name just one of his many successes) the album is a singer-songwriter tour-de-force. Now, I’ll be clear here. If you don’t care for singer-songwriters you are probably not going to like this album. The production is something that might be called “soft rock” or “adult contemporary.” There is a lot of orchestration and strings. The vocals are smooth, the musicianship even smoother. There’s no “grit” here. Most of the songs are in the classic unrequited or lost love vein. The lyrics are introspective and pensive. But, if you like this kind of stuff, this is the real thing. I personally happen to love it. The songwriting is divided between the two with Kaz getting the nod: Fuller has two songs, Kaz has five and they wrote two together. Lead vocals are just the opposite, Fuller sings seven of the songs and Kaz two. While they do an excellent version of Kaz’s “Cry Like A Rainstorm” the rest of the songs are new and some of the best either of them has ever written. Songs like “Feel That Way Again,” “Let The Fire Burn All Night” and “Restless Sea” are, to me, perfect songs. Both Fuller and Kaz have an excellent way with a melody and almost all of these songs keep me singing along at full force whenever I play the album.

Unfortunately, this album has never been issued on CD anywhere in the world. Probably won’t ever be. It’s never gotten a lot of attention or respect. allmusic.com is an unbelievable resource for music on the web, but even they don’t have a review or track listing for this album, which is hard to believe. I have, of course, ripped my treasured vinyl copy to CDR. But, there are fans out there. A good friend of mine discovered that I had this on CDR and asked for a copy saying it was also one of his all-time favorite albums. The folks at XM’s The Loft regularly play several tracks. It’s just one more of those “lost” masterpieces. There are a lot of them out there.

Other Listens on July 5th:
Fire In The Wind by John Stewart
Boys In The Trees by Carly Simon
New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum (bootleg) by Bob Dylan And The Rolling Thunder Review 
Boston Music Hall (bootleg) by Bob Dylan And The Rolling Thunder Review 
Jefferson Airplane Takes Off by Jefferson Airplane 
Misfit Scarecrow by Sammy Walker 

I have a friend who won’t listen to Jimmy Buffett because his ex-wife used to listen to him all the time. It’s funny how artists can impact our lives in so many ways, some quite subtle, some very direct. This is probably the only album that ever played an instrumental part in my moving to a new town. In 1975 I was living in Hawthorne, California and working for the Wherehouse record chain. I was listening to as much music as I could buy, mostly stuff like Elliott Murphy, Bruce Springsteen, The Flying Burrito Bros, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Jerry Jeff Walker, Little Feat, John Stewart and lots more. I also listened a lot of a guy on a local FM radio station (KMET), Jimmy Rabbitt. He was one of the first DJs I ever heard play country-rock and just plain country on a traditional rock oriented FM station. Some friends of mine turned me on to Jimmy Buffett’s ABC Records debut release, A White Sportscoat And A Pink Crustacean. It was actually Buffett’s third album. He’d made two albums for the small Barnaby Records label: Down To Earth (1970) and High Cumberland Jubilee (1971), both of which sank without a trace. He signed with ABC/Dunhill and in 1973 released A White Sportscoat And A Pink Crustacean. It wasn’t any more commercially successful than the first two, but it was a giant step forward for Buffett in terms of songwriting and presentation. One of Buffett’s true strengths is his ability to tell a great story. Often times they can be quite comical, but on occasion they can quite insightful and profound. This album contained a few from both camps. And it was here that his Key West, beach bum, bar hopping, good timing, Caribbean sailing personality became to really take shape on vinyl. It’s a fine, fine record with some great songs. I immediately discovered that Buffett had two more albums, both released in 1974, Living And Dying In 3/4 Time and A1A. I searched them both out. Living And Dying in 3/4 Time was another strong effort and it even contained a small hit, “Come Monday.” But it was A1A that really caught my attention. 

The album kicks off with a lively version of Alex Harvey’s “Makin’ Music For Money.” I guess it’s not really for me to say, but I’ve always found it hard to take this song seriously coming from Jimmy Buffett. The man’s a marketing genius. These days he overseas a virtual empire of restaurants, minor league baseball teams, stores, casinos, books and more. It’s said he earns over $100 million per year. The guy has always been about making music for money. Hey, I don’t hold it against him. More power to him, it’s just that this song doesn’t ring true.  One of the highlights of the album is his version of John Sebastions “Stories We Could Tell,” a beautiful ode to friends and traveling. I’m pretty partial to Sebastion’s own version of this song (found on his great, criminally underrated album Tarzana Kid), but Buffett does a very credible version here. There are many fine songs to be found on this record, but the real center and soul of the album are two songs on side two: “A Pirate Looks At Forty” and “Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season.” “A Pirate Looks At Forty” is easily one of the best songs Buffett has ever written, maybe even the best. It’s also the kind of song he has not written, unfortunately, in a very long time since. A story song about an aging, directionless, aimless modern day “pirate,” it’s a minor masterpiece that perfectly captures the melancholy and borderline despair of a man completely out of step with the times in which he finds himself. “Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season” is a more personal, as Buffett takes account of his life. Other highlights include the whimsical “Nautical Wheelers,” the warm, contented “Tin Cup Chalice” and the tourist loathing “Migration.” As far as I’m concerned this was the last really great album Jimmy Buffett made. He certainly found much greater success with future albums such as Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes (with it’s big hit “Margaritaville”) but he never made another album as uniformly excellent as this from beginning to end. 

