Devil's In The House of the Rising Sun

Yep.

It's been an interesting year, this 2006. I want to thank all those who stopped by. We'll try to keep things interesting 'round these parts in the year to come.

Part 3 today of the fantastalistic BRCM Top Ten Albums of the Year. We aint necessarily calling these the best albums, they're just our favorites. We'll have the final installment next Tuesday.


First, here's some fine albums that didn't make the cut, but are worthy of y'all hunting down some mp3's to see what you think. The list is in no particular order:


Califone: Roots and Crowns

The Be Good Tanya's: Hello Love

Handsome Family:Last Days Of Wonder

The Buffets: Saucy Jack

Bob Dylan: Modern Times

The King Kkan and BBQ Show: What's For Dinner

Jack O and the Tennessee Tearjerkers: The Flip Side Kid

Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (best title for an album ever)

Bonnie Prince Billy: The Letting Go

Scott Biram: Graveyard Shift

Jim Lauderdale: Country Super Hits,Vol. 1


The Legendary Shack Shakers: Pandelirium



Now, on with the exciting part of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Part 3:


5. South Filthy: Crackin' Up


Bring the boogie. One of the most aptly named groups around, the moniker tells you all you really need to know about this nasty little supergroup featuring Jeffrey Evans, Jack Yarber (Oblivian), Walter Daniels, Eugene Chadbourne, and a host of other trash merchants. I wrote more extensively on this band and this album in an earlier post. Here's part of what I said:

"Oddly enough , it's not quite the scunge-trash fest one might expect, being more akin to your favorite bar band playing a trailer park barbecue fest. And that's a compliment. Sure, it's a shambolic, booze-ridden mess of an album, sloppy and missing anything remotely suggesting production values, with obvious nods to Exile-era Stones, Faces (small and large), Allmans and Van Zandts(both kinds). It's a very Southern affair, sweatily drawled and scrawled from Memphis to Austin, underpinned with a sense of longing and regret, of all things. A little
bit rawk, and a whole lotta country. Pop a top on your favorite beverage, settle into your lawn chair and enjoy the mad dog stylings of South Filthy."

That seems about right.

South Filthy: (So You Think) You Got Trouble (mp3)

4. Cat Power: The Greatest


Chan Marshall has apparently been to hell and back, ripe for a VH1 special. I'm not a subscriber to the pop psychology notion that pain makes for great art. Marshall almost changed my mind. Almost. The problem with crediting pain or personal disorder to the creating process is that it takes for granted, or even negates, a little thing called talent. All the Artist's Way books in the world aren't going to make a piss poor writer, painter, or musician any better. Marshall's got talent in spades, and, outside of humane reasons for me wishing her well, I could really give a rat's ass about her demons. Show me what you got on the finished product, give me a song that lasts. And, whoah nelly, Cat Power dropped a bombshell. I found it hard to believe that Marshall could ever top her album "Moon Pix", and her last album, "You Are Free", sort of confirmed to me that she had long ago reached her peak. "You Are Free" was, frankly, a rather bad album. So it was with trepidation that I approached her latest, "The Greatest". I'm glad I did. Gathering some of the finest legendary Memphis studio musicians, Marshall is transformed. Long known for her lustily lazy, almost sleepy, vocal style, Marshall practically swings and swaggers through a good amount of these tunes, while the crack band honking and fiddling behind her. Even when things slow to normal Cat Power crawl and meditation it's with a sultrier, more confident sexiness than we're used to. It's a very Southern album, the kudzu lit hazily by the mid-afternoon sun. An album where the belle wanders off from the ball, barefoot, dancing with the ghosts of her dreams.

Cat Power: Lived In Bars (mp3)

Have a good New Year's weekend. Stop back Tuesday for numbers 1-3 on the big list. Wonder what they'll be? Bet y'all can make some accurate guesses.

Run Boys, Run

Howdy. Welcome back. Part 2 of the Big Rock Candy Mountain Top 10 Most Favorite Albums All Time of the Year Until I Change My Mind list.

Before reading on, head over to Hickory Wind for my preview of a band that's going to be showing up on this list later on this week. It's the post entitled "In Praise of the Bar Band".

Now that you're back from that, let's get started.

