A Different Type of Back Cover

I have just finished one of the most absorbing books I have read in a long time, Amanda Petrusich's Do Not Sell at Any Price, which is subtitled, The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records. While focussed on a very particular type of collector who seeks out what is essentially a finite resource - there are no masters in existence for many prewar recordings so "the records themselves are the only evidence of these sessions." - you don't have to be into prewar American music to enjoy it. It will resonant with anyone who has ever dug deeper into an artists recorded output, beyond the official records and into the murky world of bootlegs.

It particularly resonated with me because of a topic I have written about here before. That is, the magic of capturing a genuine performance. This is something that links my fascination with both old blues recordings and the ragged LPs of Neil Young (see for instance here on why Young has so much emotional pull and here for some quotes on 'Immediacy and Impulse: The Vibration of the Take'). The technology of the time only allowed for single microphone recordings to be made, so you had no option but to record a one-take performance. As Petrusich notes, "the most important component of any country blues song is still the performer's articulation of the blues "feeling," that amorphous, intangible, gut-borne thing that animates all music and gives it life." Elsewhere she notes one of the key figures in the book, Chris King, as insisting he wasn't merely collecting records, but collecting performances.

I still find it hard to articulate the wonder of hearing today recordings captured over 80 years ago, unchanged from the moment they were performed, save perhaps for some additional crackle. A moment in time preserved, hopefully forever. Petrusich however does a much better job than me and on finishing the book it has even pushed me to order the Anthology of American Folk Music on vinyl, something I had previously only owned digitally but which has recently been reissued on Mississippi Records. Given the investment involved, that is deservedly heavy praise for this wonderful book.

Given what this blog is meant to be about, it seems fitting that the back cover gets replicated here too!

Vinyl: My 1st 100 records

I have just checked my iTunes library and it is currently home to 31,957 tracks. Many I have never listened to and many I won't ever return to. Frankly an unmanageable and unlistenable amount.  My solution? My iPod now only contains the tracks that I own on new vinyl that I have amassed over the last two years or so. I now only buy new music on vinyl too, so I really have to want an album before I buy it. No more frivolous purchases. I have written in previous posts about why I started buying vinyl, as well as the benefits of a less is more approach to acquiring music, but as I recently bought my 100th long-player (clue above) it seemed like a good a time as any to look back on what I now focus my listening on.

This list doesn't quite represent what I would claim are the best 100 albums of all time. Instead it is a combination of albums I do think should be in such a list, but also those that I have some reason to be nostalgic about and are meaningful to me, as well as a few rash purchases when I had money in my pocket and found myself in a record shop. Limiting myself to new and currently available vinyl does result in some glaring omissions and a few albums I definitely consider great are missing. Neil Young's On The Beach being one that springs to mind. Indeed the whole Doom Trilogy is missing. But it does give me something to look forward to should he ever get round to reissuing them on vinyl. In fact these were due a Record Store Day box set release this April but look to have been delayed until November...we'll see.

While the Bob Dylan albums here may not form many people's sole recommendations for where to start with him, there is nothing very unusual on the list. In fact nearly a third of these albums feature in the 2011 edition of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. A few of less well-known cuts (Vernon Wray, Jim Ford, Chris Darrow, Bobby Charles) I've been steered towards either by digging into the influences of more recent artists or by sites such as Aquarium Drunkard.

So, what might you make of this list. Well, I like music made in the 60s and 70s, particularly between 69-75. I like Neil Young too. I also like music being made now that draws on the same aesthetics (Wooden Wand and Hiss Golden Messenger for example). That is to say, organic sounding records made by people who really care about the music they are making and make it with sincerity. Where I have written about the albums in these pages before I have included links.

So, in broadly the order I bought them, here they are:

