All reviews from Amazon entry unless otherwise indicated.
total 69M 7.5M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 01.mp3 6.3M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 02.mp3 11M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 03.mp3 8.1M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 04.mp3 5.4M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 05.mp3 5.5M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 06.mp3 6.6M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 07.mp3 8.3M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 08.mp3 4.4M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 09.mp3 5.9M Bill Hicks - on Letterman 10.mp3
"Blowfly is the X-rated alter ego of Clarence Reid, a songwriter/producer who had quite a bit of success under his own name in the '70s, writing and producing hits for Gwen MacRae, KC & the Sunshine Band, Betty Wright, and others while on the staff at the preeminent Florida disco label of the era, TK Records. It's as Blowfly that Reid is best remembered in certain circles, though. The Redd Foxx of the Southern soul circuit, Blowfly specializes in dirty parodies of current soul and pop hits; his over two dozen albums, almost all of them recorded live in the studio with the ambience of a liquor-fueled all-night party, are an entertaining mixture of filth and wit that's neither too disgusting to be funny nor too refined to be dirty.
Born in Cochran, GA, on Valentine's Day, 1946, Reid got his nickname in the early '60s when his grandmother caught the adolescent singing dirty lyrics to a popular hit and proclaimed that her grandchild was "nastier than a blowfly." Reid moved to the more dirty-word-friendly climes of Miami in the mid-'60s and hooked up with producer and label owner Henry Stone. Under his own name, Reid released several solid albums of straight R&B, and had several chart singles, starting with 1969's Top Ten soul hit "Nobody but You Babe," for Stone's Alston and TK imprints.
Reid never lost his knack for filthying up Top 40 hits, though, and after a few years of performing his parodies for friends and co-workers, Reid resurrected his adolescent nickname and went in the studio after hours with some studio musician buddies in 1970 and recorded Blowfly's debut album, The Weird World of Blowfly. Of course, Stone's labels couldn't touch the results, so Reid pressed the album on his own Weird World imprint, housing it in a bizarre homemade-looking sleeve featuring Reid standing on a trash can in a comically hideous monster mask, a pair of homemade wings, a blue sweater with "BF" printed on it in yellow and a pair of tighty-whiteys and knee socks, holding a rubber chicken in one hand and clawing at two large-Afro'ed nude women kneeling before him. A weird world indeed.
Sold on the same semi-underground circuit that traded in Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite albums and other cultural oddities, the Blowfly records were massively popular. Although it was an open secret from the beginning that Blowfly was Clarence Reid, Reid always appeared in some sort of elaborate and/or strange costume on the record sleeves. His reticence to be publicly identified as Blowfly stemmed not only from his religious upbringing--despite his dirty mouth, Reid is a devout Christian who forswears liquor and cigarettes and has worked as a minister--but from the criminal prosecution that Reid's latter-day buddies 2 Live Crew found out about the hard way. Stores have been prosecuted for carrying Blowfly albums in some communities, and Reid was sued by the then-president of ASCAP, Stanley Adams, after Blowfly parodied Adams' jazz standard "What a Difference a Day Makes" as "What a Difference a Lay Makes."
Reid released Blowfly records under a variety of label names through the '70s, '80s, and '90s, collaborating with like-minded folks like 2 Live Crew and even Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Blowfly is enough of a cultural icon that he even recorded his own holiday single in the mid-'70s. Of course, the songs were called "Jingle Fuckin' Bells" and "Queer for the New Year," but this is Blowfly we're talking about here, not Bing Crosby. Blowfly also starred in the low-budget documentary The Twisted World of Blowfly in 1991, and several of his albums were reissued on CD through the '90s, capped by The Best of Blowfly: Analthology in 1996." - Stewart Mason
"Raunchy-beyond-belief sendups of American Bandstand, with every song you ever loved from the '50s ("Ten Commandments of Sex," "F**k Around the Clock, " etc.) raped, pillaged, and plundered in the bargain." - Cub Koda
"Recorded live in the studio, The Weird World of Blowfly has the ambience of an after-hours party. In the tradition of older albums by similar (though tamer) acts like Doug Clark & Hot Nuts, The Weird World of Blowfly starts with his theme song, "Weird World," and then moves through 14 sexual and scatological parodies of popular soul and pop hits of the time, interspersed with good-humored, rambling introductions. So is it funny? Some will undoubtedly find the whole enterprise juvenile and distasteful, and frankly, a couple of the parodies are a little too obvious to be clever (surely sixth graders around the world have written songs like "Shittin' on the Dock of the Bay"), but most of the album is really very funny, for those who like this sort of thing. The 1995 reissue adds three tracks to the original LP (first released on Clarence Reid's own Weird World label), including both sides of a celebrated mid-'70s holiday single, "Jingle Fuckin' Bells" and "Queer for the New Year," along with, oddly enough, a clean single released under Reid's own name in 1974, "Fonky Party."" - Stewart Mason
"Michael Flanders (1922-1975) and Donald Swann (1923-1994) were two of the finest British comedians of their day. Their medium was cabaret; Swann was a gifted pianist, composer, and linguist and Flanders a talented raconteur and lyricist with a sharp eye for satire. Meeting at school, Flanders and Swann first performed a revue together in 1940, although this was not the beginnings of their partnership; Flanders aspired to be an actor. During the second World War, Swann served in the ambulance corps and Flanders in the British Navy. Not long after the war, Flanders contracted polio and was confined to a wheelchair. In the early '50s, Flanders and Swann began writing together again, but mostly for other performers. In 1956, they presented their first revue of their own songs, At the Drop of a Hat. The revue first played at the New Lindsey Theatre in London, but soon moved to a larger theater (the Fortune), where it played continuously for two years until 1959. They took the Hat revue on tour after this to the Edinburgh Festival, 13 cities across the United States, and Canada, then on to Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. While the songs themselves remained by and large the same during the touring, Flanders would change his banter between songs to suit the location and to take into account any current events that could be addressed. A number of the Hat songs have become classics, but none more so than the immensely popular "Hippopotamus Song," whose chorus ("Mud, mud, glorious mud/Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood") is universally known, even if its origin isn't. In 1964, Flanders and Swann returned with a new revue, entitled At the Drop of Another Hat. As with the first Hat, the songs were tales of everyday English life, but included astute comments on current affairs of the day. As he had done in their first revue, Swann sang in languages other than English -- in Another Hat it was Russian, to add to his French and Greek songs on the first Hat. In 1966 and 1967, Flanders and Swann returned to the United States and Canada for another tour, and in 1967 Swann broke up the partnership. One more recording was produced; The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann. This was not a live recording, unlike the previous two, and while these songs were written by Flanders & Swann, many had already been performed by other people. After the breakup of the partnership, Flanders made use of his directing skills in stage plays, while Swann continued to compose and perform with a variety of partners. The strength of Flanders and Swann's music lay in a number of areas: Flanders' word play in his lyrics and his sharp wit and clever banter kept audiences' attention for hours, while Swann's music could borrow from the classics, light opera, jazz, or popular styles of the day, changing from one to the other in the blink of an eye. While much of their material was simply observational of middle-class English life, they also wrote a significant number of protest songs, whether they be about the closure of train lines ("Slow Train") or anti-war songs ("20 Tons of TNT"). Their protests were certainly much gentler than the folksingers of the day, but in many ways that has seen their music simply age much more gracefully." - Jonathan Lewis
"In 1936, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann met at school in Westminster. Little did they know at that point the partnership they were going to make in later years, to become famous and release several recordings of their highly successful revues, and remembered for many years after their deaths.
At the Westminster school, they worked together for the first time in 1939, when Donald, born in 1923 in Llanelli to Russian parents, provided piano music for a revue called 'Go for it' that Michael, born in 1922 in London, was performing in. After school, both men went to Christ Church, Oxford, but they had little to do with each other. The war then came into the frame, Michael serving on a destroyer, and Donald in the Ambulance service in Greece and Palestine. It was during this time that Michael contracted Polio after his ship was torpedoed, and was made wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. Following the war, the two got back together, and set about writing songs; Donald providing the music, while Michael, who originally wanted to be an actor, writing the words.
The first revue they contributed to, Oranges and Lemons, featured the song In The D'Oyly Cart, a send-up of Gilbert and Sullivan. The show started in 1948, and ran for a couple of years. Following the first revue were Penny Plain, Airs on a Shoestring and Pay the Piper, all of which, like the first, directed by Laurier Lister, and starring other performers such as Joyce Grenfell and Ian Wallace. After these, in 1950, the pair made their first step towards independence, performing songs in the Whistler Ballroom in 1950. The pair, renown for their revue-writing talents, were invited to give a lecture on this topic at the Dartington School of Music in 1956. It was here Michael started to introduce each song with a short narrative. This, he found, went down as well with the audience as the songs themselves, and so this was integrated into the performance, and in 1959 the duo performed their first fully-fledged revue of their own, At the Drop of a Hat, at the New Lindsay theatre in Notting Hill gate.
After three weeks, the show was moved to the Fortune theatre in the West end, where it ran for over 750 performances. It was during this run the performance was recorded by George Martin (of Beatles fame). 1959 also saw the first US tour, and one to Switzerland, and the recording of their first studio album, The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann. The pair toured England after this, and then, in 1963, their second revue opened at the Haymarket theatre. At the Drop of Another Hat ran for almost a year, and was recorded, like the first show. The pair toured Australia at this time also. After Another Hat, the F&S found the format of revues rather restricting, and branched out into other areas. Michael Flanders Narrated many radio shows, stories and documentaries, and presented radio quiz shows. Donald wrote more music, including for the Hoffnung concerts. They did have a final tour, and very successful it was too, and then they decided to stop 'while they were ahead'.
The music of Flanders and Swann, however, remained popular with the young and old throughout and after their lives, attracting Royalty to the revues and often compelling them to join in with the singing! It is clear that their own brand of inoffensive, gentle but very witty and often satirical humour has found favour with a great many years, and will continue to do so for many years to come." - Flanders and Swann Online
"A perfect evening of British cocktail piano wit, this live performance at the Fortune Theatre in London should delight any fan of such classic BBC radio shows as "My Word" and "My Music." It shares with them same droll narrative, dry wit, and sparkling piano. "A Gnu" and "Hippopotamus" both became justly famous among adults and children alike, particularly for the former's punning malapropisms: "I'm a G-nu / How do you do / You really ought to K-now W-ho's W-ho." "Design for Living" gives a wry look at two bachelors attempting to redecorate a house, and the leering "Madeira, M'Dear?" is a cheeky account of that oldest of seduction ploys. Charming and witty, this album deserves to be far better known." - Paul Collins
"After the success of their songs "A Gnu" and "Hippopotamus," it was a short leap to recording an entire studio album of animal-themed songs. None of these quite rise to the level of those predecessors, but there are some very fine pieces here nonetheless, from Flander's mock horror at "The Spider" in his tub to Donald Swann's vocal turn at extolling the virtues of "The Rhinoceros," who uses his horn for picking up litter in the forest. The most enduring number, though, is Flanders' languid paean to watching the world go by, "The Sloth," in which the titular character hangs upside down and happily watches the clouds pass by his toes." - Paul Collins
"Comedy is hard. I have great respect for the performer who gets up on stage alone, microphone in one hand and drink in the other, in an attempt to make a drunken audience laugh. Some comics opt for the easy route of clichéd dick and fart jokes to appeal to the lowest-common denominator; others elevate the art of joke-telling to subversive social commentary. Of course, the latter is the more fearless and desired of the scenarios, but one can't fault a comedian for falling back on safe material after sensing hostility in a crowd that clamors for mediocrity.
Comics like Patton Oswalt fall uncomfortably in between art and edifice, achieving a sort of stymied irreverence that doesn't always connect or satisfy. This is not to say that Oswalt isn't funny, for he's quite capable of inducing hearty belly laughs throughout his first comedy album, the recently released Feelin' Kinda Patton. But Oswalt is more of sprinter than a marathon runner, and therefore is more successful at bizarre, seemingly off-the-cuff bits than the stretched-out sections that slow the album's otherwise quick-witted flow.
