COVER: Counting Crows Rock Out on Gram Parsons

I am actually still alive, despite my two week absence from the blog. I'll cover some of the reasons for the delay in my next feature post, which I am working on, but in the interim, I wanted to drop a cover on here and mention that my "Stream Recordings" list just hit 500 albums linked (halfway for all you non-math types).

Counting Crows (my favorite band) released a new album of covers this week. Part of me was disappointed that it was a covers album because they hadn't released a studio album since 2008, but I still couldn't help but be excited. Lead singer Adam Duritz and his band sure know how to do a great cover. Based on their tracklist and the songs they have been playing live forever, the band loves to listen to music. In fact, in the liner notes, Duritz says "As much as I love our band, and I DO love our band, we were just one of a thousand bands, in one city among a thousand cities, and a lot of those bands were great or amazing in one way or another... I've never stopped being a fan." Really, one of their best skills is song selection, and they picked one of the 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die on the tracklist for this one.

"Return of the Grievous Angel" by Gram Parsons is one I discovered through Moon's book, and I can't claim that it really left much of an impression. I am way more into Parsons' work with the Byrds than his solo stuff. The Crows version was much more memorable to me, as they pick up the pace and get pretty rowdy on this one. The great lyrics are highlighted by the immediacy of the arrangement, the live energy of the band, and a couple kickass solos (one mandolin and one guitar).

Listen to the song here, then buy the whole album here.
Buy Gram Parson's GP/Grievous Angel here.

Letting the Recording Interfere with the Recordings

I'm not sure I am going to be able to keep up the pace once the job actually starts, plus grad school. I can listen to a lot of music in a day, but to write about it takes a bit longer, so I am going to have to start clustering my posts I think. So in this post I will cover the recordings I heard in the last few days:

Artist: Pablo Casals
Album: J.S. Bach, Suites for Cello
Recording #230
Stream the album here
Basically dinner music. Very nice dinner music, but pretty much just a guy playing the cello. What makes this interesting is to hear so much Bach all in a row, you start to recognize it a little bit. And it's also a very nice recording considering it was made in the '30's. I especially liked Suite 1, which was the most dinner suitable. Suite 2 was cool because it was a little more melancholic and actually had a few discordant moments that I didn't know was really even a part of baroque music.

Artist: Neko Case
Album: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Recording #100ish
Stream album here
This is an album I got from my brother early on when I picked up the book. I already had Neko's album "Blacklisted" and all her work with the excellent band The New Pornographers. I had high hopes for this one because "Blacklisted" is one of my 100 favorite album (yes, there is a list), but I think Tom got it wrong on this one. Neko's voice is still a knockout on this album, but the songs are too homogeneous. On "Blacklisted" there are more tempo and style changes, with "Deep Red Bells" being the most surprising, but on "Fox Confessor" each song kind of rolls into the next. I would suggest if you want to hear who is carrying the torch from Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, start with "Blacklisted," and check this one out after that.

Artist: Johnny Cash
Album: At Folsom Prison
Recording #50something
Stream album here
One of the earlier recordings I heard, well before I bought the book. I had already been introduced to Cash through a "Super Hits" album and "American IV," so I was a fan of his classic style. He was the first true country artist that I enjoyed after I branched out from Alt-Country. "At Folsom Prison" is pretty awesome, just in the fact that his "Man in Black" persona really comes through. The sad songs are nice, but where he really makes his money is singing the outlaw songs, "Folsom Prison Blues," "25 Minutes to Go," etc. If you haven't heard him before, this is a great place to start!

Artist: Johnny Cash
Album: American Recordings
Recording #150something
Stream album here
I loved Johnny Cash's "American IV," which really brought him back into the spotlight with covers of "Hurt" and "Personal Jesus" (both better than the originals), but it all started with Rick Rubin producing the original "American Recordings" in 1994. This one has less recognizable covers, but highlight's Cash's voice and ability to bring a simple song to life. I would suggest "American III" (with covers of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" and U2's "One") or "IV" first to really appreciate what Cash can do to a song, but this is one worth having, especially for songs like "Thirteen," a Danzig cover that really brings out the darkness in Cash's persona.