1. Poor Moon - Hiss Golden Messenger
2. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground
3. The Creek Drank The Cradle - Iron & Wine
4. Being There - Wilco
5. Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys
6. In Rainbows - Radiohead
7. Loaded - The Velvet Underground
8. L.A. Turnaround - Bert Jansch
9. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco
10. Fleet Foxes + Sun Giant EP - Fleet Foxes
11. After The Gold Rush - Neil Young
12. De Stijl - The White Stripes
13. Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
14. Plant and See - Plant and See
15. for Emma, forever ago - Bon Iver
16. Exile On Main Street - The Rolling Stones
17. You Are Free - Cat Power
18. Bad Debt - Hiss Golden Messenger
19. Rubber Factory - The Black Keys
20. Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan
21. Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers - Gene Clark & The Gosdin Brothers
22. Twins - Ty Segall
23. Smoke Ring For My Halo - Kurt Vile
24. All Night Long - Junior Kimbrough & The Soul Blues Boys
25. The Rough Guide To Blues Legends: John Lee Hooker: Birth Of A Legend - John Lee Hooker
26. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Neil Young
27. Either/Or - Elliott Smith
28. The Stooges - The Stooges
29. No Other - Gene Clark
30. The Band - The Band
31. The Fantastic Expedition Of Dillard & Clark - Dillard & Clark
32. Harvest - Neil Young
33. #1 Record - Big Star
34. Marquee Moon - Television
35. Neil Young - Neil Young
36. Revolver - The Beatles
37. Forever Changes - Love
38. Surf's Up - The Beach Boys
39. I Can't Stand The Rain - Ann Peebles
40. The Dictionary Of Soul - Otis Redding
41. Man In The Hills - Burning Spear
42. Live At Massey Hall 1971 - Neil Young
43. Harlan County - Jim Ford
44. Bend Beyond - Woods
45. Wrecked Again - Michael Chapman
46. Lord I Love The Rain - Hiss Golden Messenger
47. Root Work - Hiss Golden Messenger
48. Big Inner - Matthew E. White
49. King Of The Delta Blues Singers - Robert Johnson
50. The Beatles (White Album) - The Beatles
51. Pink Moon - Nick Drake
52. Blood Oaths of the New Blues - Wooden Wand
53. Briarwood - Wooden Wand & The Briarwood Virgins
54. Haw - Hiss Golden Messenger
55. Golden Gunn - Golden Gunn
56. Artist Proof - Chris Darrow
57. Impossible Truth - William Tyler
58. Fully Qualified Survivor - Michael Chapman
59. Country Funk 1969 - 1975 - Various Artists
60. Delta Swamp Rock - Sounds From The South : At The Crossroads Of Rock, Country And Soul - Various Artists
61. Time Off - Steve Gunn
62. Music From Big Pink - The Band
63. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
64. White Light - Gene Clark
65. Workingman's Dead - Grateful Dead
66. Jessica Pratt - Jessica Pratt
67. Wasted - Vernon Wray
68. Garra - Marcos Valle
69. Cerulean Salt - Waxahatchee
70. Promised Land Sound - Promised Land Sound
71. Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes - Elizabeth Cotten
72. Nashville Skyline - Bob Dylan
73. John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan
74. Long Journey - Michael Hurley
75. Wooden Wand & the World War IV - Wooden Wand & the World War IV
76. Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan
77. Corsicana Lemonade - White Denim
78. Solar Motel - Chris Forsyth
79. Born With The Caul - Cian Nugent & The Cosmos
80. The Magnolia Electric Co. (10 Year Anniversary Edition) - Songs: Ohia
81. Jesus I'm a Sinner - Daniel Bachman
82. Live At The Cellar Door - Neil Young
83. Blue Rider - Zachary Cale
84. Unhalfbricking - Fairport Convention
85. Jackson C.Frank - Jackson C. Frank
86. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard & Linda Thompson
87. Bobby Charles - Bobby Charles
88. Bad Debt [reissue] - Hiss Golden Messenger
89. Live at Fillmore East - Neil Young
90. Hard For To Win & Can't Be Won - Nathan Salsburg
91. Nixon - Lambchop
92. The Immortal - Mississippi John Hurt
93. Atlas - Real Estate
94. Bill Withers - Just As I Am
95. Neil Young - Zuma
96. Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze
97. Phosphorescent - Muchacho
98. The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream
99. Funky Kingston - Toots & the Maytals
100. Radio City - Big Star

Live At The Cellar Door by Neil Young

Live at the Cellar Door is the latest in Neil Young’s Performance Series of archive concert releases. That it is numbered 2.5 in the series, chronologically following volume two (Live at the Fillmore East from March 1970) and preceding the third instalment (Live at Massey Hall 1971), suggests the tapes for this gig have surfaced since the original release schedule was drawn up. Or maybe it’s just Neil being Neil, cantankerous as ever. Indeed, much of the early talk around this release has focused on how chronologically close the performance is to the Massey Hall concert, which was recorded only one month later. There has therefore been some disgruntlement that this has been an opportunity missed to release something from another period, say the late ‘70s, which is as yet uncovered by the Performance Series. This of course will not stop people buying it, not least because those who already own Massey Hall will most likely be Neil devotees and they’ll want this too. And rightly so. This comes from arguably Young’s most fertile period, when he was so prolific he was playing songs live he would not get round to recording released versions of until years later, if at all. But with Massey Hall considered by many to be the last word on early 1970s solo Neil live, does Cellar Door have anything to add?