8. Richard Buckner: Meadow

Buckner goes rock. I've discussed elsewhere that I don't believe that the Country tag fits Richard Buckner any longer, if it ever really fit in the first place (maybe "Bloom" qualifies). Maybe nobody considers him Country, even "alt-country". What Buckner makes is burnt desert music, seared and charred meditations on minutiae, rendered inscrutable by dense and imagistic lyrics. A word rarely used when mentioning Buckner albums is fun. And while this album may not push that word up the list of descriptives, it certainly sheds the doom and gloom tag, at least musically. Lyrically, he's still plumbing the depths. But the addition on instrumentation of former Guided By Voicers, and a Superchunker gives Buckner a new sonic palette to ply his obsessions. His voice is still formed by the cracked clay of the earth, but the jagged bursts of guitar skronk and amped tempo provides a different context with which Buckner can play. The album is brief, 10 short songs, but Buckner takes the quick in and out all the way to the pharmacy. It's his best, most cohesive album since "Devotion + Doubt". Just don't expect a rehash of that classic album. It's a different beast entirely, and I can hear the purists moaning. Which should just add to why this album is so swell.

Richard Buckner: Mile (mp3)

7. Jolie Holland: Springtime Can Kill You

On here previous two albums, "Catalpa" and "Escondida", Holland mined the creaky, rocking chair, sepia-tinted tones of old weird America. They were spare affairs, the focus on her vintage Sara Carter-esque voice. With her latest album, Holland picks up stake, loads the mule, and heads east, slightly, picking up a band on the way. Jazz informs this album, particularly the ghost of Billie Holiday, who's slurred and lustily lazy vocal style is suggested, but never imitated, here by Holland. The themes of loss and memory permeate this album, the flourishes of melancholy. Music for attics and speakeasy's after hours, when the dancing is done, and the last dregs drained, the couples stumbled out the door, and only the lonely remain, one for my baby, and one more for the road. That road being a dusty lane from the city to a mythic, Gothic South. In a time of spineless Southern-inspired jazz-lite wallpaper by the likes of Norah Jones and Diana (makes my skin)Krall, this is the real deal. The following is not the one you think it is. It even includes a nice reference to Freakwater.

Jolie Holland: Moonshiner (mp3)

6. Lambchop: Damaged

Lambchop's main man Kurt Wagner has played with us. What began as a quirky take on oddball Country has morphed from Hank to Curtis Mayfield-influenced blue-eyed Nashville soul, to this, his most intimate album yet. It's a record that requires time spent. A dusk album, all crickets and fading lights, the gloaming. In the quick fix, ipod nation, I'm not sure how this album fits. Songs that meander, hushed and murmuring vocals, lyrics of the smallest movements. The slowest thing, the glass of whiskey, the rustle of leaves. Beauty in the heart of sadness.

Lambchop: The Decline Of Country And Western Civilization (mp3)

Part 3 tomorrow, numbers 3-5.

Insert clever comment here.

Fire On The Mountain

Hope all y'all had a nice holiday.

'Spect it's time for the Big Rock Candy Mountain best of list for 2006. I guess best of isn't necessarily the right word for it. As I've read through the various publications who do the whole "best of" thing, I find the majority of what is deemed important or best holds little appeal to me. I'm probably not alone in that. Things have become so niche-oriented that it's difficult to fully take in the broad spectrum of music that's out there. Look at all the music blogs that specialize, this one included. We've been so overwhelmed by genre that a common, shared voice is difficult to pinpoint. I'm not sure we could produce another Elvis, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nirvana, or Eminem again. Artists who, for one reason or another, transcend their genre, who reach across imaginary market share lines. I could be wrong.

This is the year that one of the most perfect songs ever written, "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, has been co-opted to hawk a business that I will not patronize. Parliament is hawking some kind of SUV thingy.

I've purchased somewhere around 100-150 albums this year. The majority of them were not released in 2006. That probably makes me sound a bit the fogey. I'm too young to start sounding like my parents, right? There's great music being made every year, and I'm not keen on sacred cows or status quo's. I see no reason Yo La Tengo, f'rinstance, shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles. Music didn't begin and end with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I find myself more and more drawn to strange little compilations from no-name or overseas labels featuring a bunch of never-remembered hillbilly honky-tonkers, blues jumpers, trashcan bangers, and whatnot. There's gold in them there hills. Important? Maybe not. There's a reason some folks never made it down the mountain, tablet in hands. But, you know, it's what I like.

Which is why this is not a Best Of list. There's no context to judge Best. No remove. Get back to me in 10 years when we see if we're still listening, when we see if there's influence.

So this is part 1 my list of favorite albums of the year, plus some other odds and ends sprinkled in over the next four days. They're albums I listened to the most, or think I'll appreciate for years to come. Maybe you will too. Or not.

Favorite Box Sets

1. Rockin' Bones : 50's Punk and Rockabilly (Rhino): The motherlode of trash. Sure, there's a couple thousand songs left off, but it's tough to argue with the songs included. Great as a primer, or as a nifty little all-in-one package for those of us who have these songs spread out over 101 other compilation cd's or records. This is the kind of music the Mountain's all about.