The best moments on Feelin' Kinda Patton are those that don't feel too forced or wear out their welcome. Oswalt scores big on 1980s heavy metal videos ("Bands that rocked so hard, they could change the physical properties of things!"), TiVo ("Greater than even the gift of life!"), parenting ("Be a boring parent so that your kids will hate you and become cool!"), President Bush ("I really think he can get us into the apocalypse"), and peaks with exaggerating the confrontational ads of the Black Angus restaurant chain. He can get an inspired, almost manic riff going that's highly effective, especially when he moves swiftly between topics. His random visions of the apocalypse (which includes Avril Lavigne and the Good Will Hunting screenplay) and ironic insights into the mixed messages inherent in liquor ads are also highlights. It's only when he gets stuck on a topic for too long (a lunatic comedian he watched in Toronto, slowing down an Alvin and the Chipmunks LP, Robert Evans' ESPN ads) that he loses speed and the listener's attention.
Oswalt's got a couple of repetitive obsessions that are immediately problematic. First, he's in heated pursuit of the title of Analogy King: too many of his jokes hide their punchlines in a tacked-on analogy. After you've heard "...that's kinda like" used in abundance on every other joke, it becomes more of an expected crutch and loses any intended impact. Secondly, he takes any chance he can get to imitate the stereotypical Down's syndrome voice for a joke's big payoff, and the fact that he does it often is uncomfortably off-putting. Don't misunderstand me here: I'm all for comics with edgy material and a disregard for the stifling politically correct atmosphere of the 21st Century, but the problem here is that Oswalt seems to derive great pleasure from just aping the voice.
Oswalt has seen his notoriety increase in the last couple of years and is finally coming to be known as Patton Oswalt the Stand-Up Comedian (he who opened for Aimee Mann and Michael Penn on the couple's 2000 Acoustic Vaudeville Tour) rather than simply Patton Oswalt the Guy I Can Sorta Place When I See Him But I Don't Know His Name (he who has a regular role on the TV show King of Queens and small roles in films like Magnolia and Starsky and Hutch). Feelin' Kinda Patton is a bid to help boost his stand-up profile, and it does a reasonable job of representing where he presently stands. Oswalt certainly has the promise to deliver an entire set of solid comedy, but right now he's only halfway there." - Zeth Lundy
total 670M 77M NL-XM-#003.mp3 78M NL-XM-#004.mp3 74M NL-XM-#005.mp3 75M NL-XM-#006.mp3 73M NL-XM-#007.mp3 74M NL-XM-#008.mp3 71M NL-XM-#009.mp3 77M NL-XM-#010.mp3 75M NL-XM-#011.mp3
total 655M 76M NL-XM-#012.mp3 38M NL-XM-#014.mp3 38M NL-XM-#015.mp3 38M NL-XM-#016.mp3 39M NL-XM-#018.mp3 39M NL-XM-#019.mp3 26M NL-XM-#020.mp3 39M NL-XM-#021.mp3 40M NL-XM-#022.mp3 24M NL-XM-#023.mp3 24M NL-XM-#024.mp3 35M NL-XM-#025.mp3 34M NL-XM-#026.mp3 36M NL-XM-#027.mp3 37M NL-XM-#028.mp3 32M NL-XM-#029.mp3 34M NL-XM-#030.mp3 35M NL-XM-#031.mp3
"EYES OF THE IDOL 2CD (QR 13/14) Magdeburg, GE 12 Jul 96 + filler from Konstanz, GE 3 Jul 96 (4) & Louisville, KY 7 May 96 (1) Tracks: 19 Times: 76/72 Source: Audience Quality: Outstanding That sound you hear is the shuffling of the rankings of finest Dylan CD's of 1996. For the time being, there's 3 kings of the hill now, with this set, perhaps, nestled a bit above the acclaimed SOUL & CHRISTIANIA.........for the time being. Only time will tell but I'll tell you why I think so:
1) The sound quality is astonishing. The full force of Dylan's vocals come through loud and clear, upfront and strong, every nuance and inflection fully intact and true. The balance is perfect - Dylan's vocals ride above the equally forceful instrumentation in perfect sync. Every instrument is clearly defined, from Tony's robust bass lines to Bucky's "are those keyboards?" steel guitar.
2) The setlist is a doozy. More varied than most, the Magdeburg set included LayLadyLay/HollisBrown/GatesOfEden/Jokerman/Sweet Marie&Times as those rarely played in '96. The trump card, though, would be the killer filler. Finally, we get the tracks from Konstanz w/Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band on violin, accompanying Bob on wonderful renditions of MAGGIE'S FARM/EVERYTHING IS BROKEN & TIMES!! Maggie's & Broken really cook, high energy versions given a harder edge with Tinsley's energetic backing. Dave Matthews lends a sizzling guitar to Broken, to boot. The acoustic Times w/ Tinsley is a joy to behold!! I'll Remember You is slotted in between Maggie's & Broken, plus a gorgeous Never Gonna Be The Same from Louisville in May just adds additional lustre to the whole shebang. Very well though out, this set. Remaining tracks: Watchtower/Silvio/Jokerman/Sweet Marie/LARS/RDW, plus the below.
3) The performance is special. As a witness to the event states in the liner notes, this was not just another "good" performance. No warming up on the first few songs that night. Not a millisecond passes after the intro that the first ass-kicking notes of ToBeAlone WithYou hit home, as if Bob and the band were champing at the bit to cut loose. The throttle was opened up from the get-go and stayed on throughout. You gotta hear the country stomp and roll of ToBeAlone to believe it, and Bob's wild harmonica is out of this world. 4th Street is sung with a passion and intensity and feeling of regret and pity that is awe-inspiring, and rivals the SOUL (Berlin) version (IMO) as THE one for the ages. The band is so tight with Bob that the bluesy excursions on ItTakesALotToLaugh are quite extraordinary. More even than usual, Bob's vocals are playful and crisp and alive with adrenaline. He really MEANS it at this show!! Hollis Brown has never sounded so full of dread and GATES is, well, always a joy. The acoustic tracks just leap out of the speakers and sound so alive. The harmonica playing is particularly soulful on MR TMan. Transcendence, more than a few times!!
4) The original artwork. A very interesting and, IMO, deceptively simple, pastel portrait of Bob from the neck up, amidst a wonderful design of pastel squares and blocks, graces the front cover. The "feel" of the portrait captures the feeling of the show - timeless and enigmatic. Eyes of the idol, indeed. The colorful pastel "scheme" is echoed throughout the package, and the back cover art captures Bob from the neck to the waist, cradling a guitar, with the loosely- arranged pastel squares again prominent. A nice mesh of autumn- flavored watercolors border the rear insert. The original art is a classy touch to an all-around class package. Look here!
5) The entirety of the package. Arguably (and many have said it is) the best show of '96, and with the filler added it can't be beat!" - xyz
36K Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) back.jpg 36K Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) front.jpg 40K Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) insert.jpg Disc 1 total 106M 6.7M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 101 To Be Alone With You.mp3 7.3M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 102 Lay Lady Lay.mp3 9.5M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 103 All Along the Watchtower.mp3 14M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 104 Positively 4th Street.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 105 It Takes A Lot To Laugh....mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 106 Silvio.mp3 8.1M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 107 Ballad of Hollis Brown.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 108 Gates of Eden.mp3 15M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 109 Mr Tambourine Man.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 110 Jokerman.mp3 Disc 2 total 99M 13M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 201 Like A Rolling Stone.mp3 13M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 202 Absolutely Sweet Marie.mp3 16M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 203 The Times They Are A-Changin'.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 204 Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35.mp3 9.5M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 205 Maggie's Farm.mp3 6.8M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 206 I'll Remember You.mp3 7.4M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 207 Everything is Broken.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 208 The Times They Are A-Changin'.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Eyes of the Idol) 209 Never Gonna Be the Same Again.mp3
"When this tape surfaced, it took the world completely by surprise because hardly anyone knew of its existence. This is a complete one hour radio show in excellent quality. I'm not sure if this show was ever actually broadcast, but it seems unlikely that it was, otherwise we would have known about this tape years before. The quality is so good, it has to come from the master tape rather than an over-the-air broadcast.
There are a number of firsts here, such as the earliest known recording of Emmett Till and the rare performances of Smokestack Lightning and Roll On, John. Material wise, there are better tapes around (such as the excellent Minnesota Hotel Tape), and the few originals here don't show much promise, but Dylan is very relaxed and in excellent voice throughout.
The show is hosted by Cynthia Gooding and features an interview interspersed with songs. The tape was apparently recorded not long after the tape recorded at her apartment (known as the Cynthia Gooding Tape). She is obviously taken with the young Bob and he seems to feel at ease in her presence. One particularly funny exchange occurs when Dylan finishes a song with lots of harmonica and Gooding asks if he's just recently started playing harmonica. She's surprised to hear him say that he's played for a long time. His harp style was so crude at the time, and has never improved (thankfully!) over the years, that it sounded like a first time player. Dylan doesn't seem in the least embarrased by the exchange." - Skipping Reels of Rhyme
total 80M 5.9M Bob Dylan - 01 - Lonesome Whistle Blues (Folksingers Choice).mp3 6.2M Bob Dylan - 02 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 6.2M Bob Dylan - 03 - Fixin' To Die (Folksingers Choice).mp3 1.4M Bob Dylan - 04 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.5M Bob Dylan - 05 - Tell Me Baby (Folksingers Choice).mp3 2.0M Bob Dylan - 06 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 5.1M Bob Dylan - 07 - Hard Travel (Folksingers Choice).mp3 948K Bob Dylan - 08 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 7.4M Bob Dylan - 09 - Death of Emmett Till (Folksingers Choice).mp3 2.6M Bob Dylan - 10 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.6M Bob Dylan - 11 - Standing On The Highway (Folksingers Choice).mp3 2.3M Bob Dylan - 12 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.5M Bob Dylan - 13 - Long John (Folksingers Choice).mp3 1.6M Bob Dylan - 14 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.7M Bob Dylan - 15 - Stealin' (Folksingers Choice).mp3 5.9M Bob Dylan - 16 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.9M Bob Dylan - 17 - Long Time Man Feel Bad (Folksingers Choice).mp3 1.3M Bob Dylan - 18 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 3.1M Bob Dylan - 19 - Baby Please Don't Go (Folksingers Choice).mp3 628K Bob Dylan - 20 - conversation (Folksingers Choice).mp3 4.2M Bob Dylan - 21 - Hard Times In New Your Town (Folksingers Choice).mp3
"The first glass-mastered complete show from the Spring 99 Eurotrek is a good one, well worth the wait. that. A sublime, sometimes heart-wrenching acoustic set; followed by an intense, razor sharp, and dramatic electric set; plus five excellent filler tracks, all in warm, upfront quality. Nattily packaged, too.