All three of Buffett’s albums painted a very enticing picture of the Florida beaches and especially Key West. I’d grown up in the Southern California area, loved to swim and always wanted to live closer to the beach. Key West seemed like the place for me. I packed up a suitcase, tied a sleeping bag to it and headed across the country, hitchhiking through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before heading north. It was, of course, much faster to go straight through the deep south, but this was 1975 afterall and “easy rider” stories were rampant. I decided it was well worth the extra time and miles to bypass the deep south and scoot a little further north, going through Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina before heading down the East Coast into Florida. Well, it almost worked. I got thrown in jail in Conway, Arkansas along with a couple and their small child who had picked me up. What for? Who the hell knows. They didn’t like the looks of us. Luckily they didn’t keep us too long, just long enough to scare the hell out of me. I eventually did make it to Key West without much more trouble. I think it took just over two weeks total for the trip. I rented a room in a boarding house called The Q Rooms for $12.50 per week. Yep, $12.50 per week. It was a tiny room. There was space for a single bed and not much more. I got a job in the one record store on the island. I tried so hard to convince myself that, as Buffett said, “I had finally found me a home.” But, it seems I still had a lot of traveling left in my blood and I only ended up staying there for about six months before I was back on the road again, this time heading for New York. Six months was a much longer period of time in those days than it is today. And believe me, Key West was a much different place in those days as well. I wasn’t really there long enough to miss it, but I still miss the idea of “finding a home” there.

Other Listens on July 1st:
Tom Thumb The Dreamer by Michael Dinner
The Great Pretender by Michael Dinner
Izitso by Cat Stevens
Enough Rope by Chris Knight
Jesus Of Cool by Nick Lowe 
Moments by Boz Scaggs 
Desire Outtakes (bootleg) by Bob Dylan 

The subject of bootlegs is always a touchy one. Some people have a strong opinion one way or another. Many average music listeners don’t really have much of an idea of what they are all about. Those that search out and collect bootlegs have their own feelings about the “morality” of the practice. Bootlegs can generally be broken down into two categories: live and studio. Live bootlegs can be broken down into a few more categories: audience recordings, soundboard recordings and radio or TV broadcasts. Audience recordings are made when someone sneaks a tape recorder (or digital recorder) into a concert and records the show from the audience. Quality on these can vary widely from truly outstanding to unlistenable. Soundboard recordings are made on the soundboard at the concert by the performer’s crew and are usually very, very good quality. Generally someone “leaks” these types of recordings to the fan base (or in some cases it’s possible they have been stolen). Radio or TV broadcasts are taped via the radio or TV when a show is broadcast live (or at a later date) and are usually excellent quality. Studio recordings generally consist of alternate versions or outtakes that someone has, once again, leaked to the fan base (or, again, they may have been stolen). Many artists these days are quite willing to allow fans to exchange live recordings as long as money is not involved. Some even encourage the practice. The Grateful Dead are probably the most well known band to do so, usually setting up a special place in front of the stage where tapers could record the show from. Studio recordings are a completely different matter. It’s harder to justify the trading and exchange of studio recordings since the artist has not usually given any permission to do so. I collect them all. I don’t try to make any “justification” for my “habit.” I’m a junkie, pure and simple. The one great thing that has happened with the advent of the internet, bit-torrent and digital trading is that most of the profit has gone out of the bootleg industry. True fans will never sell bootleg material. It is traded openly and freely. There is also a case to be made for “historical” purposes, though that’s a pretty lengthy discussion which I think I’ll save for later. But, in short, it’s the fans who have often recorded and archived a lot of this material that may well be considered priceless hundreds of years from now and looked on in a much different light. 

In the early 60s, long before he was well known, around the time he recorded his first album, Bob Dylan obtained a publishing contract with M. Witmark & Sons. Between 1962 and 1964 he recorded at least 40 (that we know of) “publishing demos” for the company. Dylan would come into the offices and sit before a tape recorder, just himself, his guitar (sometimes a piano) and occasionally a harmonica. These performances were simply meant to serve as an audible source which the publisher could use to transcribe the songs’ music and lyrics for legal purposes. Sometime in the 60s a very rare, one-sided 9 track LP was also pressed up to distribute to other artists who might have been interested in recording some of the songs. A copy of this album sold on eBay a few years ago for $737 (see image on the left). Many of these songs were never officially recorded by Dylan. Some were indeed recorded by other artists. There are however, demos of some of his best known early songs, including “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” and “Girl From The North Country.” Some of the unrecorded songs are excellent and some are merely just good. It’s easy to see why some of them were never recorded by Dylan or anyone else. The fact that Dylan was not “performing” these songs for an audience, or recording them for an album, makes them very unique. Dylan, for the most part, is very relaxed, just running through the songs. This has both good and bad consequences. On the one hand we get very off the cuff, spontaneous performances. There are also a few instances of Dylan playing songs on piano that he usually performed on guitar: a great version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” for instance. On the other hand Dylan’s not really trying very hard all the time and a few of the versions are fairly uninspired. In fact, at one point, while singing “Let Me Die In My Footsteps” he stops and says, “It’s a drag, I sang it so many times.” Other times he sings a portion of the song so the company can get the basis of the verse and chorus and then says, “I’ll write down the other verses for you later.” Still, for any Dylan fan these tracks are priceless. Lots of songs you will never hear anywhere else. Historically they are quite significant and very important.

These demos have been collected in at least three well known bootlegs: The Witmark Years, Through A Bullet Of Light and The Witmark Demos. All three contain basically the same material. This version, The Witmark Years, is generally considered to be the best quality and it also arranges the recordings in chronological order.

Quality is very good to excellent throughout this collection, though it does vary a bit from session to session and of course, it is not as good as officially released material. Three of the songs on this double CD have been released officially on Dylan’s The Bootleg Series: Volumes 1-3: “Walkin’ Down The Line,” “When The Ship Comes In” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Here’s hoping Dylan and Sony see fit to release more of them, perhaps an entire double CD of all the tracks. That’s the best way to combat bootlegging: release the material officially. 

