MUSIC THREAD

Exactly what I meant DFN - they pretty much died out after 60's . But they have a great body of work.  After the beatles , stones and the  who they fall into that 2nd tier like the Kinks.  Because the Kinks stayed around more started to realize how good they were.

I am trying to envision JR driving through Toronto in the 60's belting out House of the Rising sun

 

Back in the late 60's, maybe '67 or '68, there was this great group that I believe was out of San Francisco.

A friend had one of their albums so I know they were for real, but using eBay or Amazon has not led to any hits.

The group was called "Fever Tree".

Anyone know who I am referring to??

 

I didn't get around to posting anything about it last week, but I saw the Boss' new band's first live performance at Jazz Fest in NOLA. It was a tremendous show. That description by Rolling Stone is accurate. They rocked out folk music like I wouldn't have imagined. (Still, there were jackasses behind us yelling, "When you come back for the encore, leave the f---ing fiddles behind!" Dolts.) I think I counted 16 or so people on stage: four- or five-piece horn section, two fiddlers, banjo player, accordian player, three (or four?) guitarists, a guy who swapped between pedal steel and dobro (only electrified instrument), a pianist, three backup singers, drummer. I'm sure I left somebody out, but the group bow at the end of the set spanned the entire set. He kept prefacing songs with statements like, "This song was writting in 1912," and things like that. He did an Irish anti-war ballad from the 1810s that featured a line talking about a guy losing both his legs to a cannon ball that made you think of Iraq. I couldn't hear most of Springsteen's between-song banter, but much of it was political, obviously. He played long past the 7 p.m. mandatory stop time, an extra 30 minutes or so. He started his encore with My City's in Ruins, and if you didn't have a tear in your eye you were dead. It wasn't the first tear-jerking line of the set by any means (see, "Oh Mary Don't you Weep" and the lyric "God gave Noah the rainbow sign/'No more water but fire next time'/Pharaoh's army got drownded/O Mary don't you weep"; or any moment in "We Shall Overcome). In "Ruins," when he got to the "Rise Up" part, the audience without prompting threw their hands up, Gospel Tent-style. I'll never foget that show. Just wish they would have sold the live recording. Hopefully, he'll release it nationally as a fundraiser.

OK, enough sap. Other obscure acts I saw and recommend: Jeremy Lyons and Deltabilly Boys and theNew Orleans Klezmer All-Stars. Neither will ever sniff the mainstream. One guy I heard for the first time and loved was Eric Lindell. Fantastic blues guitarist who jammed the Fais Do Do Stage (my fave) on Friday. Theresa Andersson was great Saturday. For the ladies, she sings great and plays a mean fiddle; for the guys, she sings great, plays a mean fiddle and is hot as hell. Anybody who wouldn't hit it is lying.

I'll spare you reviews of the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra (but they were good, too)

 

I love "Crazy" but haven't heard the rest of it. That song is pretty catchy. Damn near infectious.

 

"Crazy" is easily the best one on there, I think, but the rest of the album is pretty damn good. And I'm not a hip-hop fan at all.

 

Nada Surf's "Armies Walk" is one of my favorite songs out there right now.

 

I'm going to get killed for this, but my favorite Kinks albums are all from the late 70s and early 80s. Love "Village Green," love the early singles and all the Anglo stuff -- but nothing beats "Give the People What They Want" and "Low Budget" for me.

 

Give The People What They Want is a great record (love "Around The Dial" and the title track) as is the One For The Road live album they released in 1980.

 

After seeing it on the top of a lot of critic's lists from 2005, I recently bought "Illinois" by Sufjan Stevens. I found it weird at first, but once I burned a copy without all the riff raff (songs under two minutes with no lyrics), I really started to get hooked.

Now I'm thinking of buying his Michigan CD, but wondered if anybody owned it who could give a recommendation? Is it worth my ten bucks?

 

In that second tier, I'd also include the Zombies. ... Odessey and Oracle is an awesome album, and they split up before they really got rolling. Definitely in the same class as The Animals and Kinks.

 

If you haven't heard of them, listen to Procal Harum, the greatest hits album. The song "Power Failure" has a nasty drum solo on it.

 

Some might call it a guilty pleasure, but years ago, when I couldn't find the 10cc single "I'm Not in Love," I broke down and bought a used CD by the group called, "Mirror Mirror."

Turned out to be one of the most used CDs in the collection. Tons of good, soft pop music.