Recording quality is astounding. Without question, the best Europe '99 disc." - Bob Dylan Field Recordings
40K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) back.jpg 40K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) cd1.jpg 32K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) cd2.jpg 24K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) front.jpg 32K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) insert.jpg 28K Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) liner.jpg Disc 1 total 105M 7.9M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 101 Friend of the Devil.mp3 8.3M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 102 Mr Tambourine Man.mp3 7.7M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 103 Masters of War.mp3 15M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 104 Hard Rain.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 105 Tangled Up in Blue.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 106 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.mp3 8.2M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 107 Boots of Spanish Leather.mp3 9.0M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 108 Cold Irons Bound.mp3 5.5M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 109 Make You Feel My Love.mp3 13M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 110 Stuck Inside Of Mobile....mp3 8.2M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 111 Trying to Get to Heaven.mp3 Disc 2 total 108M 11M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 201 Highway 61 Revisited.mp3 8.3M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 202 Not Dark Yet.mp3 8.7M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 203 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.mp3 16M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 204 It Ain't Me Babe.mp3 5.7M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 205 Not Fade Away.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 206 Like A Rolling Stone.mp3 9.1M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 207 My Back Pages.mp3 12M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 208 Desolation Row.mp3 9.8M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 209 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.mp3 9.4M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 210 It Takes A Lot to Laugh....mp3 7.0M Bob Dylan (Rollin' Through Stormy Weather) 211 All Along the Watchtower.mp3
"This is a great recording of an historic concert. Dylan performs some long absent jewels during this first tour of Japan in nearly a decade. The audience recording is a touch dark, but it's well mixed. Bob's vocals are slightly low in the mix on the softest words, but the overall effect is that they are well represented, and not above the music. Thanks to the always polite and respectful Japanese audience, even the softest lyrics are well heard. The highlight tonight is a breathtaking acoustic version of Masters Of War. The first time in over 30 years! Also included are some great filler highlights of some of the other rarities performed during the February Japanese tour. The sound quality is similar throughout, but in-between song splices of the filler material are cold cut, and amateurish. R.E. has created a package worthy of the event. The awe inspiring "St. Robert" cartoon graces the front cover of this classy set. Truly, "Beauty walks a Razor's Edge"." - Bob's Boots
84K Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) back.jpg 28K Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) front.jpg 56K Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) insert.jpg Disc 1 total 92M 12M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 101 Jokerman.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 102 Shelter From the Storm.mp3 7.3M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 103 All Along the Watchtower.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 104 She Belongs to Me.mp3 14M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 105 Tangled Up in Blue.mp3 7.2M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 106 Watching the River Flow.mp3 5.8M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 107 Tomorrow Night.mp3 7.0M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 108 Masters of War.mp3 8.8M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 109 Don't Think Twice.mp3 9.2M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 110 Series of Dreams.mp3 Disc 2 total 113M 10M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 201 I and I.mp3 9.6M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 202 Maggie's Farm.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 203 Man in the Long Black Coat.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 204 It Ain't Me Babe.mp3 8.8M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 205 I'll Remember You.mp3 8.3M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 206 You're A Big Girl Now.mp3 8.3M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 207 If You See Her, Say Hello.mp3 9.5M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 208 Shooting Star.mp3 11M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 209 Born in Time.mp3 9.1M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 210 To Ramona.mp3 8.7M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 211 God Knows.mp3 9.5M Bob Dylan (Through a Glass Darkly) 212 Blowin' in the Wind.mp3
"As much a performance art troupe as a band, Bongwater was the brainchild of guitarist (Mark) Kramer -- chief of the Shimmy-Disc label and a former member of Shockabilly -- and actress Ann Magnuson, best known to mainstream audiences for her role in the ABC sitcom Anything But Love as well as the feature film Making Mr. Right. Kramer and Magnuson first met at her downtown New York nightspot Club 57, where he engineered the sound for her performances with the all-female percussion group Pulsalamma; after forming Bongwater in 1985, the duo enlisted avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith to record their 1987 EP debut Breaking No New Ground, a crazed neo-psychedelic set typified by Magnuson's surreal narratives, often inspired by her dreams about major celebrities and fellow downtown NYC denizens.
After garnering a reputation for their anarchic live sets, Bongwater re-entered Kramer's Noise New York studios with ex-Phantom Tollbooth guitarist Dave Rick and former Shockabilly drummer David Licht to record 1988's sprawling two-LP opus Double Bummer, a wildly experimental collection peppered by bizarro-world covers of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt. 2" and Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" (retitled "Dazed and Chinese" and sung in Mandarin) as well as media satires like "Decadent Iranian Country Club" and "David Bowie Wants Ideas." The follow-up, Too Much Sleep -- a collection of lo-fi recordings mottled with dialogue fragments, sampled answering machine messages and television soundbites -- appeared in 1989.
With 1991's The Power of Pussy, Bongwater parodied sex in all its forms; a European tour with rhythm
guitarist Dogbowl in tow followed, but Kramer and Magnuson's complex relationship soon began to unravel, and after one final record, 1992's The Big Sell-Out, the duo parted both personally and professionally. The dissolution of the partnership was acrimonious, and resulted in a protracted legal battle which ultimately resulted in Shimmy-Disc's bankruptcy; Magnuson, meanwhile, mounted a solo career, issuing The Luv Show on Geffen in 1995." - Jason Ankeny
"Beginning an album career with an utterly schizophrenic double album that ran the gamut from reinterpretations of Led Zeppelin songs with Chinese lyrics to such zingily titled rants as "David Bowie Wants Ideas" might not seem like the most sane approach. Then again, Bongwater were one insane group. Kramer and Magnuson's screwy take on art rock á la Henry Cow or early Faust is fairly overwhelming, though perhaps this is the whole point. With the help of Kramer's fellow Shockabilly vet David Licht on drums and King Missile guitarist Dave Rick, not to mention free jazz legend Don Cherry on a cut or two, the duo cranks up the overall weirdness factor, whether quiet or loud, to great effect. One definite carryover from Kramer and Licht's Shockabilly days is a fondness for tweaked reinterpretations of older tunes. Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt. 2," Michael Nesmith's "Just May Be the One," and the Beatles' "Love You Too" and "Rain" are among some of the victims, at points rendered unrecognizable. Johnny Cash's "There You Go," however, gets a lovely, straightforward take. The musicians' overall abilities are quite impressive; given all the recording took place at Kramer's hole-in-the-wall studio, everything sounds pretty sharp throughout, and the use of various multi-tracking and production tricks fills out Double Bummer very well. Magnuson, though, steals the show with both her strong singing and witty, nutty spoken word pieces. "Decadent Iranian Country Club" recounts a dream set at such a location -- "pre-Ayatollah," she carefully notes -- with a sweetly off semi-whisper over an increasingly queasy guitar arrangement. As for the Bowie number, she details receiving a form letter from the Thin White Duke accidentally inviting her to contribute to a new album before meeting David Byrne out of nowhere and drinking perfume, the band doing a weird-ass psych jam behind it all. The CD version includes a three-song epilogue, the Breaking No New Ground EP, and a single featuring covers of Roky Erickson's "You Don't Love Me Yet" and the Monkees' "The Porpoise Song."" - Ned Raggett
"Restless sonic chameleons the Fiery Furnaces revolve around the brother and sister duo of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, whose prickly childhood relationship and musical family set the stage for their playful, unpredictable music. The Friedbergers' grandmother was a musician and choir director at a Greek Orthodox church near the family's home in Oak Park, IL; their mother, who had a penchant for Gilbert & Sullivan, played piano and guitar and sang; and throughout school, Matthew played standup bass. While the Friedbergers weren't the closest of siblings growing up, after college and separate trips abroad they returned to Oak Park and began working on music together. The pair mixed simple, poppy melodies with a dizzying array of wordplay, sounds, and influences, including the Who, Captain Beefheart, Os Mutantes; dashes of folk, blues, and garage rock; and Eleanor's adventures in Europe. In 2000, they moved to Brooklyn, took day jobs, and began playing as the Fiery Furnaces late in the year.
The Furnaces played their initial gigs at a small club called Enid's and branched out from there, going through several lineups of supporting musicians as they played gigs with the French Kicks, Sleater-Kinney, and Spoon. In 2002, they began working on their first album. By the time they signed to Rough Trade on the basis of their demo, their debut, Gallowsbird's Bark, was completed and the Fiery Furnaces were already at work on the follow-up. Gallowsbird's Bark arrived in fall 2003 and won critical acclaim for its charming kitchen-sink feel, but the band gained more momentum the following year, when praise for the debut album dovetailed with the release of the group's even more diverse and challenging sophomore album, Blueberry Boat, that summer. The Fiery Furnaces spent much of 2004 touring with Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Franz Ferdinand, and the Shins, but already had plans for their third and fourth albums, including an album of duets with the Friedbergers' grandmother and a set of beatnik-inspired songs, ensuring that their tireless creativity kept moving." - Heather Phares
"Overflowing with creativity and energy and fueled by a cheery restlessness, the Fiery Furnaces are perhaps the most charmingly difficult rock band in years. Most acts wait a few albums to unleash their rock operas and concept albums, but just as their brilliant first album, Gallowsbird's Bark, felt like it contained several albums' worth of ideas and melodies (that often sounded like they were playing at once), the Fiery Furnaces skip ahead and deliver the fascinating, vaguely conceptual, and only occasionally frustrating Blueberry Boat less than a year after they released their debut. The band packs even more stuff into these 13 songs, nearly all of which have distinct movements that sound like two or three times as many tracks. Stories about pirates, Spain, a love triangle, a girl kidnapped into white slavery, World War I, making music, and (of course) blueberries are surrounded by strange noises and experimental twists that act like funhouse mirrors, stretching and warping the album's essentially simple melodies until they're about to fall apart. At times, Blueberry Boat sounds like it was made entirely out of the noodly bits that most other bands would junk for being too weird and difficult, but the Fiery Furnaces forge them into an album that's both more pop and more radical than Gallowsbird's Bark. Granted, it's not a total change from the band's previous material: the revamped, psychedelic dance-pop version of "Tropical Ice-Land" and the cover of the Fall's "Winter" on the Rough Trade comp Stop Me if You Think You've Heard This One Before... foreshadowed Blueberry Boat's busy, mischievous sound, and Gallowsbird's Bark's medley-like "Inca Rag/Name Game" and "Tropical Ice-Land/Rub-Alcohol Blues/We Got the Plague" suggested that the band really wanted to make multifaceted epics that stretch out to ten minutes or thereabouts (of which there are four on this album).
The rootless, rambling, travelogue feel of their debut remains, but Blueberry Boat feels more like a breakneck tour through different kinds of music -- around the canon in 80 minutes. The preponderance of keyboards, drum machines, samples, loops, and computer manipulation draw on electronica, new wave, and prog influences, giving the album a sparkly, colder sonic palette that feels like an equal and opposite reaction to the earth-toned garage-folk-blues of Gallowsbird's Bark (although elements of that sound remain and are thrown in for good measure). The bright, bold title track -- the tale of the hapless captain of a blueberry boat beset by pirates -- is one of the most striking examples of the album's new sounds: starting with a busy signal-like glitch loop backed by a faux hip-hop beat, the song quickly shifts to a wheezy, shuffling rhythm and steep slide guitars; carnival organs make way for relatively down-to-earth guitars, pianos, and keyboards before beginning all over again. As the captain, Eleanor Friedberger goes down with the ship and her blueberries, and this kind of perversely stubborn bravery mirrors the band's fearless artistic leaps.
Even more than their debut, Blueberry Boat reveals the Fiery Furnaces' modus operandi: rather than be defined by a certain set of sounds, it's their attitude and approach that make them what they are. They disorient their listeners and then charm them, or charm them by disorienting them; fortunately, because their music actually is pretty charming, this tactic usually works. At their best, the Fiery Furnaces' albums feel like the adventures of the Friedberger siblings; the personality displayed in their songs gives their flights of fancy just enough grounding. Eleanor's voice is as aloof and, er, fiery as ever, although she sounds downright gentle on "Turning Round." Meanwhile, Matthew Friedberger sings more on Blueberry Boat, and his quieter delivery makes a striking contrast to his sister's more attention-getting vocals. Yet at times they sound almost like the same person, especially on the strangely singsongy melody of "Quay Cur," one of many songs with lyrics as insanely detailed as the sounds that surround them. On top of the many allusions and references in the album -- which include Beanie Babies, Sir Robert Grayson, OxyContin, and Damascus computer cafes -- nonsense phrases like "you geeched that gazoon's gow" fill out more than a few songs. You could say that the Friedbergers' stream-of-consciousness approach nearly reaches Joyce levels, but that would be pretentious, and while Blueberry Boat might seem pretentious on paper, in execution it's just playfully brainy. Indeed, the whole album offers plenty of food for thought and many intriguing contradictions: the delightful "Birdie Brain" rails against the march of progress and technology (and antiquated technology, like steam trains and livery cars, at that) against a backdrop of twinkly synths straight out of the PBS astronomy show Star Hustler.
More broadly, Blueberry Boat's mix of quick changes and extended length sounds like it was made for and by people with highly developed long and short attention spans; it's an album of children's songs for adults. Nowhere is this blurring of youth and maturity more apparent than on "Chief Inspector Blancheflower." It begins as an odd little story about a boy unable to concentrate long enough to get good grades but with a sharp focus for details like "tickets, tangibles, chips and stars." Matthew Friedberger's lead vocal is backed by a tweaked, babyish one, mimicking the song's flashback lyrics. It's a clever trick, and at times, the album threatens to wallow in its own wittiness, but every now and then there's a briefly emotional moment that's more powerful than an entire ballad would be; the instrumental coda at the end of "Blancheflower" is one of these glimpses. The band also has a gift for making the strange sound familiar and the familiar sound strange: on "Chris Michaels" they pay homage to the Who, the past masters of rock operas and concept albums and a major influence on the band's sound in general. Eleanor plays the emotive Roger Daltrey to Matthew's more reflective, pensive Pete Townshend, and the song's rapid-fire riffs, big pianos, and mix of stomping rock with plaintive interludes is pure Who -- although the Who never wrote a rock opera that involves getting arrested for credit card fraud and escaping from the Bombay Army. But, naturally, the Fiery Furnaces did. As engaging as the album can be, its dazzling density is still a lot to digest; in the wrong mood, it can feel like too much time spent at the amusement park. The trick is to appreciate Blueberry Boat in the same way you would a puzzle box with intricate, endlessly shifting parts: you can spend a lot of time trying to unlock (or describe) its riddles, or just enjoy the artfulness behind them." - Heather Phares
"Public Image Ltd. (PiL) originally was a quartet led by singer John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten, born January 31, 1956) and guitarist Keith Levene, who had been a member of the Clash in one of its early lineups. The band was filled out by bassist Jah Wobble (John Wordle) and drummer Jim Walker. It was formed in the wake of the 1978 breakup of Lydon's former group, the Sex Pistols. For the most part, it devoted itself to droning, slow-tempo, bass-heavy noise rock, overlaid by Lydon's distinctive, vituperative rant.
