Anxiety, apathy, and adulthood are the only things keeping me from writing like I want to. And while only one of those three is intractable, the other two have some wicked inertia.
So, on to the rest of the J's it is.
/Blog couch talk-therapy
With LaLa out of bidness thanks to The Notorious J-O-Bs I don't know how I'll link to all these. But I guess I'll have to figure it out by the time I'm done with this post.
Joey Kneiser - "Adelina," The All-Night Bedroom Revival
Joey's already on the list as the lead singer/songwriter for the band Glossary. He is a master of mood, establishing an immediate coherence between the musical tone of each song and the theme or narrative of the lyric. Every album Glossary has recorded has at least one extraordinary song on it, a song that contends for the song of the year on any of the crazy mixed-up lists I make in my head. See this if you need further clarification.So why should his solo record be any exception? Overall, it is a very good album. Four out of five stars. Four and a half, even? Initially, I wasn't thrilled by the title, too verbose even for little ol' me, but after listening to the whole thing, it grew on me like only a title of true depth can.
The All-Night Bedroom Revival is about a songwriter who locks himself in his sleeping quarters and records an album, because if he doesn't he'll go crazy. It is about a couple who stays up all night talking about their relationship, beating it to death with words, resurrecting it with closeness and copulation, and perhaps killing it once again, the minute they leave the room. The album is a revival in the very Christian tent-meeting sense, but the leaping preacher is replaced by a quiet Southerner with a beat up Gibson guitar, stuck in a ten by ten rented room with worn wood floors and a sputtering ceiling fan. This preacher man favors the power of the word too, the words we speak to each other in our most bare and vulnerable moments. He cherishes the old-time religion of honesty in the face of loss and wants us to be baptized in the tears of love gone wrong and the sweat of love made right.
And once again, on an album full of well-made, intimate songs, Joey brings one that is simply perfect. I wouldn't change a thing about "Adelina." It jangles along like lovers do when they just don't quite know how to make the thing work, but, by God, some of it feels so goddamn good that they just can't quit until they've burned it to the ground. And until a whole lot of people have heard this song, it is most definitely underrated.
John Hammond - "2:19," Wicked Grin.
Growing up John Hammond, Jr. (actually, The Third) must've felt like making music was nothing less than his destiny. His dad was already an established music producer and helped establish the careers of many music luminaries from the Thirties into the Sixties. The elder Hammond was so important and influential to the popular music of the Twentieth Century that I will not even try to discuss it here. There are many books that address the subject.
His son became a gifted singer and guitarist with a moving Baritone. Hammond Jr. sounded as close to a Delta blues singer as any white boy who'd come along. And while he wrote some excellent tunes of his own, his racially ambiguous vocal chords and his family tree may have dictated the arc his career more than his own musical talent, which was abundant.
Since he was a teenager, Hammond has always sounded best singing other people's songs. No shame in that endeavor at all. But I can't imagine it was all roses and lollipops considering that his father is linked so closely with two of the most important original voices in the history of rock and roll. Nevertheless Johnny seemed to know that a great song could be both venerated and improved by a singer and player who cared about the rendering and fussed, in a good way, over every inch of the song. Whether that meant injecting new tropes into a classic, or just leaving perfect alone, John Hammond was, and still is, a GREAT cover artist.
On Wicked Grin, Hammond takes on the always polarizing Tom Waits. He plays the songs as straight ahead blues, taking care to avoid mimicking Waits' vocal idiosyncrasies. He employs some renowned blues session musicians to aid him in the endeavor, and even brings in Waits himself to help on the "I know I've Been Changed."
Every song is a gem, coaxing out the brilliant songwriting that is often obscured by Waits' madman howl. Waits' lyrical wit is even more apparent when delivered by Hammond, in his dry, off-hand manner. "You know there ain't no Devil, it's just God when he's drunk," becomes a convincing argument when Hammond says it, as opposed to street-corner raving as in Waits' original. The whole album is spectacular. Dance up close to a pretty girl on a hot night. Grab your man and tell him he ain't no good if he don't give you a sip of that whiskey. Get the record.
John Hammond may not have been a Dylan or a Springsteen, but he was one of the great musical apostles of the last hundred years. He knew that great art was more important than one person, in some cases, even more important than the person who created it. And that kind of dedication to continuing the legacy of great artists is always underrated.