Other Listens on June 29th:
Nolita by Keren Ann
Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 by Various Artists
Abandoned Luncheonette by Daryl Hall & John Oates
After Bathing At Baxters by Jefferson Airplane 
Hartford 1965 (bootleg) by Bob Dylan 

I first moved to Austin in 1976. I moved away for two years, but then came back in 1982. I went to a lot of concerts and shows in those days. I hardly ever go to any these days. There is a great venue in Austin, The Paramount Theatre, and it may be my favorite place in the entire world to see a concert. I saw tons of acts there in the late 70s and throughout the 80s and even into the 90s. But I also went to a lot of clubs to see smaller artists and bands. One of my all-time favorites was Emma Jo’s on North Lamar. A tiny little club, it catered mostly to singer-songwriters and acoustic artists: people like Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, Butch Hancock, etc. But there was at least one artist who would always play with a band and just rock the joint from top to bottom: Tom Pacheco. Tom was from the New York area, he’d lived in Woodstock for a long time. I have no idea how he ended up in Austin, but he was living there for about a year or two and he would play regularly at places like Emma Jo’s and Hut’s. I tried to catch every single performance and I managed to see him quite a few times. I heard him to some fantastic songs that still don’t seem to have appeared on any of his albums since then. And his band was just stellar. Tom is a songwriter first and foremost, but with the right band he can put on one hell of a show.

I was familiar with Tom through his two RCA albums: Swallowed Up In The Great American Heartland and The Outsider, both released in 1976. He’s a very unique, distinctive songwriter. Story telling is his forte. His story songs can veer off into wild territory, UFOs and alien visitations, beer killing bacteria, energy producing crystals, the life of a tree, JFK’s assasin, etc. but he always manages to pull it off (well, most of the time).  He also has a very strong political vein and comparisons to Woody Guthrie would not be out of line. A true romantic, he’s written some beautiful love songs and has a great way of exploring relationships from all points of view. He moved to Austin in 1981 or 1982, I don’t know for sure and put together a terrific band called The Hellhounds.  I think he may have had a “deal” with a production company, Third Coast Productions, and I also think he may have recorded some tracks, but nothing from this time was ever released. He moved back to New York in 1983, then on to Nashville and Dublin. His time in Austin was well spent, and based on the songs I heard him do during that time, I think it may have been one of his most creative and prolific songwriting periods. A friend of mine recorded several of the shows at Emma Jo’s and I still have copies of those tapes. The quality is pretty good for an audience recording, but it’s certainly not “commercial” quality. Still, I treasure those tapes, not only because they contain some terrific songs and performances but also because they bring back a lot of great memories.

Eagle In The Rain, released in 1989, was Tom’s third album. There was a gap of 13 years between The Outsider and Eagle In The Rain. Tom has since made up for that gap releasing quite a few albums in the 90s and 2000’s. This may be my favorite of all his albums. Overall, I think it’s the most balanced and cohesive. Like I say, Tom is a terrific writer, but he does have a tendency to get a bit “overemotional,” even “schmaltzy” from time to time. He writes a lot of songs it seems and not all of them are really up to par with his best. He’s the kind of songwriter that could really benefit from a great editor. On this collection of 11 songs he manages to keep those issues at bay. The album opens with one of his best songs ever, “Robert And Ramona,” the story of two doomed outcast lovers. “Midnight At The Hot Club,” “Donna Marie,” “She Always Thought He’d Come Back,” “Jesus In A Leather Jacket” and “The Last Blue Whale In The Ocean” are perfect examples of his fine story telling abilities. “Made In America” picks up where “Swallowed Up In The Great American Heartland” left off 13 years earlier. “All Because Of You” and “All I Can Look At Is You” find Tom working familiar romantic territory with his heart (as always) squarely on his sleeve. “You Will Not Be Forgotten” and “Just A Little Bullet” (which closes the album) touch on his political leanings. It’s a damn fine album from beginning to end. Produced by well known Irish performer Arty McGlynn, the album was recorded in Ireland and features Irish musicians, who bring just the right sound to these songs.

Like I say, Tom’s made quite a few more albums since this one. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty hard to find. He seems to record for small, out of the way labels and a lot of the albums don’t stay in print very long. I’ve tried to keep up with them all, but most of them have only been released in Europe and when you can find them they are quite pricey. Still, I think I have the majority of them. A few recent ones have slipped by me, but hopefully I’ll be able to find those one of these days at a reasonable price. Tom Pacheco is a true songwriting treasure and I sure hope he continues to keep new songs and albums coming for us to listen to.

Other Listens on June 28th:
Enough Rope by Chris Knight
Forgive by Rebecca Lynn Howard
11/12/13 Live In Melbourne by Kieran Kane & Kevin Welch
Float Away With The Friday Night Gods by Marah
Own & Own by Butch Hancock
Family Tradition by Hank Williams, Jr. 

The first job I got working in the “music” business was at Wherehouse Records in Gardenia, California. I was living in Hawthorne just a few miles away. I think at that time Wherehouse was the biggest record store chain in California. I don’t know maybe Tower was bigger, but I don’t think so. Wherehouse certainly had more stores. The job I got was working at the warehouse for Wherehouse. They had a big central warehouse in Gardenia. All the LPs, cassettes and 8-Tracks were shipped in to the the warehouse and then sent out to the individual stores. Someone I ended up working in the “returns” room. It was a fairly large corner of the warehouse, closed off into its own “room” constructed from 2×4s and chicken wire. All the returns (defects, overstock and otherwise) would be shipped from the individual stores to the warehouse and end up in giant stacks of boxes in the returns room. My job was to sort through all the albums, group them together by label on shelves and then write up “return authorization” forms to ship them back to the labels. Many people don’t know that in the record business everything is 100% returnable to the label, for any reason whatsoever. Stores can buy anything they want, as much as they want, and if it doesn’t sell they just send it back to the label for credit. I don’t think most retail businesses work that way. I think in most retail situations if you buy something and can’t sell it you just keep marketing it down until it does sell. But not the record business. You just send it back. I actually really liked this job. It gave me an incredible education in music and record albums. I’d see so many things come through that room. Things I’d never seen before. Some pretty rare things too. Well, rare nowadays at least. I really learned a lot about labels, artists, albums, etc. working there.