The group's debut single, "Public Image," was more of an up-tempo pop/rock song, however, and it hit the U.K. Top Ten upon its release in October 1978. The group itself debuted on Christmas Day, shortly after the release of its first album, Public Image. Neither the single nor the album was released in the U.S.
Metal Box, the band's second U.K. album, came in the form of three 12", 45 rpm discs in a film canister. It was released in the U.S. in 1980 as the double-album Second Edition. (By this time, PiL was a trio consisting of Lydon, Levene, and Wobble.) The third album, not released in the U.S., was the live Paris au Printemps (1980). Lydon and Levene, plus hired musicians, made up the group by the time of The Flowers of Romance (1981), the much-acclaimed fourth album, which reached number 11 in the U.K.
In 1983, PiL scored its biggest U.K. hit, when "This Is Not a Love Song" reached number five. By this time, however, Levene had left, and the name from here on would be, more than anything else, a vehicle for John Lydon (though with a comparatively steady lineup). A second live album, Live in Tokyo, appeared in England in 1983.
The following year saw the release of This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get, only PiL's third album to be released in the U.S., though it now had six albums out. It marked the start of Lydon's move toward a more accessible dance-rock style, a direction that would be pursued further in Album (1986) (also called Cassette or Compact Disc, depending on the format), notably on the hit "Rise," as well as on Happy? (1987) and 9 (1989). In 1990, PiL released the compilation album The Greatest Hits, So Far, and in 1991 came the new album That What Is Not. After completing his memoirs in late 1993, Lydon decided to put an end to PiL and pursue a solo career." - William Ruhlmann
"PiL managed to avoid boundaries for the first four years of their existence, and Metal Box is undoubtedly the apex. It's a hallmark of uncompromising, challenging post-punk, hardly sounding like anything of the past, present, or future. Sure, there were touchstones that got their imaginations running -- the bizarreness of Captain Beefheart, the open and rhythmic spaces of Can, and the dense pulses of Lee Perry's productions fueled their creative fires -- but what they achieved with their second record is a completely unique hour of avant garde noise. Originally packaged in a film canister as a trio of 12" records played at 45 rpm, the bass and treble are pegged at 11 throughout, with nary a tinge of mid-range to be found. It's all scrapes and throbs (dubscrapes?), supplanted by John Lydon's caterwauling about such subjects as his dying mother, resentment and murder. Guitarist Keith Levene splatters silvery, violent, percussive shards of metallic scrapes onto the canvas, much like a one-armed Jackson Pollock. Jah Wobble and Richard Dudanski lay down a molasses-thick rhythmic foundation throughout that's just as funky as Can's Czukay/Leibezeit and Chic's Edwards/Thompson. It's alien dance music.
Metal Box might not be recognized as a ground-breaking record with the same reverence as Never Mind the Bollocks, and you certainly can't trace numerous waves of bands who wouldn't have existed without it like the Sex Pistols record. But like a virus, it's tones have sent miasmic reverberations through a much broader scope of artists and genres. [Metal Box was issued in the States in 1980 with different artwork and cheaper packaging under the title Second Edition; the track sequence differs as well. The UK reissue of Metal Box on CD boasts better sound quality than the Second Edition CD.]" - Andy Kellman
"Wire emerged out of the British punk explosion but, from the outset, maintained a distance from that scene and resisted easy categorization. While punk rapidly became a caricature of itself, Wire's musical identity -- focused on experimentation and process -- was constantly metamorphosing. Their first three albums alone attest to a startling evolution as the band repeatedly reinvented itself between 1977 and 1979. That capacity for self-reinvention, coupled with a willingness to stop recording indefinitely when ideas weren't forthcoming, has been crucial to Wire's longevity and continued relevance.
By the time of punk, British art schools had long been a hotbed of musical activity, spawning some of the nation's most innovative rock acts from the '60s onward. Like many punk contemporaries, Wire had roots in the art school tradition. At Watford Art College in 1976, guitarists Colin Newman and George Gill formed Overload with audiovisual technician Bruce Gilbert (also on guitar). Subsequently, the three recruited bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Gotobed (aka Robert Grey), and the first Wire lineup was in place.
Wire began playing dates in London and, having ousted Gill, started from scratch, writing new material and taking a more pared-down, experimental approach. A gig at the Roxy in early 1977 proved auspicious. Wire met EMI's Mike Thorne, who was recording groups for a live punk album, The Roxy, London WC2. Thorne included two Wire tracks and was then instrumental in bringing the band to EMI in September. By then, with Newman writing most of the music, they were eager to record before they lost interest in material, abandoned it, and moved on; a pattern that would define the group.
Produced by Thorne, 1977's amphetamine-paced Pink Flag found Wire taking punk to extremes while also keeping an ironic distance from it by introducing elements of tension and abstraction. Pink Flag's 21 highly original tracks (each averaging just over a minute and a half) compressed and twisted rock into often jagged, taut shapes. The album met with critical acclaim and a follow-up was recorded in spring 1978.
Chairs Missing was a radical departure. Although the phrase "early Pink Floyd" was uttered dismissively in some quarters, it was well-received. With Thorne playing keyboards and producing, this was a more complex, multi-dimensional record that supplemented Pink Flag's harsh minimalism with dense, occasionally unsettling atmospherics. Wire albums usually feature one near-perfect pop song and Chairs Missing's "Outdoor Miner" almost became a hit, until it was scuppered by a payola scandal at EMI.
This was an enormously creative phase. Songs were being written and jettisoned at a considerable rate and the band was gigging relentlessly. In summer 1978, Wire played in the U.S. for the first time and, in March 1979, toured Europe with Roxy Music. Although Chairs Missing had been released only months before, live sets included a significant amount of material that would appear on 154. Indeed, Wire often tended to bewilder live audiences by playing new, unrecorded tracks rather than the numbers people expected to hear.
If Chairs Missing saw Wire exploring the possibilities offered by the recording studio, on 154 they took fuller advantage of that environment. With Lewis emerging as a vocalist alongside Newman, the result was an expansive, textured album with a more pronounced melodic orientation. 154 was Wire's most accomplished statement to date and the group seemed poised for success. The opposite happened. Wire's relationship with EMI unraveled and they were soon label-less. In February 1980 at London's Electric Ballroom, the band played an infamously chaotic show (captured on Document and Eyewitness) that was more like performance art than a rock performance. A five-year hiatus ensued.
Following a period of intense activity away from Wire, the members regrouped in 1985, referring to their new incarnation as a "beat combo" -- a no-nonsense, stripped-down unit. The 1986 "comeback" EP, Snakedrill, begat "Drill," a track built on a paradigmatic Wire rhythm, which bridged the gap between the group's past and its present. "Drill" would stand as an evolving metaphor for the band's shifting identity. It mutated through multiple versions, changing from performance to performance. (In 1991, Wire would release The Drill, an album composed entirely of versions of the track.)
The bandmembers' solo endeavors during the early '80s proved crucial to Wire's new direction: the avant-pop sensibility developed by Newman on his albums and the experimental inclinations of Lewis and Gilbert were channeled into the nascent digital context in which the band was now working. The Ideal Copy (1987), the first full-length example of Wire's new approach to the processes of composition and recording with sequencing technology, found the group's smart, state-of-the-art grooves skirting the dancefloor. While first-generation fans were glad to have Wire back, their new sound drew a new audience in the U.S. and an American tour followed. They continued in an electronically oriented direction with the more homogeneous A Bell Is a Cup...Until It Is Struck(1988), whose combination of hypnotic, melodic patterns and impenetrable yet catchy lyrics made for surreal, brainy pop.
Wire had already made one of rock's more unorthodox live records but they further deconstructed the cliché of the "live album" for 1989's It's Beginning to & Back Again. Performance recordings were stripped down in the studio, sometimes to a drumbeat or a baseline, which was then used as the starting point for rebuilding the track. Wire continued to experiment with ways of letting studio technologies affect their creative process on Manscape (1990), which forayed deeper into computer-based electronics and programming. Drummer Robert Gotobed was less enthusiastic about changing his role in the developing digital version of Wire and left the band just before a 1990 tour. Dropping the "e" from the group's name, Gilbert, Lewis, and Newman carried on as Wir, releasing The First Letter. In 1991, another hiatus began and the three returned to their diverse solo ventures.
In the '80s, American bands like R.E.M. and Big Black had covered Wire songs. By the mid-'90s, Wire's influence started to manifest itself among a younger generation of Britpop artists, most notoriously Elastica, whose appropriation of Pink Flag's "Three Girl Rhumba" resulted in a settlement between the groups' respective music publishing companies. Having briefly resurfaced with Robert Gotobed in 1996 for a performance of "Drill" to celebrate Bruce Gilbert's 50th birthday, Wire remained silent until 1999, when they began rehearsing again. In 2000, the band played live in the U.K. (including an event at London's Royal Festival Hall) and completed a U.S. tour; unpredictable as ever, Wire performed almost exclusively old numbers.
Although reworkings of older tracks taped during 1999 rehearsals appeared on The Third Day (2000), Wire soon initiated their next phase. Completely new material appeared in the form of 2002's Read & Burn 01, the first in a projected series of releases to be developed at Newman's Swim studios. While the fast, loud menace of Read & Burn 01 harked back to Pink Flag, Wire sounded more like they were stomping all over their roots than nostalgically returning to them. A second Read & Burn was out by the end of the year; Send, a full-length containing brand new songs and Read & Burn material, was released in May of 2003." - Wilson Neate
"The enduring L.A. punk band Social Distortion has overcome numerous personnel shifts, the demise of the Los Angeles hardcore scene that spawned them, and the heroin addiction of singer/guitarist/bandleader Mike Ness to achieve a measure mainstream acceptance for their rootsy, hard-hitting punk without compromise. Inspired by the fertile L.A. punk scene, Ness formed the group in 1978 with drummer Casey Royer and brothers Frank (bass) and Rikk Agnew (guitar). When the Agnews left to join the Adolescents, Ness's schoolmate Dennis Danell joined on bass; the next few years saw a revolving-door membership. When the group finally recorded its debut album, Mommy's Little Monster, in 1983, the band consisted of Ness, Danell (now on guitar), bassist Brent Liles, and drummer Derek O'Brien. Their music was often described as a punk version of the Rolling Stones, and "Another State of Mind" was one of the few punk videos to air on MTV in 1984. However, the band took four years to record a follow-up, as Ness descended into heroin addiction and self-consciously rebellious behavior. Liles and O'Brien left, and Ness, after straightening himself out, finally regrouped in 1988 with John Maurer on bass and Chris Reece on drums. This lineup recorded Prison Bound, a mature album broadening Social Distortion's roots-rock influences with a country feel. Their self-titled 1990 effort included a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" and returned the group to MTV via "Ball and Chain." Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell became their most popular album to date, producing a minor radio hit in "Bad Luck" and keeping with their now-established blend of punk, blues, country, and rockabilly.