Cellar Door shares seven of its 13 tracks with Massey Hall. Where Massey Hall points towards Harvest, Cellar Door focuses on his third solo album, After the Gold Rush (released just three months before this gig), along with songs from his time with Buffalo Springfield. Interestingly, it ignores his first self-titled solo album altogether. This set feels more intimate than Massey Hall but also more tentative, reflecting perhaps the fact that these shows were considered a warm-up for a Carnegie Hall gig a few days later. Given the quality of the songwriting this isn’t really a criticism and the tracks come over as fresh and new born. There is also less of the rambling, albeit charming, between-song banter that peppered Massey Hall. The main exception is the introduction to ‘Flying On The Ground Is Wrong’ when Young gives a suitably stoned-sounding explanation that the song is about dope. If anything, the crowd is even more polite than Massey Hall, which only adds to the intimacy.

As with Massey Hall, Cellar Door mixes acoustic guitar tracks with songs demonstrating Young’s elegant and understated piano playing.  In fact, it’s the piano songs that provide many of the highlights, such as a majestic ‘Expecting To Fly’. Most notable though is the rare, and beautiful, piano version of ‘Cinnamon Girl’, which given it is one of his early signature guitar songs, shouldn’t work but does (“That’s the first time I ever did that one on the piano” he notes at the end). It also features the first performances of ‘Old Man’ (the only track to appear from Harvest, which was still over a year away) and ‘See The Sky About To Rain’, which didn’t surface officially until On The Beach, four years later.

Given the man’s track record, Young fans are used to erratic release schedules and they should soon stop worrying about what could have been released. With Neil you never know what’s around the corner anyway. Whether Cellar Door is better or worse than Massey Hall is somewhat irrelevant – it’s just wonderful to have both. As one contributor to a discussion board on a Neil Young fan site says, “Repetition doesn’t matter, hearing the performances does.” We couldn’t agree more.

This review originally appeared for Muso's Guide in December 2013.

As a postscript, Neil Young News, a news blog from fan site Thrasher's Wheat, returned to the old Cellar Door venue to 'recreate' the gatefold photo used for the album. Read more here.

Year-end List

I thought I would share the list of albums I submitted to Muso's Guide for their year-end list. Interestingly, I feel as if I have been much more engaged with music this year, although not because I've listened to more. I have actually had less money to spend on it and this has meant buying less and listening more. I think my listening experiences have been better for it. I've also focused my buying on vinyl, so less frivolous 'only ever to be listened to once' downloads. Add to that the fact that I've been casting the net a little closer to shore; I've paid attention to the output fewer labels and blogs, but really engaged with the ones I have followed. Of course this approach means there will have been much great stuff released this year I simply won't have listened to, but a manageable and deep listening experience seems preferable to me.

Paradise of Bachelors releases are most heavily represented here, a consistently brilliant label I've written about before. That's a selection of their back covers to the right, all of which feature in my list. As ever I have also kept a close eye on what Light In The Attic have been up to; more unwieldy but always interesting. This hasn't been to the exclusion of other labels, but these are the two I return to most often to see what they are up to.

The writers who have consistently pointed me in the direction of great music have been John Mulvey (of Uncut Magazine. I strongly recommend you follow his Wild Mercury Sound blog) and the Aquarium Drunkard site generally, but particularly Tyler Wilcox (also check out his Doom & Gloom From The Tomb musings). Where possible I have added links to relevant articles for each album.

Anyhow, here you go (in no particular conscious order):

1. Hiss Golden Messenger - Haw
2. William Tyler - Impossible Truth (reviewed for Muso's Guide here - that's the back cover at the top)
3. Steve Gunn - Time Off
4. Wooden Wand- Blood Oaths of the New Blues
5. Matthew E White - Big Inner
6. Michael Chapman - Wrecked Again (reissue)
7. Kurt Vile - Wakin' on a Pretty Daze
8. White Denim -  Corsicana Lemonade
9. Lal Waterson - Teach Me to Be a Summers Morning (reissue)
10. Chris Forsyth - Solar Motel
11. Bob Dylan - Another Self Portrait (reissue)
12. Golden Gunn - Golden Gunn
13. Promised Land Sound - Promised Land Sound

To this I would definitely add a couple of late entries that I have only just got hold of:

14. Neil Young - Live At Cellar Door (I reviewed this for Muso's Guide here)

15. Daniel Bachman - Jesus I'm A Sinner

Folk, Blues & Beyond by Davy Graham

This is definitely an example of an album I would not have been aware of were it not for my father. The fact that he had had a radio show on an RAF base that he named after it slipped out in conversation in the way you often hear of your parents past. It comes from a time when the back cover was a story and piece of literature in itself. There is wonderful commentary about each song and the back cover literally speaks for itself.