2: Waylon Jennings: Nashville Rebel (Sony/BMG): Good gravy! We got your Outlaw Country right here. Ol' Waylon had some schmatlz in 'im, and some of that is included on this career-spanning set. But all the classic honky-tonk goodness is here, from the personification of the Outlaw movement. I'm pretty sure Hank would have done it this way.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain Top 10 Albums, Part 1

10. Cast King: Saw Mill Man

I'm cheating already. This album was released in 2005. But I didn't get it 'til this year. Seems likely this would have finished higher on last year's list, but I figger it's not fair to the albums that came out this year. Or something. Cast King, 79 and recording his first proper album, makes mountain music, lonely and faded, burnt and dirty, creaking and caked by mud. For a more in depth look into how great I think this record and Cast King are, you can check out what I wrote 11 months ago. It's a perfect record, the way god intended: A man, a guitar, a back porch, a mountain.

Cast King: Wino (mp3)

9. Gob Iron: Death Songs For The Living

I was fully prepared to dislike this album. Gob Iron is Jay Farrar of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt and Anders Parker of Varnaline. Ostensibly a collection of Farrar and Parker's take on traditional folk songs with musical interludes, it could easily have been a tossed-off, ego-driven affair, on it's way to the bargain bin of history. What it turned out to be, though, was a bit of a revelation. Farrar has the kind of voice made for the dusty corners of America, and he puts it to good use, with Parker's cracked voice serving as counterpoint. With respect to the originals, the two men forge a new modern traditionalism. The spirit of the old with a new weariness of time infused. A creaking, desperate affair.

Gob Iron: Death's Black Train Is Coming (mp3)

Stop back tomorrow for Part 2, and a list of runners-up. Thanks.

The Godfather

Damn.

James Brown 1933-2006.

There are no words. Just music.

James Brown: Super Bad Parts 1 & 2 (mp3)

I Built My Dreams Around You

Well.

Here we are on the final day of the Holiday extravaganza. Thanks for stopping by. Regular posts will resume shortly. Hope you can make it back for those. My Best Of lists start next Tuesday.

On to the tunes, and no surprises today. It's the same damn song every year.

My favorite Christmas song, and I'd argue one of the best ever written, is "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues . On it, Shane MacGowan has his finest moment, both as a writer sweet and sour, and as a singer, slurring and blurring the lines between the drunken joy and sunken despair of the Season. The gutter angel voice of Kirsty MacColl, accusing and cajoling, gives Shane the perfect foil. It's an immigrant song, filled with the broken dreams of brave new worlds and the willful, joyful abandon that desperation brings. And in the end, it's a song about hope.

Shane MacGowan turns 49 this Christmas day.

As a bonus we've got our good pal Tom Waits giving his take on a Christmas chestnut. It's....strange. Even by his standards. Back up singers?

Enjoy. Have a good Holiday. Or at least a good day off, if you get one. See you next week.

The Pogues: Fairytale of New York (mp3)

Tom Waits: Silent Night (mp3)

You've spent enough money this year.

Santa's Got A Mixed Bag

The best radio station in the country, WFMU, has a blog. And on that blog they mentioned this here little corner of the world as a place to check out for Holiday music. I am both honored and humbled. The individual writing the entry singled out Jimmy Butler's "Trim Your Tree" as their favorite. As I had just deleted the song for exceeding the one week limit, I think it's only fair to re post the song:

Jimmy Butler: Trim Your Tree (mp3)

Now for a hodge podge of stuff I didn't mange to fit elsewhere this month. There's one more Holiday post tomorrow, but if you've visited here for any length of time, you can probably guess what tunes are going up on Friday. I've got a ton more stuff, but y'all are just going to have to wait 'til next year.

And don't forget to stop back on Tuesday for the four- part, world-famous Big Rock Candy Mountain Best of 2006 extravaganza. Yippee.

Jim Lauderdale is one of the best songwriters working in Country and Americana today. His whiskey-tinged vocals serve well in contrast to folks like Ralph Stanley, who he's recorded Bluegrass albums with, and on it's own on keenly observed slice of life songs.

Sonny Boy Williamson (II) kicked some nasty Mississippi blues harmonica, with a gritty, worn voice to match. He's a favorite here at the Mountain.

Can you surf in a garage? The Trashmen found a way to make you feel like you could, here begging Santa Claus to aid and abet in their teenage lust.

And finally, Jump Blues bandleader extraordinaire Jimmy Liggins knows what we all really want for the Holidays.