Social Distortion took an extended hiatus following the release of Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, returning in 1996 with White Light, White Heat, White Trash, which proved to be a moderate hit on MTV and modern-rock radio; former Black Flag and D.O.A. drummer Chuck Biscuits made his debut on the album, following the departure of Reece. Live at the Roxy followed in 1998, and a year later Ness issued a pair of solo albums, Cheating at Solitaire and the covers collection Under the Influences. Danell died February 29, 2000 of an apparent brain aneurysm; the guitarist was just 38 years old. In the fall of 2000, Jonny Wickersham signed on as the group's new guitarist, and Charlie Quintana took over on drums from the often busy Biscuits. After extensive touring, the band went back into the studio in 2004 to record Sex, Love and Rock 'n' Roll." - Steve Huey
"By 1997, it had become clear to Social Distortion that their relationship with 550 (formerly Epic) Records had not worked out and that it was time to move back to the independents. They wrestled themselves free from the contract and signed wtih Time Bomb Recordings. Their first album for the label was Live at the Roxy, a blistering set that offered a career summation and effectively set the band up for a new beginning. No matter how good Social Distortion records are -- and they're usually fairly strong -- the band performs with more energy and passion on stage, and Live at the Roxy captures the intensity of their live show. It doesn't have any surprises, but the set list is solid and the performances thrilling, which makes it a must for dedicated fans." - Stephen Thomas Erlewine
"Mainliner: Wreckage From the Past is a collection of early singles and rare B-sides from Orange County punk legends Social Distortion. Recorded while they were still in their teens, this early material shows no signs of the country-influenced sound that would appear later in the band's career. The main style displayed here is pure punk fury with short, fast songs, lyrics about teen rebellion, and plenty of attitude to go around. "Playpen," "Moral Threat," and "All the Answers" speak of the plight of the early punk rockers who took major abuse from all forms of authority back in a period where the musical style was still considered dangerous. "Mainliner" is a not-at-all subtle tale of heroin abuse. A cover of "Under My Thumb" shows early on that the Rolling Stones were just as much an influence on Social Distortion as the Sex Pistols and the Clash. This collection is definitely intended for dedicated fans and is more of a history lesson than a proper album. Although extremely raw and a bit naïve, becoming familiar with this material will help fans understand where the band came from and appreciate their point of view on stronger, later material." - Paul Tinelli
"Seminal Orange County punk band Social Distortion's first full-length album Mommy's Little Monster is the epitome of early-'80s suburban California punk and provided inspiration for many future Californians, including the Offspring and Rancid. Mommy's Little Monster finds the band supplying plenty of attitude and aggression as they rip through nine tracks worth of hard, fast, power chord-filled tracks loaded with snarling anti-establishment lyrics and themes. Songs like "The Creeps (I Just Want to Give You") and "Telling Them" show a young punk group that is very angry, and they were going to let society know it whether they wanted to hear it or not. The title track, "Mommy's Little Monster," with its descriptions of the girl with blue hair and the unemployed young punk who loves to drink and fight, gives you a good idea of the characters Social Distortion was surrounded by in the scene of the day. Although the low budget production gives the album a genuine early genre feel, it tends to hinder some of the potential power of most of the tracks presented here. As frontman Mike Ness matured as a songwriter the band went on to record stronger albums later in their career, but Mommy's Little Monster is a fine document of the raw early stages of a great influential American punk band that would go on to influence countless others in the future." - Paul Tinelli
"After the long layoff that followed their groundbreaking debut, Mommy's Little Monster, Mike Ness and Social Distortion dropped another seminal punk offering, Prison Bound, in 1988. Slower and more song-driven than their previous disc, this sophomore outing is an absolute triumph. The epic stories of hard living and regret that became Social Distortion's trademark fill Prison Bound's track list. Right off the top, the band adds Ghost Riders-like surf/country guitar riffs to "It's the Law," proclaiming a commitment to their rootsy punk direction. Cautionary tales like the title cut foreshadow future monster hits like "Ball and Chain" off of the group's self-titled 1990 release. Other highlights include "Like an Outlaw" and a raucous cover of the Rolling Stones' "Backstreet Girl." Fans of Social Distortion who have somehow neglected to pick up this gem are encouraged to do just that at their very first opportunity, as the list of West Coast punk offerings more influential than Prison Bound is extremely short." - Vincent Jeffries
"With Prison Bound, Social Distortion began to metamorphasize from a rather ordinary L.A. hardcore band into a roots rock band willing to make with more than their share of the attitude, and this process continued on their self-titled third album (which was also their major-label debut). Musically, Mike Mess and company had learned to split the difference between rockabilly and Ramones-style punk, not unlike fellow L.A. vets X, and if Ness couldn't sing or write with the skill or the resonance of John Doe, "Story of My Life" and "It Coulda Been Me" sound a lot more personal and deeply felt than anything on Mommy's Little Monster, and "Ball and Chain" and "So Far Away" prove he could crank out a respectable honky tonk number if he put his mind to it. Thanks to Epic's sponsorship, the group had more time and money at their disposal for Social Distortion than on their previous albums, and producer Dave Jerden made the most of it; Mike Ness and Dennis Danell's guitars sound lean, sharp, and powerful; Ness's vocals are better controlled than ever before; and Christopher Reece's drums have a tight snap that suits both the thrashier numbers as well as the slower, blusier tunes. Social Distortion isn't a great roots rock album, but it's a pretty good one, and it's better and more affecting than anything this band had cranked out before." - Mark Deming
"Social Distortion finally achieves the perfect balance between their two major influences, the country anguish of Johnny Cash and the furious punk rock sound of early Clash, on their 1992 album Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, making it the band's finest hour. The band tears through a fair share of rollicking, straight-ahead hard rock with songs like "Cold Feelings" and "When She Begins," but they also show a reflective, heartfelt, country-inspired side with songs like "This Time Darlin'" and the hard rock tribute to "Folsom Prison Blues," the cold blooded, murderous tale "99 to Life." At times the band slows down the pace a bit more than on earlier albums, but the band hasn't lost any of the edge or attitude they had as the brash young punks who recorded Mommy's Little Monster. Social Distortion classics "Bad Luck" and "Born to Lose" find a more mature Mike Ness still continuing to play the familiar role of the steadfast underdog with better results than in previous efforts. This album had all the earmarks of a major commercial success with some radio friendly tunes and strong production, but it never found the large audience Epic records expected. Regardless of the sales totals, Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell finds Orange County's most enduring punk band, Social Distortion, at their creative peak, and this album is the crown jewel of their entire catalog." - Paul Tinelli
"With White Light, White Heat, White Trash, Social Distortion made a conscious attempt to cash in on the alternative "revolution" of the early '90s. Underneath the layers of glossy hard rock production, the band still holds fast to some of their punk roots, but too often they sound like a heavy hard rock band. Of course, that commercial sheen is intentional -- it's the only way they could appeal to the legions of post-grunge alternative fans that appeared since Social Distortion released Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell in 1991. The problem is, the band doesn't deliver enough songs to justify the production. Mike Ness still wails away and growls out confessional lyrics, but too often they are ham-fisted and cliched, much like the music that supports them. The band sounds tight and muscular, but the songs have no hooks to make them memorable. In trying to appeal to a wider audience, Social Distortion has lost their identity on White Light, White Heat, White Trash. If it does win the band new fans, they will be listeners that only have a vague idea about what the group is about." - Stephen Thomas Erlewine
"After a lengthy period of struggle, Kris Kristofferson achieved remarkable success as a country songwriter at the start of the 1970s. His songs "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," and "For the Good Times," all chart-topping hits, helped redefine country songwriting, making it more personal and serious, much in the way that Bob Dylan's songs had transformed pop music songwriting in the mid-'60s. By 1987, it was estimated that Kristofferson's compositions had been recorded by more than 450 artists. His renown as a songwriter enabled him to launch a moderately successful career as a musical performer and that, in turn, brought him to the attention of Hollywood, leading to a lengthy career as a film actor.
The eldest of three children of an Air Force major general who retired from the military to head up air operations for the Saudi Arabian company Aramco, Kristofferson spent most of his childhood in Brownsville, TX, though his family moved around, finally settling in San Mateo, CA, by his junior high-school years. He graduated from San Mateo High School in 1954 and entered Pomona College in Claremont, CA. There he studied creative writing and he won first prize and three other placements in a collegiate short-story contest sponsored by Atlantic Monthly magazine. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1958, having secured a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to continue his studies at Oxford University in England. While at Oxford, he wrote and performed his own songs, which brought him to the attention of manager Larry Parnes (who handled Tommy Steele and other British pop stars). Signing with Parnes, he made recordings for Top Rank Records produced by Tony Hatch (apparently never released) and performed under the name Kris Carson, but he was not successful.
After earning a master's degree in English literature from Oxford in 1960, Kristofferson intended to continue his studies there. But during a Christmas break back home in California, he resumed his relationship with an old girlfriend, Fran Beir, and they married. Instead of returning to Oxford, he joined the Army. Like his father, he became a pilot, learning to fly helicopters. He was assigned to West Germany and went there with his wife and their daughter. During the early '60s, while rising to the rank of captain, he eventually returned to writing and performing, organizing a soldiers' band to play at service clubs. Hearing his songs, a friend suggested sending them to a relative of his, the Nashville songwriter Marijohn Wilkin. Kristofferson did so and he received encouragement from Wilkin, who had become a music publisher by founding Bighorn Music. In 1965, Kristofferson was reassigned to the West Point military academy, where he was to become an English instructor. He spent a two-week leave in June 1965 in Nashville, where he looked up Wilkin and decided to try to become a country songwriter instead. He resigned his commission and moved his family to Nashville, signing to Bighorn, which gave him a small weekly stipend that he augmented with a variety of jobs, including janitorial work, bartending, and flying helicopters to and from offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. He and his wife had a son who was born with a defective esophagus, resulting in thousands of dollars in medical bills. Eventually, the couple divorced.
Kristofferson scored his first success as a songwriter with "Viet Nam Blues," which was recorded by Dave Dudley and peaked in the country Top 20 in April 1966. As a recording artist, Kristofferson was signed to Epic Records and released a lone single, "Golden Idol"/"Killing Time," in 1967, but it missed the charts. (He later re-recorded both songs for his Surreal Thing album.) Roy Drusky recorded Kristofferson's "Jody and the Kid" and took it into the country Top 40 in the summer of 1968 and Billy Walker and the Tennessee Walkers' version of his "From the Bottle to the Bottom" peaked in the Top 20 of the country charts in April 1969. But by that spring, those three chart placings and his failed single were all Kristofferson had to show for almost four years of effort in Nashville. He had moved to Fred Foster's Columbine Music and begun to collaborate occasionally with Foster, and he got a break when Roger Miller decided to record one of their songs, "Me and Bobby McGee," a ballad about hoboing that recalled earlier Miller hits like "King of the Road," but with more of a hippie slant. Miller ended up recording not only "Me and Bobby McGee," but also two other Kristofferson compositions, "Best of All Possible Worlds" and "Darby's Castle," for his August 1969 album, Roger Miller. "Me and Bobby McGee" was released as a single in advance of the album and it peaked in the country Top 20. Meanwhile, Kristofferson had begun to gain recognition as a performer, thanks to Johnny Cash, who introduced him at the Newport Folk Festival that summer and featured him on his network television show.
In September 1969, Kristofferson earned another important cover when Ray Stevens released a version of his reflection on a hangover, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," as a single. It entered both the pop and country charts. The following month, Faron Young released "Your Time's Comin'," co-written by Kristofferson and Shel Silverstein. It gave the songwriter his biggest hit so far when it peaked in the country Top Five in December 1969. Jerry Lee Lewis' recording of Kristofferson and Silverstein's "Once More with Feeling" did even better, just missing the top of the country charts in March 1970.
In addition to Columbine Music, Fred Foster also ran Monument Records, an independent label, and he signed Kristofferson to it as a recording artist. Kristofferson went into the studio and cut his own versions of some of the songs others had already done -- "Me and Bobby McGee," "Best of All Possible Worlds," "Darby's Castle," "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" -- as well as some new songs, notably "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "For the Good Times," both romantic ballads with a decidedly erotic tone. His debut album, titled Kristofferson, was released in April 1970 and he promoted it with his first major concert tour, debuting at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on June 23, appearing at the giant Isle of Wight Festival on July 26, and playing the Bitter End in New York in August. But even at a time when standards for singers had fallen noticeably, the album was criticized for Kristofferson's rough vocals; it sold poorly and quickly went out of print.
