Callin' Me Home

More tasty goodness from 2011!  Our Big Rock Candy Mountain Favorite Records of 2011 rocks on with #20-11!  We're gettin' the really primo stuff now...every record in our list is great, and we recommend every damn one of them, but now we're starting to touch on the really heavy hitters!  From now 'til the end..well, what are you waiting for?  Support these artists!  The future of music depends on you! 

Did we miss some great records this year?  Let us know!  An open mind is a chance to hear great tunes!  Tell us what we missed!

Some more "Best Of's" before kickin' it out...

Re-Issue of the Year:  This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel on 45 R.P.M. 1957-182  (Holy shit!  (literally)...A box set of essential hollerin' and wailin', The very roots, both spiritually and sonically, of rawk'n'roll...fighting the devil, making love to the saints, a compendium of the spiritual and the secular sound.  Amazing!)

Singular Live Moment of the Year: Molly Gene, Ten Foot Polecats and the Scissormen performing "Old Black Mattie" together at the 2011 Deep Blues Festival in Cleveland Ohio.   (A transcendent throwdown, in which we found the Deep Blues George'n'Tammy in Molly Gene and Jay Scheffler, Jim Chilson and Ted Drozdowski abusing their guitars in a sick, sick way, and Matt Snow and Chad Rousseau bringing tribal pounding insanity to drum kits that seemed as if they might buckle and disintegrate under the siege. Yeah, it was that good...even better. Youtube it, kids!)

Top Ten tomorrow!


The Big Rock Candy Mountain Favorite Records of 2011 (Part 4 of 5)

20, Mickey: Rock 'n' Roll Dreamer

Scuzzy glamster  shine and sin, rotten loud, baby yr a glittertrash star!


Mickey: Dance (mp3)

19. Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds: 5 Greasy Pieces

5 45's  making up one  album, bananas and primitive sleaze boogaloo, greasy, indeed, like three day old chicken swiped from the garbage!



Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds: Bobo Boogaloo (mp3)

18. Black Oil Brothers: High Road To Ruin

More stompin' backwoods holler, darker this time, like a midnight thunderstorm on the Great Plains,  washing the dust into a muddy bottom.


The Black Oil Brothers: Sodapop's Blooze (mp3)
















17. Jack Oblivian: Rat City 

Here's what we said recently: "... a record of dilapidated splendor...a Southern, sneering rawk'n'punk-ass record of timeless qualities...booze, cooze, and loozers, floundered, desperate in its bourbon-soaked tabletop, slippery brass rail as heaven."


 Jack Oblivian: Jealous Heart (mp3)

16.  The People's Temple:  Sons of Stone

 Menaced psych-swirl haze, droned-out murmer, float away on waves of ether!



The People's Temple: Sons of Stone (mp3)


















15. Lydia Loveless: Indestructible Machine

Country record of the year, badass  hillbilly girl on wrong side of the tracks, she'll fuck you up, and you'll like it, hardscrabble tonkin' hell with a pistol full of gasoline!

Lydia Loveless: More Like Them (mp3)

14. Julia Klee: The Big Charade

From our review a while back: "A booming and deep well vocalist, Klee has drawn comparisons to Neko Case, Jolie Holland (whom she covered brilliantly at her live show) and Kelly Hogan.  Which is all well and good, and apt, but Julia Klee seems to be drawing from an older tradition, one that includes Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and most especially, Emmylou Harris.  Some of those comparisons come from a lyrical intent. Klee is songwriter of incredible situationist gift, warping her voice into the subject, manipulating her vocals into the sad and the beautiful. Some of those comparisons are in the power of her voice.  It's an astonishing instrument in it's own right...a record of depth and spirit, a hoedown of longing and beauty."

Julia Klee: Drunken Chess (mp3)

13. Husky Burnette: Facedown In the Dirt

(Note:interview and full album review coming soon) Repent, evil sinners, from out of darkest, deepest waters a junkpiled pickup truck, rusty and rattling, caked and bloody, growling red-eyed moonshine!


Husky Burnette: Hog Jaw (mp3)

12. Chicken Diamond: Chicken Diamond

From our review:  "It's a loud record.  Really, really loud.  In a glorious, fuzzy, xpressway to yr spine kind of way, rattled and raw.  Chicken's voice, a bastard child of Tom Waits and James Leg, wails "sinners in the hands of an angry god"-syle salvation, 'til yr ears are hoarse and yr throat is parched gasping water, lord, water from the sacred well.  Brutal throbbed kick drum pounds sex beat degenerate lust.  And some of the filthiest fuckblues guitar, drowned in a swamp and emerging covered in the goo goo muck of creation.  Tribal, pulsing, very, very evil.  The kind of guitar slime that gives you bad thoughts, reeks of white lightning, and scrapes, scratches and claws at yr soul."

Chicken Diamond: Bones (mp3)

11. Rocket From The Tombs: Barfly

We've got a special guest review of this record.  Our pal Eric H. feels very strongly about this record, and has excoriated us about it's "too low" ranking.   Take it away, Eric:


"I’ve rewritten this review 10 times or more and: nothing I’ve written as come close to conveying  how immediate and powerful this album is.  So I will say this.  This is the FUCKING album of the year.  Dave Thomas, Cheetah Chrome, Craig Bell and Richard FUCKING Lloyd – What else do you need to know?  These guys aren’t coasting on past glories or putting out lame experiment in the name of ‘art’.  (Lou Reed I’m talking to you)  This is just a tight, muscular rock band doing what far too many rock bands these days don’t do very well, which is ROCK.  Buy this album.  Buy a copy of you neighbor. Buy a copy for your Mom.  This album should be a the top of this or any list.   Buy this album as if your life depended on it."

It should be noted, in addendum, that this is Rocket From The Tomb's first "proper" record, and that this band led to Pere Ubu and The Dead Boys, and are completely seminal in any discussion of U.S. punk.  And, of course, Peter Laughner was a member as well.  So, you know, you know it's gonna be a great record!


Rocket From The Tombs: Romeo and Juliet (mp3) 

Thanks for visitin'.  Got a quibble with our list?  Let us know!