We’re Back !
Jan 29, 2012 Rant, Youtube Clip
The Broken Jukebox has been plugged in for another attempt at consistent posting. I am going to try to stick to a 5-6 post a week schedule starting this week.
Mondays are for YouTube clips, Tuesdays and Thursdays are for reviews, Wednesdays I will post something random and Fridays will be a list of five.
Starting in March of this year the Artist of the Month will be restarted as well. I am going to try my best to resurrect the podcast series, starting by locating and posting the long lost Scott Miller podcast that was recording in the Fall of 2010 and never put up due to technical difficulties.
I figure that if I can stick to this schedule and perhaps get our old friend George Douglas back in the fold and maybe another writer or two this site can be kicking again.
Now, I know I just said that Mondays are for YouTube clips but, in memory of the late great Etta James, here are a couple of live Etta clips:
Now, I know I just said that Mondays are for YouTube clips but, in memory of the late great Etta James, here are a couple of live Etta clips:
R.I.P. Matt Scott
May 15, 2010 Rant
You may be asking yourself, who the hell is Matt Scott ? Matt Scott was an uncle of mine that I was very close to for years and he’s been on my mind a lot lately.
To fully understand why this is relevant and why I have been thinking of him recently, I must give you the short version of the back story of our relationship. I grew up pretty close to him and my aunt; my mother and I even lived with them for a short time when I was too young to remember it. For most of my youth he was just my uncle. When I was 18 or 19 we were all at a family gathering and he asked me if I knew who Keb’ Mo’ was out of the blue. Well, I was absolutely floored, never having thought about what it was my Uncle Matt listened to much less figuring he was into Keb’ Mo’.
This new discovery led to us spending the entire evening discussing different blues guys and finding out that we shared an obsession with not only blues, but all kinds of music. Over the next few years he became one of if not my best friend. We shared many a night with good smoke and better music. He was the only person in my family that not only understood my need to own more music than one person could ever need, but he had the same affliction.
At least once a week we would get together and play the game of “have you heard… (insert artist name) and copying the other’s cd’s. He turned me on to Steve Earle and Billy Joe Shaver. In turn I got him into Gov’t Mule and the Drive-by Truckers. We would go on to discover a plethora of new artists together. I remember the first time I heard Todd Snider. I had traded for a Snider show and was listening to it in my car, three songs in my plans had changed, I was going to Matt’s because he had to hear this guy.
All of this has been filling my mind lately because Fred Eaglesmith has released a new album and I am eagerly awaiting it’s arrival in my mailbox. Fred was one of Matt and my best discoveries. I had just arrived home late one evening from work and I got a phone call. On the other end of the phone was an excited Uncle Matt, “you have to come over now and hear what I just downloaded”. I had no choice, I changed clothes and headed over.
When I walked in the door there was a song playing on his computer that immediately had me intrigued after only hearing the chorus…
Time to get a gun
That’s what I’m thinkin’
I could afford one
If I did a little less drinkin’
Time to put something
Between me and the sun
When the talkin’ is over
It’s time to get a gun
What the hell was this and more importantly why had I never heard it before. Matt goes on to tell me, this is Fred Eaglesmith, an artist he had stumbled onto and found a few tracks of on limewire or something. He proceeded to play me, “Alcohol and Pills”, “Spookin’ the Horses”, “He’s a Good Dog”, and “Wilder Than Me” . Man, was this stuff good.
The next day, he and I went to the locally owned record store (remember when those existed) and had the proprietor order us up some Eaglesmtih albums. (Side note: There is a lesson here record companies…we downloaded, liked, and immediately bought everything available) . Over the next couple of weeks we digested as much Fred as we could possibly stand.
To this day anytime I hear anything by Fred, I immediately think of Matt. There are so many songs that were just perfect for my uncle. He was a car guy (“Pontiac”, “Mighty Big Car”) who drove fast (“105″) and who loved his dogs more than most humans (“He’s a Dog”, “I Shot Your Dog”) . He was also not a perfect man and Fred had songs that addressed that as well (“Drinkin’ Too Much”).
My Uncle Matt passed away very unexpectedly at a fairly young age. He had given up drinking and was getting all of his health problems under control so it came as a total shock when I got the call saying he had died. It’s been going on three years now that he has been gone. I was two days away from leaving for my wedding when he died and I thought he would not have wanted me to dwell on his passing. I don’t think I ever have really come to terms with his death, but I do so a little at a time. My aunt has since married again to a great guy, who takes care of her, but sometimes it’s hard for me to see her without Matt and I’m not sure that will ever go away.
As they were cleaning out his things, my father called asked me if there was anything that I wanted of his to remember him. I thought long and hard and decided that no, none of his material possessions could ever give me the memories of my Uncle that the music we shared would, so I didn’t need anything. So now whenever I am looking through a cd case of mine I will come across an album or a mixed disc with his writing on it and I have to listen to it. They inevitably make me sad and happy at the same time.