The demand for his songs, however, only increased. The same month that Kristofferson was released, Ray Price reached the country charts with "For the Good Times," though it had been intended as the B-side of the single. It hit number one in September and crossed over to the pop charts, where it reached the Top 20; as a result, "For the Good Times" was named Song of the Year for 1970 by the Academy of Country Music. In August, Waylon Jennings reached the country charts with Kristofferson and Silverstein's "The Taker," which peaked in the Top Five in October and crossed over to the pop charts. By then, Johnny Cash had entered the country charts with his version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (as he called it, restoring the dropped "g"s). It hit number one in October and crossed over to the pop charts, and that same month it won the Country Music Association's Song of the Year Award for 1970, putting Kristofferson in the unusual position of winning the same award from country's two rival organizations for the same year with different songs.
But the string of hits was far from over. In December, Sammi Smith entered the country charts with "Help Me Make It Through the Night," giving the song a surprising twist by having the woman ask the man to sleep with her instead of the other way around. The single crossed over to the pop charts, eventually reaching the Top Ten and going gold, and it gave Kristofferson his third country chart-topper in February 1971. Meanwhile, Bobby Bare's recording of Kristofferson's "Come Sundown" also had reached the country charts in December and it peaked in the Top Ten in February 1971. Up to this point, Kristofferson had been getting most of his recognition in country music, but that changed in January 1971 when Janis Joplin's posthumous album Pearl was released. Joplin had covered "Me and Bobby McGee" and it was released as a single, shooting up the pop charts to number one in March. That same month, Ray Price followed "For the Good Times" with another Kristofferson song, "I Won't Mention It Again," which crossed over to the pop charts and in May gave the songwriter his fourth country number one hit within eight months. Meanwhile, Joe Simon got into the pop charts with his version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" in April, Bobby Bare charted country in May with Kristofferson's "Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends," which peaked in the Top Ten in July, and Peggy Little reached the country charts with his "I've Got to Have You."
Despite all this sudden success as a songwriter, Kristofferson had not yet achieved any great notice as a performer. Monument had been purchased by CBS Records and turned into a subsidiary of the Columbia label, giving its artists the benefit of major-label distribution and promotion. Kristofferson released his second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, in July 1971. Again, it combined the songwriter's own versions of songs that had scored for others -- "Jody and the Kid," "The Taker" -- with important new work, notably the ballad "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)," which Roger Miller quickly covered for a Top 40 country hit. The album finally broke Kristofferson as a recording artist, rising into the Top Five of the country charts and the Top 20 of the pop charts and going gold, with the songwriter's own version of "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" becoming a Top 40 pop and Top Five easy listening hit. In August, Monument re-released Kristofferson's first album, renaming it Me and Bobby McGee. This time, the LP reached the country Top Ten and the pop Top 100 and went gold. Meanwhile, Ray Price released his third consecutive single of a Kristofferson song, "I'd Rather Be Sorry," and it just missed topping the country charts in October while crossing over to the pop charts. Patti Page also made the country charts with her version of the song. Jerry Lee Lewis put "Me and Bobby McGee" into the charts for a third time in November; it was given some country airplay as the B-side of his number one country single "Would You Take Another Chance on Me," while pop radio flipped the disc over and made it a Top 40 pop hit. The same month, O.C. Smith got into the pop charts with his version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night."
Kristofferson himself, meanwhile, had traveled to Peru at the behest of director Dennis Hopper, and he made his film debut in a bit part in The Last Movie, released in September, to which he also contributed songs. The same month, part of his performance from the Isle of Wight Festival was in the charts on the triple-record set First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies: Isle of Wight/Atlanta Pop Festival. (In 1997, the film and CD Message to Love: The Isle of Wight also featured his appearance.) He had a more substantial film role in Cisco Pike, released early in 1972, also getting to sing several more of his songs. In February, he released his third album, Border Lord. It was his first collection to consist of all-new material and proved to be a slight commercial disappointment, reaching only the Top 100 of the pop charts and the Top Ten of the country charts, its single "Josie" becoming a pop and country chart entry but not a big hit. In March, however, three of his songs, "For the Good Times," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," and "Me and Bobby McGee," were among the five nominees for the 1971 Grammy Award for Best Country Song, while "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Me and Bobby McGee" were also up for the Song of the Year Grammy. Competing against himself, he managed to win his first Grammy for Best Country Song for "Help Me Make It Through the Night." The same month, Gladys Knight & the Pips brought the song back into the pop Top 40 and also made the R&B Top 20 with their rendition. In April, Kristofferson was in the charts with another live recording, appearing on the various-artists collection Big Sur Festival/One Hand Clapping. In June, Sammi Smith made the country charts with her version of "I've Got to Have You," which peaked in the Top 20 in September and also crossed over to the pop charts.
Having taken only seven months between his second and third albums, Kristofferson waited only nine more months before delivering his fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn, in November 1972. Initially, the LP did not do as well as Border Lord, itself a step down from The Silver Tongued Devil and I, as the title song barely made the pop singles charts and a second single, "Jesse Younger," missed the charts entirely. But in March 1973, Monument released a third single, the slow, pious "Why Me," which topped the country charts in July and went gold, also crossing over to the pop Top 20. With that, sales of Jesus Was a Capricorn rebounded and the album hit number one in the country charts a year after it was released. (Meanwhile, Brenda Lee had covered "Nobody Wins" from the album for a Top Five country hit and a pop chart entry.)
Kristofferson, meanwhile, had returned to acting, getting more substantial film roles and working with important directors. In 1973, he appeared in Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love, also contributing a couple of songs, and in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, co-starring as Billy the Kid in the latter. His notices tended to be better than those for the films themselves and indicated that he had a future in films.
On August 19, 1973, Kristofferson married singer Rita Coolidge (who soon bore him a second daughter) and the following month the couple released a duo album, Full Moon. It was a big hit, topping the country charts, reaching the Top 40 of the pop charts, and going gold. Its first single, Kristofferson's composition "A Song I'd Like to Sing," was a Top 20 easy listening hit, a Top 40 pop hit, and a country chart entry. "Loving Arms," a second single, made the easy listening Top 40 and also reached the pop and country charts. The couple's version of "From the Bottle to the Bottom" won the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. (Due to the peculiarities of the Grammy eligibility rules, "Loving Arms" was nominated in the same category the following year.) Kristofferson also earned 1973 Grammy nominations for Best Country Song and Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, for "Why Me."
In April 1974, "One Day at a Time," written by Kristofferson and Marijohn Wilkin, reached the country charts in a recording by Marilyn Sellars that went on to peak in the Top 20. Later in the year, it reached the pop Top 40. Kristofferson's fifth album, Spooky Lady's Sideshow, was released in May. Compared to earlier releases, it was a commercial disappointment, reaching the Top Ten of the country charts but only the Top 100 of the pop charts, with no charting single. From this point on, Kristofferson's albums would be only modest sellers at best. But he remained a potent country songwriter. In July, Ronnie Milsap entered the country charts with a revival of "Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends"; by September it had topped the country charts and crossed over to the pop charts. Kristofferson continued to pursue his film career, taking a small part in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, released in the summer and a co-starring role in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, which appeared in December. Also that month, Kristofferson and Coolidge released their second duo album, Breakaway. Though less successful than their first one, it reached the Top 100 of the pop charts and the Top Five of the country charts. The single "Rain" made the country and easy listening charts. "Lover Please" also got into the easy listening charts and it went on to win the duo a second Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.
Kristofferson took a break from moviemaking to concentrate on his musical career and his sixth album, Who's to Bless and Who's to Blame, released in November 1975. But the extra effort did not translate into increased sales. The LP reached the country Top 40, but it missed the Top 100 of the pop charts. Johnny Duncan's recording of the Kristofferson song "Stranger" from the album became a country hit, however, reaching the Top Five. Kristofferson returned to the movies and in the spring of 1976 was seen in Vigilante Force and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, also contributing a song to the latter. His seventh album, Surreal Thing, followed his sixth by only eight months. It was another commercial disappointment, reaching the country Top Ten while barely registering in the pop charts. But in December 1976, he enjoyed both a hit movie and a hit record with the release of A Star Is Born, in which he co-starred with Barbra Streisand. Critics howled, but the film was a box office smash, second only to Rocky among motion pictures released in 1976 as the top-grossing hit, while the soundtrack album, which featured several contributions from Kristofferson (among them the pop chart entry "Watch Closely Now"), topped the pop charts and sold several million copies. Of course, Streisand had more to do with all that than Kristofferson did, but he was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Actor.
Monument Records seized upon the occasion of his increased profile to release a compilation, Songs of Kristofferson, in April 1977. It did considerably better than his recent releases of new material, making the country Top Ten and the pop Top 100 and earning a gold record. Making only one film in 1977, Semi-Tough, released in the fall, he worked on his eighth album for more than a year and a half, not releasing Easter Island until March 1978. It marked a slight commercial uptick, charting higher in the pop and country charts than his previous effort, but did not restore his commercial fortunes as a recording artist. Returning to the movies, Kristofferson starred in Convoy, a film extrapolation of the 1976 song hit by C.W. McCall, which opened in the summer. In January 1979, he and Rita Coolidge released their third duo album, Natural Act, which was another modest seller.
Kristofferson's personal life and professional career were both at low points in the late '70s and early '80s. His ninth album, Shake Hands With the Devil, was released in September 1979 and did not sell well enough to reach the charts, though the single "Prove It to You One More Time Again" was a country singles chart entry. His next film, Freedom Road, was not given a theatrical release in the U.S., instead being broadcast on television in October. And on December 2, he and Rita Coolidge divorced. At the same time, however, his song catalog continued to prosper. Lena Martell's cover of "One Day at a Time" hit number one in the U.K. in October, then in the U.S. Cristy Lane revived the song, taking it to number one in the country charts in June 1980. Willie Nelson Sings Kris Kristofferson was released in October 1979 and made the country Top Five, as did Nelson's single release of "Help Me Make It Through the Night." Kristofferson toured with Nelson during the winter of 1979-1980. During this period, he also was working on what should have been his greatest cinematic triumph yet, though it turned into a debacle. This was Heaven's Gate, director Michael Cimino's follow-up to his Academy Award-winning film The Deer Hunter. The lengthy, expensive film debuted to negative reviews in November 1980 and was such a financial catastrophe that it bankrupted the movie studio that made it. Kristofferson had already been contracted to make another film, Rollover, released in 1981, but his association with Heaven's Gate may have scared off casting directors, since he didn't appear in another film until 1984. Meanwhile, he released his tenth album, To the Bone, in January 1981, and it became his second straight LP to miss the pop charts, though it made the country charts briefly, as did the single "Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore." But the old songs continued to sell; in July, Tompall and the Glaser Brothers just missed topping the country charts with their revival of "Lovin' Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)."
Except for a non-charting single, "Here Comes That Rainbow Again"/"The Bandits of Beverly Hills," Kristofferson was not heard from for the rest of 1981 or most of 1982, resurfacing in November 1982 with the release of the double-album The Winning Hand, a group effort credited to "Kris [Kristofferson], Willie [Nelson], Dolly [Parton] & Brenda [Lee]." The album reached the country Top Five, though it failed to cross the 100 mark on the pop charts. On February 19, 1983, Kristofferson married for the third time, wedding attorney Lisa Meyers, with whom he eventually had five more children, for a total of eight. He returned to filmmaking in January 1984 with the television broadcast of The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, and made it back into movie theaters later that year with Flashpoint, a mystery, and Songwriter. In the latter, he co-starred with Willie Nelson in a story about the Nashville music industry. He wrote a number of songs for the film, resulting in his first Academy Award nomination for original song score. Columbia Records released Music From Songwriter, a duo album by Nelson and Kristofferson on which the two sang separately and shared a couple of duets. The album reached the pop charts and the Top 20 of the country charts, and one of the duets, Kristofferson's "How Do You Feel About Foolin' Around," made the country singles charts.
Kristofferson and Nelson expanded their partnership into a supergroup quartet with the addition of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to create the album Highwayman, released in April 1985. The title track, a song about reincarnation written by Jimmy Webb, with each group member taking a verse, topped the country charts in August and the LP was also a number one country hit, going gold. A second single, Guy Clark's "Desperados Waiting for a Train," made the country Top 20. The recordings were billed to the four participants by name, but the group came to be known informally as "the Highwaymen," though a settlement had to be made with the 1960s folk group of the same name for the name to be used legally.