I had a couple of friends who I met at Wherehouse who lived a few blocks over from me. I used to go over to their house fairly frequently and listen to and talk about music. Rolf and Jim. Jim was the old-timer. He didn’t work at the warehouse (where Rolf worked with me) but at one of the retail stores. He’d been working at Wherehouse for awhile. He was a bit older than me and I looked up to him. I was always interested in what he was listening to. I remember one night he came in from a show at the Troubador where he’d seen this band, I’d never heard of before, Little Feat. Man, he just raved about the show and the band. Now this was 1974, so Little Feat had been around a little while, but they hadn’t really broken through yet. I think their fourth album, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, had just been released. I remember he also liked The Heart Of Saturday Night by Tom Waits. But what I remember most was that he considered it a “morning” album. He used to say he would only play it in the morning. Being young and impressionable I found that kind of cool. 

I first became aware of Tom Waits when I bought the Eagles’ debut album. One of my favorite songs on the album was their cover of Tom’s song “Ol’ 55.” There’s a great story that Don Henley tells about their version. He says Tom didn’t really like it, he didn’t like the way they did the song. But, says Henley, he liked it a lot more when the royalty checks started arriving. Tom’s original version of “Ol ‘55″ was on his debut album, Closing Time. An album I dearly love. For those most familiar with Tom’s later material Closing Time might be a real shock. It’s a very folkie, singer-songwriter affair filtered through a Jack Kerouac novel. What a bunch of great songs. His second album, The Heart Of Saturday Night, was released in 1974. It contained more of the great songwriting that graced his first album, but the production was definitely something new. Producer Bones Howe brought a much tougher, street wise sound to the songs. The jazz/beat influence is much stronger as well. It’s an early preview of the direction Waits would take his music in later years. “Please Call Me Baby,” “Drunk On The Moon” and “New Coat Of Paint” are among my songs on the album, but the standout track here is the title track, “(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night.” It’s “companion” piece, “The Ghosts Of Saturday Night” is a real Kerouac/Ginsberg influenced track with Waits reciting poetry to a jazz background. I had just discovered John Stewart around this same time and I was quite surprised to hear him play “Shiver Me Timbers” during a concert at UCLA. I remember he praised Waits as a great new, young songwriter.

Funny thing about Tom Waits. I wasn’t able to stay with him as he and his music grew and changed. The first two albums are two of my all-time favorite albums. His next album was the live Nighthawks At The Diner, and I’m quite fond of that one as well. But then came Small Change, Foreign Affair, Blue Valentine and Heartattack And Vine. I bought all of these albums, but none of them really captured my ear the way the first two had. And then in the early 80s he really started to change. I read great reviews of albums like Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. I bought them, but they never connected with me. Now I know full well that these years are considered by most Waits’ fans to be his prime years. Seems that I fell off the wagon exactly when the majority of fans were getting on. I haven’t bought or listened to a new Tom Waits album in a very long time. But I come back to those first two on a very regular basis and they still do it for me every time.

Generally speaking I don’t like to write about albums made by people who I consider to be friends. There are many reasons for this, some of which should be obvious. Artists, by their very nature, are usually quite sensitive about their creations. It’s only natural. I don’t consider myself an “artist.” But, I am a graphic designer, I design and build websites, multimedia programs and other things that might be considered “art” in some ways. I know what it’s like to spend a lot of time and effort to create something. I know how I work over and over to get things to be what I consider just right. I know how I keep coming back to something trying to make it better. I know how good it feels when I get it to the point where I’m really proud of it. And I know how it feels when someone else then looks at it and starts tearing it apart, criticizing it, pointing out what they see as imperfections and problems. So, I can imagine how a musical artist might feel when they pour so much into writing, performing, mixing, mastering and perfecting an album, only to have listeners pick it apart.

On the other hand, that’s the nature of making art. Art is a very personal, selective experience and each of us interpret, absorb and judge it according to a million different influences. If you can’t handle criticism you should not be making art. My friend Grant (a writer and critic by profession) considers it part of his job to help weed out the ones who can’t handle criticism. There are a lot of people out there making just plain bad music and if they can’t handle having that pointed out to them they should be doing something else. As I’m sure you can tell if you’ve read any other of my postings, I’ve got no problem criticizing music. I just don’t like to criticize the music of my friends. At least not in public. One of the things I’ve learned spending time with and around musical artists is that they almost always consider their newest album to be the best one they’ve ever made. Which when you stop to think about it is just plain ridiculous. Every artist is going to have ups and downs, ebbs and flows. But I’ve never heard a single one say, “Yeah, my new album’s pretty good, but it’s not as good as the one I made six years ago.” Of course, whether they’ll admit it or not, as time passes I’m sure most artists are able to put their catalog in perspective and recognize the albums that really are better than others. But not when it’s new. And it’s a sad reality (that very, very few are ever able to admit), that most artists make most of their best albums during the first ten years or so of their career. Certainly there are exceptions, but they are rare. I dare anyone to try and argue that the vast majority of Neil Young’s best albums were not made in the 70s. That Bruce Springsteen has made any albums near as good as his first seven. The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell. Etc., etc., the list is almost endless. Artists often ask you to tell them what you “really think” of an album. But I don’t think many (if any) of them really mean that. Well, they mean it if you like the album. They don’t mean it if you don’t.

However, all that said, I’m willing to make a few exceptions with my rule of not writing about friends from time to time in this blog. This album is certainly an exception I am more than willing to make. However, this album presents yet another difficulty. In addition to considering Eric Taylor a dear friend I also worked with him. When I was doing A&R for Koch Records I signed him to the label and we released this album. Later I signed him to another label I was working at, Eminent Records, and we released his next album, Scuffletown. So, I am obviously hopelessly biased when it comes to Eric Taylor and this album. Whatever. It doesn’t change what I think of this music, how it affects me and the part it’s played in my life.

