Sonny Sharrock – Black Woman

Black Woman

Sonny SharrockBlack Woman Vortex 2014 (1969)


There was no hesitation in Sonny (& Linda) Sharrock’s debut album Black Woman.  It is an album so wonderfully a part of the late 1960s.  In that post-’68 time period, this feeling was about that there was no need for hesitation.  Call it naive, call it short-sighted.  What certainly did happen then was something that in the next 40 years never had such momentum.  Truth be told, Sharrock only got better as a guitarist from here on out.  But the psychedelic, free-spirited guitar and awesome (mostly) wordless shrieks from Linda really go where few if any had gone before in jazz.  Here was music that recalled folk, blues, gospel and other bits and pieces of the Afro-American vernacular without submitting to any genre constraints.  And how is this for a song title: “Portrait of Linda in Three Colors, All Black”!?  “Blind Willie”, a tribute to Blind Willie Johnson, would show up again in a new form on Sharrock’s Guitar album.  The music here bears some resemblances to that of Don Cherry (Sonny played with him around this time) minus the non-Western influences.  This is an album — especially side two — that should put a smile on your face.  And that is its biggest triumph.

How Many Roads: Black America Sings Bob Dylan

How Many Roads: Black America Sings Bob Dylan

Various ArtistsHow Many Roads: Black America Sings Bob Dylan Ace CDCHD 1278 (2010)


Bob Dylan biographer Howard Sounes made the claim that black America was largely unaware of Dylan.  The compilation How Many Roads: Black America Sings Bob Dylan seems intended to disprove Sounes’ statement.  Yet, in the end, it probably lends support to Sounes’s position.  Most of these tracks are soul and R&B covers, particularly from the 1960s and 70s (though tracks are from as recent as 1990).  But a careful examination shows many of these to be B-sides and filler album tracks.  In other words, it often feels like some of these artists are covering Dylan not out of a sense of connection, but perhaps to garner crossover appeal to white audiences.  Of course, there are exceptions.  Solomon Burke does a kick-ass rendition of “Maggie’s Farm” with a lot of guts.  But probably the highlight here is a stunning a cappella doo-wop rendition of “The Man in Me” by the one-and-only Persuasions (who released an entire album of Dylan covers, Knockin’ on Bob’s Door).

Turbonegro – Ass Cobra

Ass Cobra

TurbonegroAss Cobra Boomba 001-2 (1996)


My favorite Turbonegro album.  It’s got all the gay raunch punk/metal that I want.  With song names like “The Midnight NAMBLA,” you really shouldn’t be surprised by what you get here.  Old heavy metal kind of took itself too seriously, with pretensions to being deep and profound.  Turbonegro took all the allusions and implied meanings of old metal and put them into a sarcastic, campy, blunt package that leaned heavily on hardcore punk sounds for enjoyment at a very superficial level, where that stuff belongs.

Sam Mitrani – The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

Link to an article by Sam Mitrani:

“Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People”

Bonus links: The Truth About Crime: Sovereignty, Knowledge, Social Order (plus interview) and “Police and the Wealth of Nations: Déjà Vu or Unfinished Business?” and “Police and Plunder” by Peter Linebaugh and “New York City: Aggressive ‘Broken Windows’ Policing but Carte Blanche for Banksters” by William K. Black and Alain Badiou Quote

Lucinda Williams – Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams

Lucinda WilliamsLucinda Williams Rough Trade ROUGH US 47 (1988)


Lucinda was a key voice in the emergence of what would be called insurgent or alt(ernative) country.  What separate this kind of country from others was, above all, the affinity for a less working class, more urban audience.  It metastasized through the influence from the rock world.  Lucinda Williams was released on a record label associated with what was then known as college rock, whose biggest act, well, ever, was the jangle-pop post-punk outfit The Smiths.  The connection between these audiences is immediately apparent in the jangle rock trappings of the album’s single, “Passionate Kisses,” which sounds only a half step away from an R.E.M. hit.  But it’s also there on the opener “I Just Want to See You So Bad,” which has organ backing and some thin, icy guitar riffs that resemble vaguely Elvis Costello.  She’s name-checking the gritty urban modern rock of The Velvet Underground in the liner notes too.  But Lucinda still sings with a clear and light yet sturdy southern twang — her voice here is smoother, more athletic and nimble (not unlike Sheryl Crow) than the grittier, coarser instrument it became years later.  Among everything brought to bear on the album, the country roots are still a dominant force.  In the slower patches (“Big Red Sun Blues,” “Am I Too Blue”) there are echoes of what Emmylou Harris was doing in the 1980s, though with considerably more bite (Emmylou was dreadfully boring then).  The biggest feature is that Lucinda embodies the Texas strain of country music, not (underlined) the Nashville establishment.  This was the sort path leading from Austin, TX that Willie Nelson beat out years earlier (albeit to New York City rather than L.A.).  She was doing something similar, but with a host of new influences.