In December 1985, Kristofferson starred in Alan Rudolph's film Trouble in Mind, also contributing the theme song, "El Gavilan" ("The Hawk," after the name of his character), sung by Marianne Faithfull. He put the song on Repossessed, his first solo album in six years, which was released on Mercury Records in February 1987. Reflecting his left-wing views particularly on American military involvement in Central America, Repossessed spent six months in the country charts, and "They Killed Him," a tribute to Christ, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., placed in the country singles charts. Simultaneous with the release of the LP, Kristofferson appeared in Amerika, a controversial weeklong television mini-series that fantasized a U.S. under Communist domination. It was one of many TV movie projects the actor had done in the mid-'80s, a time when his feature film work remained sparse.
Highwayman 2 appeared in February 1990, preceded by a single, "Silver Stallion," that made the country Top 40. The album reached the country Top Five and it earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Collaboration. Kristofferson followed Repossessed with a second Mercury album, Third World Warrior, in March 1990. Another work of agitprop, it failed to reach the charts. In 1991, Columbia/Legacy released the compilation Singer/Songwriter, a double-CD set containing both Kristofferson's versions of his best-known songs and the best-known covers of them by people like Janis Joplin and Ray Price. The archival label followed in 1992 with the previously unreleased concert set Live at the Philharmonic, recorded in 1972. Kristofferson worked steadily in TV movies and independent features during the late '80s and early '90s; he wrote the score for the 1993 film Cheatin' Hearts, in which he also appeared. The Highwaymen's third album, The Road Goes on Forever, appeared in April 1995 and made the country charts. As a solo artist, Kristofferson had teamed with producer Don Was to record a new album, A Moment of Forever, for Was' Karambolage imprint in 1993, but an initial distribution deal fell through and the album was not released until August 1995, when it appeared on the Texan independent label Justice Records. Four years later, Kristofferson released The Austin Sessions, an album of remakes of his most popular songs. (In the mid-'90s, One Way Records reissued many of Kristofferson's Monument albums on CD.)
Kristofferson's appearance in director John Sayles' film Lone Star (1996) marked a turning point in his film career. Taking a supporting role as a corrupt sheriff, the 60-year-old actor displayed a flair for character parts and villains that vastly increased his offers from Hollywood in the late '90s and led to his appearances in such major-studio action features as Fire Down Below, Blade, and Payback. He also earned admiring critical notices as a James Jones-like novelist in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries and in another Sayles film, Limbo. By the turn of the century, complaining that he hadn't had time to tour as a singer in years, Kristofferson was looking forward to additional film work." - William Ruhlmann
"After salvaging several recording careers, producer Don Was formed his own imprint, Karambolage, to continue such efforts in the early '90s, and among other artists worked with Kris Kristofferson, dormant as a solo singer/songwriter since the commercial failure of his two politically oriented Mercury albums Repossessed and Third World Warrior in the late '80s. But A Moment of Forever, the comeback album Was produced for Kristofferson, was shelved when Karambolage lost its distribution deal, and the album wasn't released until the summer of 1995 by the independent Justice label. That means it's a far more ambitious undertaking than you might expect, packed with Los Angeles studio heavyweights like drummer Jim Keltner, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, and Heartbreakers organist Benmont Tench, as well as studio wiz Was on bass and behind the glass. In his late 50s, Kristofferson has retreated slightly from the agitprop, but fighting is still a recurring motif in his songs, along with an old favorite subject, freedom. (Picking up on this, designer Cynthia S. Kinney even sticks the dictionary definition of freedom into a collage on one of the CD booklet pages.) But the songwriter often comes off as a sage elder rather than an active combatant, and the album is as concerned with emotions as it is with politics. Two old songs, "Casey's Last Ride" and "Good Love (Shouldn't Feel So Bad)," and two later ones, "Shipwrecked in the Eighties" and "Under the Gun," join the new compositions, and the old ones have a lyricism and clarity that makes you wish Kristofferson's mature writing wasn't so rhetorical. A Moment of Forever doesn't seem like the place to start in listening to Kristofferson, but those who have been following his work thus far will find it a good representation of his philosophical concerns, expressed in strong musical performances." - William Ruhlmann
"Border Lord was a crucial album for Kris Kristofferson. After five years of scuffling in Nashville, he had broken through in 1970-1971 largely because of a series of song hits recorded by others, though his first two albums, Kristofferson (aka Me and Bobby McGee) and The Silver Tongued Devil and I had enjoyed healthy sales, the latter even spawning a Top 40 pop hit in "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)." But he needed to consolidate that success and even increase it, especially as a recording artist. Yet, as is so often the case, he was afforded precious little time to craft his next work. Border Lord, which, like its predecessors, was an album of all-original compositions, was in record stores only seven months after The Silver Tongued Devil and I, and it was his third such collection in 20 months. He continued to draw upon the dwindling store of songs in his trunk, using the 1967 copyright "Burden of Freedom," as well as "Somebody Nobody Knows," published in 1968, while two others, "Smokey Put the Sweat on Me" and "When She's Wrong," were published by his first publisher, Buckhorn Music, suggesting that they may have been written well before their 1972 copyright dates. New or old, the songs on Border Lord often seemed like retreads of already familiar Kristofferson themes. His interest on lowlife characters, especially fallen women, was so pervasive it practically turned the disc into a concept album. Of the ten songs, six -- "Josie," "Stagger Mountain Tragedy," "Somebody Nobody Knows," "Little Girl Lost," "Smokey Put the Sweat on Me," and "When She's Wrong" -- treated the subject of women in debased conditions, several specifically described as prostitutes. And Kristofferson tended to reuse his allusions and imagery, especially references to the Devil (already the subject of earlier songs such as "To Beat the Devil" and "The Silver-Tongued Devil and I"), who appeared in no less than five songs. The songwriter was almost, but not quite, as interested in the Lord, who was name-checked here and there, and with whose Son Kristofferson identified in the philosophical "Burden of Freedom" ("Lord, help me forgive them, they don't understand"). Among the religious and roadhouse references, the only really new subject was life on the road, which was treated in such new songs as "Border Lord" and "Gettin' By, High and Strange," an indication that this always confessional songwriter was writing about his current life as a touring musician. Though it consisted of material that was noticeably inferior by Kristofferson's standards, the album was full of poetic lines effectively performed by a road-honed singer and a touring band heavily augmented by Nashville pros; even second-rate Kristofferson was pretty good in 1972. Still, Monument Records had difficulty finding an obvious candidate for a hit single, finally settling on "Josie," which must have seemed to have some of the same qualities as "Me and Bobby McGee," but which only struggled into the lower reaches of the pop charts. With that, Border Lord proved a commercial disappointment, slowing the momentum of a career that had been accelerating over the past three years. No doubt Kristofferson and Monument would have been better advised to have waited until he had a collection of songs to match his early hits; instead, he quickly began work on yet another album, Jesus Was a Capricorn, which was out before the end of the year." - William Ruhlmann
"There are many who can claim that since Kris Kristofferson never had much of a singer's voice, his songs were always better served by someone else's interpretation. This view is dead wrong, however. While Kristofferson may not possess a golden throat, that doesn't mean he isn't a great singer. He is. No one sings his material -- with the possible exception of Willie Nelson's interpretation of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee" -- better than he does. (No, Johnny Cash's read of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" wasn't forgotten in the list, and it's a good one, but Kristofferson's is devastating.) Broken Freedom Song features the singer/songwriter in a stark yet romantic setting, accompanied only by guitarist and mandolinist Stephen Bruton and Keith Caper on bass. Both musicians provide backing vocals, and Kristofferson accompanies himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. He has never been in better voice, and the collection of songs here is stellar. Along with "Darby's Castle," the title track, "Here Comes That Rainbow Again," and "Shandy" are four new songs, such as "The Circle," written after two significant events, the story of the disappeared ones (los Olvidados) in Argentina and the late Iraqi artist Layla Al-Attar, who was killed during the Clinton administration's bombing of Baghdad--the pilots missed the target. Al-Attar's name, and those of her husband and children, were never mentioned in the American press.
Also, "Sky King," a song sung by Vietnam veterans during the war and others later, is a perennial live offeriing by Kristofferson that's never been recorded before; finally "Sandinista" frm the excellent [^Third World Warrior album offers a widely divergent view of the truth about Nicaragua from the U.S. government's. And herein lies the beauty of this recording: It was never planned as a live album and features none of the "hits" except for the title track. It was recorded as a way to find a track for a Bread and Roses Foundation compilation. Broken Freedom Sing a record of love songs and topical protest tomes. But there's no placard-waving here. Kristofferson is a humanist and an intimate performer who doesn't give a damn whether people agree with him or not, nor does he presume he's right or superior. He asks questions and feels it important to preserve the names of victims in historical memory. And he asks a lot of questions here, amiably but unflinchingly. He also engages his audience so intimately that it feels as if he's playing in somebody's back yard. This is easily one of Kris Kristofferson's finest moments on record; it's the way a songwriter's album should be done -- full of unpretentious songs that offer wisdom, a sense of community and empathy, and a performance that is as soulful and humorous and humble as they come." - Thom Jurek
"Kris Kristofferson is pictured smiling in sunglasses on the cover of Jesus Was a Capricorn, accompanied by his girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife Rita Coolidge. The album followed his previous LP, Border Lord, by only nine months and was his fourth album to be released within two-and-a-half years, which meant that a man who had struggled for half a decade to get anybody to listen to his songs was now writing and recording them as fast as he could. Not surprisingly, he was having trouble filling the pipeline; he borrowed the melody of John Prine's "Grandpa Was a Carpenter" for the title song and even recorded a cover song for the first time, performing a duet with Larry Gatlin on Gatlin's "Help Me." There was nothing here that matched his best songs, but the overall quality of the material was quite good, as Kristofferson went back over familiar ground, singing about religion, romance, and roughhousing with equal fervor. Especially impressive were the two duets with Coolidge, "It Sure Was (Love)" and "Give It Time to Be Tender," which looked forward to their duo albums. Commercially, Jesus Was a Capricorn can be seen either as a case of record company ineptitude or perseverance, or both. Border Lord had marked a falloff in sales from Kristofferson's first two albums, and initially Jesus Was a Capricorn looked like it was going to do even worse, as Monument Records couldn't seem to figure out what the right single was. The label started by releasing a single version of the title track, in which Kristofferson described Christ as a sandals-wearing hippie, and, despite the subject matter, pop radio gave it enough play to get it into the bottom of the charts for a few weeks. But the LP quickly peaked in the charts and started to fade, not helped by the second single, the medium-tempo rocker "Jesse Younger," which made no impression. (Meanwhile, Brenda Lee had no trouble locating the album's best song; she covered "Nobody Wins" and established herself in country music by taking it into the country top five.) Finally, four months after the album's release, Monument issued a third single, the slow-paced statement of faith that closed the LP, "Why Me." (Actually, a disc jockey had started playing the song, which Monument hadn't even wanted on the album. Though sometimes described as a spoof, "Why Me" sincerely reflects a religious experience, according to Kristofferson.) It quickly entered the country and pop charts, hitting number one in country in July 1973, and peaking in the pop Top 20 after a slow climb in November. That turned around the fortunes of Jesus Was a Capricorn, which marched back up the charts and reached number one on the country charts a full year after it had been released. Both album and single went gold, giving Kristofferson his greatest success as a recording artist." - William Ruhlmann
"In the late 60s and early 70s, Kris Kristofferson's adult, reality-based songs were the most shocking thing to hit Nashville in a long time, and what's more, they were hits. This album contains his own versions of some of the best, including the title song, "Help Me Make It through the Night," and "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down."" - William Ruhlmann
"By the time Monument came to release Kristofferson's second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, in July 1971, he was the author of four songs that had topped the country or pop charts for others. Kristofferson himself had not yet reached the charts with a recording of his own, but his spectacular success as a songwriter made The Silver Tongued Devil and I a much-anticipated record. One consequence of this was that Monument was willing to spend more money; three of the album's songs boasted strings and another a horn section. But the key, of course, was still the songwriting, and though there were several excellent songs, the album could not live up to its predecessor, which was the culmination of years of writing. Typically for a second album, Kristofferson reached back into his catalog, presenting his own treatments of "Jody and the Kid" and "The Taker," which had been hits for Roy Drusky and Waylon Jennings, respectively. In his newly written material, Kristofferson continued to examine the lives of society's outcasts, but the antiestablishment tone of some of Kristofferson was gone along with much of the wry humor, and in their place were touches of morbidity and sentimentality. Kristofferson retained his gift for intimate love songs, and the album's most memorable selections turned out to be "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" (which became a semi-standard) and "When I Loved Her." And even if his observations seemed less acute, his talent for wordplay often rescued the songs from banality. On its way to becoming a gold record, The Silver Tongued Devil and I reached the pop Top 20, Kristofferson's career high on that chart, and the country Top Five; thus, Kristofferson made the transition from being a successful songwriter to a successful recording artist." - William Ruhlmann
" As the so-called "alternative country' movement has become increasingly commercialised over the last few years, it has become increasingly more of a struggle to see a bullshit-free route through the clutter. Moreover, a somewhat ill-formed interpretation of the historical realignment of country's non-conformist travellers has developed: a flawed assumption that country was totally lost into the hands of corporate milkers somewhere between the mid-70s (around the untimely death of Gram Parsons) and the late-90s (with the rise and rise of Lambchop, Calexico et al.). To compound these problems has been the lack of some truly authoritative fan-led country compilations that haven't been bent out of shape by the selfish-agenda of the main Americana-sponsoring labels (Lost Highway, Loose Records, Bloodshot, and so forth). Help, however, is at hand with the release of Country 1, compiled by the discerning folk at London's Rough Trade record shops.