Eric’s music is usually fairly sparse. Often times it’s just Eric on guitar with some piano or organ, a bass and maybe some light percussion. A violin or horn might pop up from time to time, but those instances are rare. There’s sometimes someone like Denise France or Susan Lindfors on backing vocals. Eric is a genius at weaving a mood and a spell out of a minimum amount of instrumentation. He’s one of those songwriters where the songs themselves are so damn good, so spellbinding, he doesn’t need a big full blown production. Eric is also one of those rare songwriters that is able to write both exceptional lyrics and melodies. Eric produced Resurrect himself and he does a brilliant, and I do mean brilliant job. The musical setting he places each song in is simply flawless. Every single song on this album is a small treasure. Personally, my favorite, by far, is “Comanche.” It’s a slow, seductively simple (or so it appears at first) song about the affect one person can make in another’s life. But every line is pure poetry (even the one where he says “I think that poetry and jazz are lies”). And I love how the chorus ends musically unresolved. Just like life and love. “Two Fires” and “Texas, Texas” are also two of the finest songs Eric has ever written. I could say something about each and every other song on the album, but let me just reiterate what I said before: they’re all small treasures.

Eric released his first album, Shameless Love, in 1981 on Featherbed Records. I could be wrong, but I believe it was the only album issued on that label. I somehow acquired the album at the time, but it was not one I ever listened to. I know it might seem strange, but I’ve got way more albums than I can ever listen to. Many things sit on the shelves and then one day finally get their due listen. I imagine that when I die there will be a lot of albums that never got their chance. No way around that, there’s just way too much music out there. I didn’t hear of or about Eric again until 1995. He made a self-titled album for an Austin based label, Watermelon Records. Now, I’ll be honest here. I was running a small Austin based label myself at the time, Dejadisc, and while the owners of Watermelon were friends of mine, they were also competitors. So, listening to their releases wasn’t always my biggest priority. I was, however, interested in the Eric Taylor album. It contained some truly fantastic songs, especially “Hemingway’s Shotgun” one of my all time favorite songs by anyone. The production by Mark Hallman, a well known Austin producer was very good. But, I found it to be just a little too “smooth.” Eric, his songs, and his music have a very ragged edge and I felt that was being toned down by the production, maybe in hopes of appealing to radio and other mass audiences. That’s just one more thing I love about Resurrect, the production. It suits Eric’s songs and music much better. Exquisitely simple. Production can often be about what you don’t use as much as it is about what you do use. It takes a real talent to know what to “leave in and what to leave out.”

Eric made Scuffletown for Eminent Records in 2001. It was a fine follow up to Resurrect and contains some more terrific songs. He’s since released two more fine, fine albums on his own label, The Great Divide (2005) and Hollywood Pocketknife (2007).

Eric Taylor is not famous. He’s never been widely recognized for the talent he is. Many artists are not. My record collection is full of them. The fact that he influenced so many young Texas songwriters in the 70s and 80s is almost forgotten (except of course by those songwriters). The fact that some of them (Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett especially) have recorded his songs and tried to spread the word about him to a larger audience is admirable. But, in the end, none of that really means much to me (though I’m sure it does to him). To me he’s just a guy I know (who can be downright sweet or a complete jerk) who writes and sings some of the best songs I’ve ever heard. I don’t see or talk to Eric much these days. That’s more my fault than it is his. I’m very bad at keeping in touch with people. I tend to live in my own little world doing my own little things and I don’t make the effort to reach out to people who are important to me as much as I should. At my age I’ve come to accept that as just part of who I am. But it’s such a great thing to know I can always throw on an Eric Taylor CD and it’s like he’s right here in the room with me.

Other Listens on June 25th:
Roger The Engineer by The Yardbirds
Firefall by Firefall
The Otis Redding Dictionary Of Soul: Complete And Unbelievable by Otis Redding
A Pocketful Of Rain by Michael Fracasso
Live Blow Your Face Out by The J. Geils Band 

When I was younger I used to move around quite a bit. I left home for college when I was 16. Just before my 18th birthday I dropped out and took off for Europe. Between the time I left home and when I bought my first house in San Marcos, Texas about fifteen years later I lived in places like Los Angeles, CA, Key West, FL, Syracuse, NY, Austin, TX, Houston, TX, Lancaster, CA, Cupertino, CA, Eugene, OR and lots of places inbetween. Some for only a few weeks or months at a time. I hitchiked back and forth across the US at least five or six times during those years, usually from coast to coast. I once hitchhiked non-stop from New Haven, CT to Los Angeles in four and a half days with only $2.00 in my pocket (I still had 20¢ left when I got back home). I once figured out I had lived in over sixty different houses and/or apartments over a ten year period.

“Have you ever been lonely in the middle of the night
Even though the one you love got her arms around you so tight
And a far-off freight train makes a hollow sound
And the mockingbird singing a sweet sad song as your feet hit the ground

“I gotta move, that’s all I know
I gotta move, gotta hear the west wind blow
I gotta move, but I’m running out of somewhere to go
So I just move…”

When I heard those opening lines from “Gotta Move” on Tom Jans‘ The Eyes Of An Only Child album I was completely hooked. It’s still one of the saddest, sweetest songs I’ve ever heard. I’ve never come across a song that so eloquently captures the “sweet sorrow” contradiction of moving and traveling. I had heard Tom Jans before. I first became aware of him when I saw him open for Cat Stevens at the Greek Theatre (Los Angeles, CA) in November 1971 with his singing partner Mimi Farina (Joan Baez’s younger sister). Jans and Farina put out a wonderful album in 1971 titled Take Heart. Tom wrote the classic song “Loving Arms” that’s been covered by everyone from Elvis Presley to Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge to Petula Clark to Dobie Gray to Olivia Newton-John to the Dixie Chicks. He released a stellar self-titled solo album on A&M in 1974. The Eyes Of An Only Child appeared a year later. This collection of ten songs was the high point of his career and it remains a real treasure in my LP collection. Every song is a gem, but the real standouts are “Gotta Move” (co-written with Lowell George), “Once Before I Die,” “The Lonesome Way Back When” and the title track. “Out Of Hand” was a smash country hit for Gary Stewart in 1975. Lowell George is listed as the “Executive Producer” and musicians include Bill Payne and Sam Clayton (also from Little Feat), Jesse Ed Davis, Fred Tackett, David Lindley, Jeff Porcaro, Jim Keltner and Mike Utley. They just don’t get any better than that and the playing throughout this album is just faultless. Valerie Carter and Herb Pedersen are along for background vocals.