So in a week or so my copy of Cha, Cha, Cha will arrive via the postal service and I will spend a couple of hours listening to it and assuredly Matt’s memory will come up. I know everyone has a person in their past that leaps into their minds when a certain song, album, or artists comes out of the speakers. I’m not talking about the annoying ex-girlfriend who played the shit out of Janis Joplin, but rather someone who you have shared a positive musical experience with. I’m asking you to join me in remembering those people this week and break out that old tune, have a drink, laugh, cry a little and just remember.
In Matt’s Memory here a couple of Youtube clips, the first is Fred Eaglesmith “Time to Get a Gun” and the second his personal theme song, “Mustang Sally” performed by Buddy Guy.
Tags: Billy Joe Shaver, Drive-by Truckers, Family, Fred Eaglesmith, Gov't Mule, Steve Earle, todd snider, Youtube Clip
Rediscovering The Dead
May 7, 2010 Rant
I’m sure like me, many of you have been burnt out a band for one reason or another. For me that band was the Grateful Dead. During my teens and early twenties everyone I hung out with were Deadheads. Subsequently all we ever listened to was the Dead or some band closely related to them. Like many a youth I was hooked.
I listened non-stop, collected a treasure trove of live shows, and immersed myself into the music. The Dead opened so many doors for me musically, not just in what they played. So often I’d hear a song and find out that it was a cover and begin looking into where it came from. While my tastes have always been very eclectic, there were many times that a specific song or artist they covered was something I was not already familiar with.
Over time I begin to tire of constantly hearing the same ol’ stuff wherever I went and more and more I found myself not wanting to listen to them at all if I was alone or the one in control of what was playing. With the passing years I always considered the Dead one of my favorite bands, but rarely did I listen to them. I listened to a lot of their various side projects when I felt the urge and when they came on shuffle I often go ahead and skip to the next track.
Within the last week I have begun the daunting task of compiling all of my live shows on my computer from cd. When I started I thought, what the hell, I’ll start with the largest quantity which happened to be the 700 or so Dead shows I have gathered. As I was making my way through the decades of material I started to listen to random things.
The more I listened the more I remembered why I like them in the first place… they were really fucking good. Here was a band with some serious live chops, that included a great lead guitar player, bass player, two killer drummers, and a plethora of keyboard players. Along with fine musicianship was the fact that at any given time one of three very good vocalists (four if you count Phil Lesh’s Ben Steinlike monotonous drawl) would take the mic and a show or album could take on a whole different feeling.
To top it all off, the songs are great. Obviously like any artist there are gonna be some bad albums (Go to Heaven, anyone? ) and some songs or performances that aren’t going to be your cup of tea (90% percent of anything that Donna Jean could be found screaching on) but with a catalog that spans thirty years and countless available live shows it’s easy to pick through the rare downers and find the gems.
I’ve really been listening to these live shows a lot. I now immediately skip all versions of Space or Drums (because let’s face it those were for times when mind altering substances weren’t limited to only sleep deprivation), I’m not really one for most instrumental music in the first place. I do however still marvel at their ability to seemingly slide into any genre whether it be rock, country, bluegrassy, blues and do it well.
Some of the stuff I am really getting sucked back into right now are any of the Pigpen era shows because he has always been my favorite member of the Dead and I’m a fiend for some dirty blues. I am also really digging the shows from 1970 and 1980 that included the acoustic sets which were just laced with Jerry and Bobby singing country and traditional folk covers as well as songs that fit that bill from their own songbook. Finally I am loving the shows where Brent Mydland came into his own and began singing more, think 1982.
Also worth noting, I have been obsessed with downloading Phil and Friends shows now. I never really was a fan of Phil singing but I love Warren Haynes who was the singer/guitar with Phil for like three years.Also as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I am obsessed with Jackie Greene who for the last two or three years has been handling a lot of the vocals for Phil as well as playing guitar and keyboards. Interestingly enough, Greene was not a Dead fan prior to being asked by Lesh to join him and was discovering these great songs as he was learning to play them.
At the end of the day I guess the lesson for me is that some of the things we write off or forget about really are worth remembering and experiencing again. I am having a great time dancing in my mind to all these songs and once again I know why it is that it takes me ten scrolls to get through The Grateful Dead section of Itunes.
Tags: bob weir, bootlegs, brent mydland, grateful dead, Jackie Greene, jerry garcia, phil lesh, pigpen, warren haynes
We are live…. Sort of
Apr 8, 2010 Rant
Broken Jukebox is now up and running. While I have not had the chance to really change the look of the basic wordpress site, I’ve decided to go ahead and start posting. I have added some links to other music blogs I enjoy if you know of any others please let me know. I think to start I’m going to review some albums that have been released in the last couple of months that I have been digging. I hope you all like this.