Jim Lauderdale: Holly And Her Mistletoe (mp3)

Sonny Boy Williamson: Santa Claus (mp3)

The Trashmen: Real Live Doll (Alternate Take)(mp3)

Jimmy Liggins and His Drops of Joy: I Want My Baby For Christmas (mp3)

Thanks for supporting your local, independent record stores this Holiday season.

Rootin' Tootin' Santa Claus

Honestly, I'm not sure what that little feller's smiling like that for.

Country goodness today.

God bless Dolly Parton. Seems the focus is always on her, erm, considerable assets or her theme park. It's too bad, cuz folks are missing out on a tremendous songwriter and interpreter, and a woman who pushed women's independence in Country music long before it was acceptable.

We've discussed Jerry Reed numerous times before. Here's what we said most recently.

Johnny Horton was a honky tonker who was a forerunner of Rockabilly. You know him best from his rendition of "The Battle of New Orleans". He's doing something funny to Rudolph in the following song.

Faron Young is a legend. We really need to give him a proper full-length post. But for now, we have evidence below that Faron's a bit of a tattle tale.

Santa is a Honky Tonker.

Dolly Parton: Hard Candy Christmas (mp3)

Jerry Reed: Christmas Time's A Coming (mp3)

Johnny Horton: They Shined Up Rudolph's Nose (mp3)

Faron Young: I'm Gonna Tell Santa On You (mp3)

Thanks for spending the Holiday season with us.

S'not Christmas

Gonna load you up over the next couple of days. Feel free to get loaded. Erm...

A little snot for Christmas today. Call it punk rock, call it trash, call it rock'n'roll. I dunno.

Nothing beats trash wunderkind Billy Childish in the guise of the Buff Medways.

The Replacements were the greatest band of the 80's, bar none. Really, I can't think of a rational argument that would convince me otherwise. The following tune is from a bootleg, so it's pretty much what you'd expect, sound-wise. But it kicks ass, and you need it.

Lisa Kekaula of The Bellrays could pretty much give Rachel Nagy of the Detroit Cobras a run for her money, so far as smoky, trashy, full-throated trashsoul goes. Hell I think she might even win.

The Mono Men are just nasty. And that's why we like them.

Enjoy these fine traditional Yuletide numbers.

The Buff Medways: Merry Christmas Fritz (mp3)

The Replacements: Bundle Up (mp3)

The Bellrays: Merry Christmas Baby (mp3)

The Mono Men: Christmastime Is For Sinners (mp3)

Enjoy the spirit of independence this year.

Six Tons of Toys

Just wanted to say a quick thanks to all those who have provided links to this here little experiment in Holiday absurdity. And if you're a new visitor, thanks for stopping by. You probably won't get any breaking news or hot new artists at this spot, but we aim please in other ways. Some classic (or not so classic as the case may be) Country, a little Blues, Rock-a-Boppin-Billy, mountain stompers, Truck Driving, Trash, and greasy pre-rock R&B. Our favorite instruments are the accordion, pedal steel geetar, and the Hammond B-3 organ. We think Tom Waits is quite keen. Occasionally we're a little cantankerous. That about sums it up, then.

Stay tuned the day after Xmas for our week-long survey of the albums that made us hum, dance, air drum, or put a tear in our beer.

Oh, right, you're here for the music. Where was I?

'Couple of weeks ago we had Red Simpson sharing a little truckin' Yuletide joy. And what trucker's holiday would be complete without ole Dave Dudley chiming in? As you are probably already aware, Dudley is arguably the king of trucker tunes, and one of the Mountain's favorite artists.

Dave's on a tight schedule, helping Santa with his deliveries this year.

Truck on, Santa.

Dave Dudley: Six Tons of Toys (mp3)

Hey, instead of buying that last minute gift that nobody's going to want, why not drop a few bucks in the Salvation Army bucket this year?

Steady Santa

Happy Hanukkah, beginning tonight! My apologies for not having any tunes to go along. I'll try to do better next year. Any suggestions?

Speaking of things I haven't posted about, I've never really discussed Reggae or Ska here at the Mountain. It's not that we dislike those forms. We're actually big fans, particularly of Ska. I just wouldn't consider myself anywhere near qualified in my limited knowledge to post intelligently. Not that any other posts here could be called intelligent, per se.

That said, I thought I'd throw a little Ska and Reggae your way today, courtesy of the keen Trojan Records Christmas Box Set.

Yellowman wants to know why Santa is selective in his destinations.

And The Granville Williams Orchestra knows how Santa really gets around. When he's actually showing up.

Yellowman: Santa Never Comes To The Ghetto (mp3)

The Granville Williams Orchestra: Santa Clause Is Ska-ing To Town (mp3)

Shop, Shop, Shop, Shop, Buy, Buy, Buy, Fa la la la la.