Jans made one more album for Columbia, Dark Blonde (released in 1976). While it contained some terrific songs, it didn’t quite measure up to its predecessor, though it was certainly close. After that he dropped out of site. A new album, Champion, was released in a very limited edition on a Japanese label in 1982. I’ve never been able to find a copy (and believe me I’ve tried). He was in a very serious motorcycle accident in 1983 and then died in 1984, it’s said from a drug overdose (but don’t they always say that when they don’t know how a musician dies?). I was really saddened when I heard of his death. He was such a great, unique songwriter. He had the ability to write such personal, emotional, passionate songs without ever being sentimental or sappy. Not too many songwriters can do that. Joni Mitchell is another that comes to mind.

“Wondered in my heart of hearts if I’d been here before
Trembled when the winter wind would blow against my door
Been so far at sea I could not find the shore
Got down on my knees and prayed I would see more
With these eyes of an only child”

Tom Waits wrote a song, “Whistle Down The Wind,” for Tom Jans and it’s included on his 1992 album Bone Machine. Unfortunately, none of Tom’s albums have ever been released on CD in the US. I, of course, have ripped all four of them from vinyl to CDR, but it sure would be nice to get these on real CDs. The Eyes Of An Only Child and Dark Blonde were released in Japan in 2007, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to shell out the $35+ for each one. Take Heart and Tom Jans have never been released on CD anywhere in the world that I know of. It’s a crying shame. All of these albums are well worth searching out on vinyl if you can find them. Tom Jans remains one of the great “lost” songwriters of a generation. Today very few seem to know of him, but those that are familiar with his work hold his songs and music very dear.

Other Listens on June 24th:
Midnight On The Water by David Bromberg
New Skin For The Old Ceremony by Leonard Cohen
Book Of Dreams by The Steve Miller Band
Beautiful Loser by Bob Seger
Garcia by Jerry Garcia
Heart Food by Judee Sill 
Matthew & Son by Cat Stevens 

I try to go to France at least once a year. If there are such things as “past lives” I think I must have lived in France during one of them. I just can’t explain why I feel so at home there, so connected, but I do. It’s like being home. I first went to France when I was 18. I had dropped out of my second year of college, took what was left of my student load and bought a plane ticket to London. I think I had about $150 when I landed. I spent a couple of weeks hitchhiking around England and then headed over to the “continent.” Eventually I landed in Paris staying in a cheap youth hostel. I spent a few months there before coming back home. I used to dream all the time about being in Paris and France. It was actually 20 years before I made it back, on my way to a music convention in Berlin. Since then I’ve gone over almost every year. For awhile, when I worked for record labels, it was to attend the MIDEM convention ever year in Cannes. Then five years ago my friend Les and I went over for a two week cycling trip and we’ve since gone back three more times. I’d move to France in a second if only my wife would agree, but it seems I’ve married the only woman in America who isn’t interested in living in Paris. 

When I was in Paris last year I picked up a book titled Bob Dylan Album File & Complete Discography. I’m always interested in Dylan books and this was one I hadn’t seen before. Turned out it was only published in England, so I figured I might as well grab it. It’s the size and shape of a CD, though much thicker. The author goes through each Bob Dylan CD and writes about the album and the songs. He give notes about the recording process, stories, his take on the songs, etc. It’s nothing new, this stuff has been gone over dozens of times, but it is a interesting little book. So, I’ve been making my way through the book, listening to each album (in chronological order) as I read what he has to say. Today it was time for New Morning.

New Morning is one of those Bob Dylan albums that never quite seems to get the respect or attention it deserves. It’s not that it’s generally regarded as a “bad” album (like say Under The Red Sky, Knocked Out Loaded or Down In The Groove), it just kind of falls through the cracks. In 1993 Sony began reissuing the entire Dylan catalog, remastering the albums and releasing them as hybrid CD/SACD digipaks (usually with a few unreleased photos). The first batch contained fifteen albums, apparently what SONY and/or Dylan considered to be the best of his catalog. New Morning was not one of them. We’re still waiting for the second batch. It’s probably never coming as SACD is dead in the water. There is still hope the remaining albums will be remastered and reissued, though some fans and collectors think it might not happen. With Dylan, you just never know.

New Morning was released in October 1970, just four months after the disastrous reception that Self Portrait received. Some say Dylan was so stung by the scathing reviews for Self Portrait that he immediately felt he had to get something else out into the marketplace to redeem himself. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it’s actually quite a fine CD, and it certainly did help to reestablish his reputation after Self Portrait. The opening track, “If Not For You” was co-written with George Harrison (who actually released a version of the song on his own album, All Things Must Pass, before New Morning even came out). It sets the mood for the album: cheerful, satisfied, fulfilled, warm and happy. This is as close to a “family” album as Bob Dylan ever came, said to be written and recorded when he was the most content with being a husband and a father. As we all know, that period of contentment didn’t seem to last too long. But New Morning is full of songs about comfort, peace, tranquility and general domestic bliss. Standout tracks include “The Man In Me,” “New Morning,” “If Not For You” and “Three Angels.” The title track is especially cheeful and energetic with Bob proclaiming how happy he is “just to be alive on this new morning with you.” Dylan did, however, take a few left turns with tracks like “Winterlude” and, especially, “If Dogs Run Free” (which is probably one of the most detested songs in his catalog. “Father Of Night” seems almost a decade early preview of his Christian conversion. “Three Angels” is more a spoken poem set to music than a song. With it’s swirling organ and background vocals it’s just one or two steps away from something Hank Williams could have done.