My interest in Graham was piqued by the fact that he had written Angi, later played by Bert Jansch and Paul Simon. Always in the shadows, including extended periods in retirement, a few years before his death I was surprised to learn that he was playing in a small club down the road from where I lived in Crouch End, London at the time. I duly went along and saw a man who can only have been a shadow of his former self. Almost toothless, which must have affected his singing, but I don't recall this, or indeed whether he sang at all. I think I was just amazed that someone who had been so influential* was yards away from me playing in a tiny venue, well passed his prime, but still doing what he loved.

*he is credited with introducing the DADGAD guitar tuning to the English folk scene, which was subsequently used by John Renbourn, Bert Jansch and Jimmy Page.

Wasted by Vernon Wray

I had not even heard of this album nor its creator six months ago and I only had a passing knowledge of Link Wray, Vernon's younger but more famous brother. Link tends to feature in 'best guitarists' lists, principally due to his 1958 instrumental hit 'Rumble' (on which Vernon played alongside their other brother Doug as the Raymen). Link has also featured on two great compilations that I've played a lot over the last couple of years (Country Funk on Light In the Attic and Delta Swamp Rock on Soul Jazz Records). But this is about Vernon.

I first read about Wasted in T. Klepach's appreciation of the album on the excellent Aquarium Drunkard blog (where incidentally I also first heard about Chris Darrow's Artist Proof, another 'lost classic' which will no doubt get a post of its own at some point and I would urge anyone to search it out). I was then reminded of it again when I saw Grayson Currin, who writes for Pitchfork and others (he recently wrote a great piece on Hiss Golden Messenger for Indy Week), rate it in his 'top five'. Seemed worth digging further.

The back cover is an illustration by Rick Cole who also took the front cover photograph. If that weren't enough, he  played on the album too. The illustration depicts the Wray's "family recording studio, which had a number of temporary homes that included the family grocery store before coming to a temporary rest in a ramshackle shed on the family property in Accokeek, Maryland where it was famously dubbed Wray's Shack 3 Tracks." Klepach goes on; "[i]n the spring of ‘72 [Vernon] packed up the back wall of the recording shack and high-tailed it to Tuscon, AZ to “mellow out”. In Tuscon he rebuilt the recording studio renaming it Vernon Wray’s Record Factory after upgrading it to eight tracks from three. It was here that Vernon was able to put to tape his much mellower solo work released in two batches as “Superstar at My House” and “Wasted”. The former being released exclusively on cassette and 8-track tape, and the latter by Vermillion Records on vinyl in a run of about 400 copies sold only at shows in Tuscon. Both albums are extremely rare and prized." With his drawing Cole echoes the laid-back countrified feel of the songs within. Note too the '(+5)' in the credits after Wray's Shack 3 Tracks acknowledging the upgrade to 8-track! 

Having been reissued on vinyl by Sebastian Speaks, William Tyler's Nashville-based label, I was surprised, but grateful, to find it in Drift Records in Totnes. Wasted is a record full of soul that has a wonderful feel. Ghostcapital gets it right: it "[b]rings to mind a Waylon-type Highwayman cutting a handful of lonesome, stoned-out 70s demos with ocassional help from the likes of, say, Lee Hazlewood." For more on Vernon, see here.

Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes

With their full-length self-titled debut, Fleet Foxes found themselves at the top of many of 2008's 'album of the year' lists. When you look back, sometimes these lists only serve to highlight albums that fail to stand the test of time. But last year it featured well in Pitchfork's People's List, coming in 18th place in a reader-compiled poll of the 200 best albums released in the life of the website up to that point (1996-2011).

The album's cover, a reproduction of Pieter Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs, echoed the music inside; seemingly of another time and out of step with the prevailing trends. The back cover, with its somewhat medieval font, while nothing particularly noteworthy in itself, continues this sense of displacement.

As with other albums featured here, it is likely I first heard about the band through The Guardian's Paul Lester via his excellent New Band of the Day (have another read, its always refreshing to revisit what people thought of a band before they became the critic's darlings). Also from the Guardian, a nice piece here by Jonathan Jones on judging albums by their cover, in which he concludes, "[a]s for Fleet Foxes, the thrill of their cover is that it ignores all convention and fashion - instead of a designer image here is raw art. It is a classic, and so is the recording inside." The album artwork went on to win the Art Vinyl prize for best cover that year.

As lead singer Robin Pecknold told Drowned In Sound: "“When you first see that painting it’s very bucolic, but when you look closer there’s all this really strange stuff going on, like dudes defecating coins into the river and people on fire, people carving a live sheep, this weird dude who looks like a tree root sitting around with a dog. There’s all this really weird stuff going on. I liked that the first impression is that it’s just pretty, but then you realise that the scene is this weird chaos. I like that you can’t really take it for what it is, that you’re first impression of it is wrong.”