Lyrically, Lucinda is really great at bringing out a female perspective.  These aren’t the usual songs about some guy chasing after girls who frankly would prefer the protagonist wouldn’t, Lucinda sings about turning away and shedding the burdens brought on by male companions.  So we have “Changed the Locks” (“I changed the lock on my front door / So you can’t see me anymore”), “Side of the Road” (“I wanna know you’re there, but I wanna be alone / If only for a minute or two”) and so on.  But even if some of these share some of characteristics of the “guy breaking away from social bonds” theme of so much music in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that perspective is totally re-contextualized coming from a woman.  Of course, that isn’t all we get.  She’s also singing about longing (“I Just Wanted to See You so Bad”), ambition (“The Night’s Too Long”), growth (“Crescent City”), and all the other flotsam and jetsam or everyday life.  People like to say her songs seem lived in.  That’s about right.

For all its highlights (“Passionate Kisses,” “Side of the Road,” “Changed the Locks”), Lucinda Williams still has its misfires.  There is plenty of filler and quite a few songs that seem to speak to an audience that isn’t around anymore.  Some of these performances plod along, and on the receiving end it feels like being stuck listening to somebody speaking at a microphone who is slowing down the tempo of the room to the point that everyone has to come to a halt and listen, rather than continue on with their lives and absorb the words into ones now richer for the experience.  Nothing is bad, exactly, but some of this seems to overstay its welcome.

This was still a jolt to the notion that country music wouldn’t or couldn’t appeal to the generation of disaffected urban youths listening to rock music who came up after the punk explosion.  The influence?  It echoed long after this album.  Leading insurgent Country magazine No Depression‘s “artist of the decade” in the 1990s, Alejandro Escovedo, was cribbing bits of this more than a decade later (he borrowed guitar licks from “Like a Rose” for “Follow You Down” on A Man Under the Influence and her “Crescent City” seems to be imbued in his “I Was Drunk” from Bourbonitis Blues).  Just like with the aforementioned Mr. Willie Nelson, Lucinda made it seem like a lot of different strains of music could coalesce into something that seemed unlike the specifics of any of the sources.  Part of that appeal was to the vanity of the audience, distinguishing themselves as being above the fray of parochial musical genre boundaries.  But, again, Lucinda was doing much more than offering that kind of flattery.  Her music was reflective, even pensive, taking the time to inhabit its worlds and actually embody its contours in subtle detail rather than just describe its themes from without, in a period when a lot of music was done in high contrast, without any shades of gray.  If this was a little shaky at times, aside from its rather magnificent highlights, Lucinda still had much more to come.

Lucinda Williams – Blessed

Blessed

Lucinda WilliamsBlessed Lost Highway (2011)


Lucinda still has it here.  She juggles a few different styles on Blessed.  There is some stuff in Steve Earle/Bruce Springsteen mode (“Buttercup”), some in the “atmospheric” style of producer Daniel Lanois‘ efforts on Teatro, Time Out of Mind, etc. (“Kiss Like Your Kiss”), and plenty of acoustic guitar-driven singer-songwriter stuff (most of the middle of the album).  But, per usual, you get a woman’s perspective that allows the songs to transcend whatever similarities they may have in structure to music from the boys.

U2 – The Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree

U2The Joshua Tree Island U2 6 (1987)


I suppose it’s all the rage to trash this, but I would have to be a real dick to do that.  It is so popular and well known that it is just too easy to take pot shots at.  The thing is, it’s great and most bands would be lucky to ever make an album half this good.  Music geeks: get over the fact that this appeals to more people than the cult/underground/indie crap you love.  Its wide appeal makes it no less valid.  U2’s music really only works when they focus on the winsome romanticism that propels most of this album.  When they try to sound like “legendary rockers”,  the “newest reinvention of rock”, a copy of any number of post-punk groups, or some other appropriation, which sorry to say is most of the time, they sound positively contrived and annoying, with emphasis on the annoying part (uh, Bono, looking in your direction).  I can’t say this is a particular favorite of mine, but it’s a classic nonetheless.