After New Morning Dylan was enticed by David Geffen to leave Columbia Records (his long time record label) and sign with Asylum Records where he released Planet Waves and the live Before The Flood (from his 1974 tour with the Band). The story is that Columbia was not about to let him go without a fight and to show him what was coming if he continued this route they released the famous Dylan album, a collection of ten outtakes from the New Morning and Self Portrait sessions. It’s an album whose only function certainly seems to embarrass Dylan. It’s generally regarded by many to be unlistenable (though it’s not that bad). Sure, enough Dylan was back on Columbia for his next release, Blood On The Tracks. And, before too long Dylan was out of print. Today it’s the only Bob Dylan album ever released that is not available on CD. Blackmail plain and simple? Sure seems that way. 

An alternate version of “If Not For You” from a full day’s session with George Harrison was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 box set. But the real treats, if you can find them, are alternate versions of “Went To See The Gypsy,” “If Not For You” and “Sign On The Window” from the bootleg The Third One Now: Genuine Bootleg Series Volume Three. All three songs are dramatically different than the released versions and show completely different sides of the compositions. “I Went To See The Gypsy” is much slower, much more dramatic, just Dylan, a bass and a piano. It’s beautiful. “If Not For You” is also much slower, this time with a very prominent, almost symphonic, violin. Dylan sings each line with real passion, much more seriously than on the official version. It’s quite stunning. “Sign On The Window” adds dramatic strings (and a harp!) throughout, to mixed results.

New Morning may not be one of Dylan’s best albums, but it’s certainly worthy of a place on any music lover’s CD shelves. With Dylan almost every album has it’s own distinctive sound, feel and vibe, different from any of the others. This is no exception. I find something new almost every time I listen to it.

Other Listens on June 23rd:
Magic by Bruce Springsteen
With Friends And Neighbors by Alex Taylor
Writer by Carole King
All This Tangled Rope by Bob Dylan
Dusty In Memphis by Dusty Springfield
Abandoned Luncheonette by Daryl Hall & John Oates
The Very Best Of The Sutherland Brothers by The Sutherland Brothers 

In September 1976 I left Syracuse, New York with my girlfriend, Anne, headed for Boulder, Colorado. We never made it there. We hitchhiked down the East coast, all the way to Key West, Florida (where I’d lived for a short while in 1975). Anne had never travelled much so we decided to see the states on our way to Boulder. From Key West we hitchhiked up to Nashville. From there we headed to Austin, Texas. And that’s where we ended up. We loved Austin. We stayed for a few weeks and decided, hey this is great, let’s just stay here. And to be honest, at that point, we were getting a little tired of the road. Little did I know I’d be in the Austin area for the better part of the next 20 years. My only goal in life at that point was to get a job at a record store. Before too long I was working at Disc Records in Highland Mall. I was in heaven. Those were the days when every record was a potential friend. I’d pour over album covers reading liner notes, looking at musicians, producers, songwriters, trying to get as much information as I could about each record that caught my interest. 

I came across an album by a guy named Sammy Walker. There was a great black and white photo on the front of this young, country looking kid with a cigarette in his hand. It was produced by Nikolas Venet, so that immediately gave him credibility with me. Nik had produced some of my favorite records, including California Bloodlines by John Stewart. James Burton played dobro (he’d played with Elvis Presley and Gram Parsons, along with so many others), Dan Dugmore (John Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, etc.) played pedal steel, Waddy Wachtel (Warren Zevon and others) played guitar (though he was listed as Robert Wachtel). The liner notes said his first album had been produced by Phil Ochs. That was enough right there. I was a huge Phil Ochs fan. I bought the album, titled Sammy Walker, and I’ve been playing it in regular rotation for the last 30 years. It’s one of my all-time favorite albums, just a wonderful collection of Seeger/Ochs/Dylan/Guthrie influenced songwriting that I never get tired of. Sammy’s influences show in all the right ways but his songs are all his own. Extraordinary, unique, distinctive songs with spellbinding lyrics and irresistible melodies. I could compare him to a lot of other singer-songwriters but there’s really nobody else quite like him. 

As I often do when I discover a new artist, I began to look for what else there was by Sammy Walker out there. I found the previously mentioned “first album” titled Song For Patty on Folkways Records and picked it up. Songs For Patty is a more sparse affair than the self-titled album. It’s mostly just Sammy, his guitar and harmonica (with maybe a second guitar here and there, there are no musician credits on the album). Sammy wrote ten of the twelve songs on the album (it also includes one Guthrie song and one Ochs song). Two of the best songs (“Catcher In The Rye” and “Little New Jersey Town”) would be rerecorded for the self-titled album. Overall, it’s a very strong effort, an exceptional debut album. Other highlights include the title song (a great piece about Patty Hearst), “Ragamuffin Minstrel Boy” and “Closin’ Time.” A few of the songs, notably “The Ballad Of Johnny Strozier” and “Testimony Of A Dying Lady” reflect Sammy’s topical, folk, protest roots (though he was about a decade late to the party). Sammy was a “discovery” of Broadside Magazine, the famous 60s publication which had published the first works of Dylan, Ochs, Janis Ian, Peter La Farge and many others. The original vinyl album came with an eight page insert, “Broadside #127,” which contained all the lyrics, sheet music, various short articles and photos. I don’t play this album as much as his two Warner Brothers albums, but I do come back to it on a regular basis.

Sammy made a second great album for Warner Brothers, Blue Ridge Mountain Skyline, which was released in 1977. He followed that with another album for Folkways, Songs From Woody’s Pen, in 1979. And that was pretty much it for a long time. He released a live album in 1990 (Sammy Walker In Concert) and a studio album in 1994 (Old Time Southern Dream). Both were released only in Europe on a Swiss label. Both had their moments but neither lived up to the stellar quality of his releases in the 70s. There are rumors that he will release a new album soon on the Ramseur Records label, but I haven’t seen anything concrete yet. But rest assured, I’ll give anything he puts out a spin as soon as it’s available.

Song For Patty has never been released on CD in the US. There is an import version on Amazon that sells for $51.99. Probably from Japan. His two Warner releases were also released on CD in Japan for a very brief period but I was only able to ever find the second one. They’re nowhere to be found these days. The two 90s albums are not available anymore either, at least at Amazon. Much to my amazement though, I recently discovered that Song For Patty is available as a download at Amazon. Not sure why, but there it is. It’s the only album of his that is available as a download. And both Songs For Patty and Songs From Woody’s Pen are available at iTunes. It’s ridiculous that so many great albums are still not available in this day of digital downloading. It’s the one area where I truly believe the record labels are missing the boat. It would cost practically nothing to transfer these over to digital files and make them available. No inventory, no manufacturing, no storage. I could list 100 albums (at least) that I would buy right now if they were only available as downloads.

Other Listens on June 19th:
Hollywood Pocketknife by Eric Taylor
Where I’m Bound by Bob Gibson
Yer’ Album by The James Gang
Elton John (Deluxe Version) by Elton John 
Children Of The Future by Steve Miller Band 
The Essential Lee Clayton: 1978-1981 by Lee Clayton 

I have two close friends whose musical opinions and tastes I value very much, both of whom just can’t stand Leonard Cohen. He’s one of those artists that people seem to love or hate (no pun intended). There’s not a lot of middle ground when it comes to Leonard. Personally, I can’t get enough of the guy. He’s been one of my very, very favorite songwriters since I was in high school. You can’t compare Cohen to anyone. He’s one of a kind. A true poet. Some people have a problem with his voice and his singing, but not me. But then again, I tend to love singers that others don’t seem to appreciate: Bob Dylan and Neil Young come to mind. I discovered him via his second album, Songs From A Room (still one of my favorites). That album, along with his first (Songs Of Leonard Cohen) and third (Songs Of Love And Hate) have recently been reissued by Columbia in limited edition, deluxe, hard-cover digipacks with new liner notes, unreleased tracks and rare photos. I was looking through my Cohen CDs the other day searching for something to listen to. I’ve got all his albums (including a couple that have never been released in the US, only in Europe) and a dozen or so bootlegs. But the one I was looking for wasn’t there. New Skin For The Old Ceremony. Hmm. Maybe I never got that on CD for some reason. I’ve got two copies on vinyl. It was one of those albums that was released with one cover originally and then the cover was changed on subsequent pressings (Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks is another great example of this). So, of course I had to have both pressings. So I checked on Amazon and found the CD for $5.97. Sign me up! Hell, I’ll buy almost anything for $5.97. 

New Skin For The Old Ceremony was Cohen’s fourth studio album (he followed the third with a fantastic live album, Live Songs). It doesn’t seem to be one of his better known albums though. I find it downright mesmerizing. The songs themselves were not much of a departure from his earlier writing, but the production certainly was. While his first three albums had been sparse “folk” efforts, mostly just him and a guitar, this was a much more realized affair with a full band (and even horns). Songs like “Lover Lover Lover,” “There Is A War,” “Who By Fire” and, especially “Is This What You Wanted” were direct, in your face performances, unlike anything Cohen had done before. Lyrically he was mining familiar territory, relationships of the heart, soul and body (“You were KY jelly, I was vasoline”), but there was a new sense of energy and forcefulness, not just in the music but the words as well. “Chelsea Hotel #2″ is probably the best known song from this album, an almost “throwaway” piece about Janis Joplin (“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, that’s all I don’t even think about you that often”). I have no idea where this album stands in the ranks of the true Cohen followers (which are legion), but I listen to it a lot more than his more well known first or third albums.

I always thought it would be fun to be a DJ. I could play the music I loved and cherised and people would have to listen to it. I have a sort of “missionary” side to me when it comes to the music I love. I want to turn everyone I know onto it. I want them to like it as much as I do. I want them to see the magic and the salvation in it. A good song can save your life. Of course I found out a long time ago DJs these days don’t get to play the music they want. Maybe back in the 60s it was different. But it certainly hasn’t been that way for a very long time. I did spend part of a summer once in Telluride, Colorado, working as a dishwasher and living in a tent on the side of the most magnificent mountain I’d ever seen. There was a little “community” radio station and I managed to get signed up as a DJ for a short time, mostly filling in for other people who couldn’t make a shift. It was great. I played exactly what I wanted, no one told me what to do or what to play. I played everything from Bob Dylan to the Eagles to John Prine and a lot of stuff I was certain no one had ever heard before, stuff I can’t remember anymore. That was almost thirty years ago. And of course, Leonard Cohen. Only to have my good friend Bill (one of the two I mentioned at the beginning of this post) come up to me later and ask why in the hell I was playing that crap. What crap I asked innocently, all the time knowing he was speaking about Cohen. He described it as the sound of animals dying. There you go. Just like the religious missionaries know, you can’t save them all. But at least I tried.

Cohen has continued to release new albums on a semi-regular basis. Most of them would get five star ratings from me. I still listen to almost all of them. He was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this year and is touring this summer for the first time in fifteen years.  

Other Listens on June 18th:
Byrd Parts 2 by Various Artists
Toys In The Attic by Aerosmith
The Desert Rose Band by The Desert Rose Band
Evening Of The Magician by Randy Burns