Free from any record company scheming (Rough Trade Shops became formally detached from Rough Trade Records well over a decade ago), the combined minds of shop staff have conspired to conceive the most definitive and cohesive alt-country compendium released to date. Focusing heavily on material released during the 80s and 90s, Country 1 reminds the music world that roots-based Americana did in fact keep its resolve against the background of the plastic pop commercialism of the 1980s and the fragmented fads of 1990s. Furthermore, in the spirit of bedroom mix-tape making, this two-CD set flows thematically not chronologically, avoiding the temptation to pick obvious and overheard songs en route (i.e. lesser known tracks from the "bigger' artists get an airing and so on).
The wildest and most invigorating frontiers of early/mid-80s cowpunk classicism are covered in fine detail with some crucial cuts pasted in from X, The Replacements, Dream Syndicate, Giant Sand, and The Gun Club. The warm thread of post-Byrds country-folk pop is personified by Golden Smog's hazy/lazy "Until You Came Along," though likeminded outfits like The Jayhawks and The Cash Brothers are conspicuous by their absence in this side of the broad country church. Elsewhere, unhinged and death-obsessed storytellers (The Violent Femmes, Handsome Family, The Geraldine Fibbers) duke it out with heavy-heartened neo-traditionalists (Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Lullably for the Working Class) for some deeply disturbing and delicate moments, respectively. As well as being representative of the band-orientated purveyors of the country aesthetic, this collection also gives space for the gritty loners; hence the inclusion of Rainer Ptacek's chillingly beautiful country-blues lament "Life is Fine," Steve Earle's Johnny Cash-like convict confessional "Billy Austin," and Jim White's previously unreleased gem, "The Girl From Brownsville Texas"- a brilliantly atmospheric slice of late-night driving and philosophising that proves to be this collection's understated highlight.
For all its merits in the considered compiling-process stakes, Country 1 does give distressingly low credo to the feminine heart that beats strongly through the Americana underworld, something that too many male music fans still stubbornly refuse to accept. Therefore there are glaring gaps where Neko Case, Edith Frost, Gillian Welch, Kristin Hersh, Victoria Williams, Emmylou Harris, and Cat Power (to name just a handful) should all be sitting comfortably. However despite this sexist fault-line in the selection processing, at least all the non-male-fronted contributors included do manage to give miraculous presence to proceedings. Freakwater's super-rare interpretation of Dwight Yoakam's "South of Cincinnati" is deeply lovely, as is Lucinda Williams's yearning but gutsy "The Night's too Long," and Tarnation's "Lonely Lights" (a hard-to-find version plucked from the defunct band's long-deleted debut, I'll Give You Something to Cry About) is another fine example of Paula Frazer's spectral vocals and sublime songwriting.
Yet despite its smattering of shortcomings, this mammoth compendium is a remarkably healthy feast for self-educating listeners and open-minded country collectors alike. Like all the best compilations, Country 1 gives you a greedy appetite to explore elsewhere for more, whilst simultaneously being a gripping (repeated-spin) ride in its own right. Hopefully the next volume will pull in just a few more killer contributors (particularly from the cowgirl side of town), but until then, there is more than here enough to remind us that country-slanted music should never be allowed to fall into the hands of corporate Stalinists or be restricted by rigid, genre-defining regulations." - Adrian Pannett
Disc 1 total 103M 4.0K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd1-2003-esc.m3u 12K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd1-2003-esc.nfo 4.0K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd1-2003-esc.sfv 6.9M 01-giant_sand-wearing_the_robes_of_bible_black-esc.mp3 5.2M 02-the_replacements-take_me_down_to_the_hospital-esc.mp3 7.0M 03-violent_femmes-country_death_song-esc.mp3 5.0M 04-lincoln_65-jellyfish-esc.mp3 4.3M 05-wannabe_texans-i_cut_myself-esc.mp3 4.8M 06-meat_puppets-lost-esc.mp3 6.4M 07-the_geraldine_fibbers-fancy-esc.mp3 5.9M 08-the_broken_family_band-the_devil_in_the_details-esc.mp3 4.1M 09-american_music_club-garys_song-esc.mp3 2.4M 10-boiled_in_lead-tapedecks_all_over_hell-esc.mp3 5.4M 11-rainer-life_is_fine-esc.mp3 3.5M 12-the_handsome_family-when_the_helicopter_comes-esc.mp3 5.0M 13-calexico-the_crooked_road_and_the_briar-esc.mp3 6.2M 14-freakwater-south_of_cincinnti-esc.mp3 6.3M 15-richard_buckner-lil_wallet_picture-esc.mp3 5.9M 16-lucinda_williams-the_nights_too_long-esc.mp3 3.9M 17-the_gun_club-ghost_on_the_highway-esc.mp3 8.1M 18-songs_ohia-come_back_to_your_man-esc.mp3 7.6M 19-the_dream_syndicate-blind_willie_mctell-esc.mp3 Disc 2 total 104M 4.0K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd2-2003-esc.m3u 12K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd2-2003-esc.nfo 4.0K 00-va-rough_trade_shops_country_1-cd2-2003-esc.sfv 6.8M 01-golden_smog-until_you_came_along-esc.mp3 3.5M 02-the_rockingbirds-drifting-esc.mp3 4.4M 03-x-riding_with_mart-esc.mp3 3.8M 04-true_west-aint_no_hangman-esc.mp3 2.7M 05-chickenasaw_mudd_puppies-nightime-esc.mp3 2.7M 06-uncle_topelo-satan_your_kingdom_must_come_down-esc.mp3 4.2M 07-the_mekons-lost_highway-esc.mp3 3.7M 08-whiskeytown-houses_on_the_hill-esc.mp3 8.6M 09-steve_earl_and_the_dukes-billy_austin-esc.mp3 3.5M 10-tarnation-lonely_lights-esc.mp3 4.1M 11-original_harmony_creek_ridge_dippers-give_my_heart_to-esc.mp3 8.8M 12-jim_white-the_girl_from_brownsville_texas-esc.mp3 5.4M 13-camper_van_beethoven-good_guys_and_bad_guys-esc.mp3 6.1M 14-ella_guru-strugglin_horse_in_hollywood-esc.mp3 3.4M 15-green_on_red-hair_of_the_dog-esc.mp3 3.6M 16-zoth_day-this_train-esc.mp3 5.3M 17-dave_alvin-border_radio-esc.mp3 4.4M 18-lullaby_for_the_working_class-spreading_the_evening_s-esc.mp3 8.8M 19-gourds-gin_and_juice-esc.mp3 4.9M 20-souled_american-feel_better-esc.mp3 6.1M 21-bozulich_carla_with_willie_nelson-can_i_sleep_in_your-esc.mp3
total 420M 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 001 - I'm WalkingThe Dog [1954 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.9M PATSY CLINE - 002 - It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels [1954 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 003 - Hidin' Out [1955].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 004 - Turn The Cards Slowly [1955].mp3 4.5M PATSY CLINE - 005 - A Church, A Courtroom, And Then Goodbye [1955].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 006 - Honky Tonk Merry Go Round [1955].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 007 - I Love You, Honey [1956].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 008 - I Love You, Honey [1956 different intro].mp3 2.9M PATSY CLINE - 009 - Come On In (And Make Yourself At Home) [1956].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 010 - I Cried All The Way To The Altar [1956].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 011 - I Don't Wanta [1956].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 012 - Stop, Look And Listen [1956 take 4].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 013 - Stop, Look And Listen [1956].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 014 - I've Loved And Lost Again [1956].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 015 - He Will Do For You What He Has Done For Me [1956].mp3 2.9M PATSY CLINE - 016 - Yes, I Know Why [1956 Radio Transcription].mp3 2.4M PATSY CLINE - 017 - For Rent [1956 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 018 - Walkin' After Midnight [1956].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 019 - The Heart You Break May Be Your Own [1956].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 020 - Pick Me Up On Your Way Down [1956].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 021 - A Poor Man's Roses (Or A Rich Man's Gold) [1956].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 022 - Today, Tomorrow And Forever [1957].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 023 - Fingerprints [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 024 - A Stranger In My Arms [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 025 - Don't Ever Leave Me Again [1957].mp3 2.7M PATSY CLINE - 026 - Try Again [1957].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 027 - Too Many Secrets [1957].mp3 4.7M PATSY CLINE - 028 - Then You'll Know [1957].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 029 - Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray [1957].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 030 - That Wonderful Someone [1957].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 031 - In Care Of The Blues [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 032 - Hungry For Love [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 033 - I Can't Forget [1957].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 034 - I Don't Wanta [1957].mp3 2.6M PATSY CLINE - 035 - Ain't No Wheels On This Ship [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 036 - Stop The World And Let Me Off [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 037 - Cry Not For Me [1957].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 038 - If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child) [1957].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 039 - Just Out Of Reach [1958].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 040 - I Can See An Angel [1958 or prob. earlier].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 041 - I Can See An Angel [1958].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 042 - Come On In (And Make Yourself At Home) [1958].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 043 - Let The Teardrops Fall [1958].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 044 - Never No More [1958].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 045 - If I Could Only Stay Asleep [1958].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 046 - I'm Moving Along [1959].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 047 - I'm Blue Again [1959].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 048 - Love, Love, Love Me Honey Do [1959].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 049 - Yes, I Understand [1959].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 050 - Gotta Lot Of Rhythm In My Soul [1959].mp3 4.1M PATSY CLINE - 051 - Life's Railway To Heaven [1959].mp3 3.9M PATSY CLINE - 052 - Just A Closer Walk With Thee [1959].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 053 - Lovesick Blues [1960].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 054 - How Can I Face Tomorrow [1960].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 055 - There He Goes [1960].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 056 - Crazy Dreams [1960].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 057 - When Your House Is Not A Home [1960 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 058 - Stupid Cupid [1960 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.9M PATSY CLINE - 059 - Loose Talk [1960 Radio Transcription].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 060 - I Fall To Pieces [1960].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 061 - Shoes [1960].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 062 - Lovin' In Vain [1960].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 063 - Side By Side [1960 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 064 - True Love [1961].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 065 - San Antonio Rose [1961].mp3 4.7M PATSY CLINE - 066 - The Wayward Wind [1961].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 067 - A Poor Man's Roses (Or A Rich Man's Gold) [1961].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 068 - Crazy [1961].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 069 - Who Can I Count On [1961].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 070 - Seven Lonely Days [1961].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 071 - I Love You So Much It Hurts [1961].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 072 - Foolin' 'Round [1961].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 073 - Have You Ever Been Lonley (Have You Ever Been Blue) [1961].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 074 - South Of The Border (Down Mexico Way) [1961].mp3 2.9M PATSY CLINE - 075 - Walkin' After Midnight [1961].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 076 - Strange [1961].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 077 - You'e Stronger Than Me [1961].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 078 - Come On In (Make Yourself At Home) [1961 Live].mp3 6.8M PATSY CLINE - 079 - A Poor Man's Roses (Or A Rich Man's Gold) [1961 Live].mp3 2.7M PATSY CLINE - 080 - Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home [1961 Live].mp3 4.4M PATSY CLINE - 081 - She's Got You [1961].mp3 3.9M PATSY CLINE - 082 - You Made Me Love You (I Did'nt Want To Do It) [1962].mp3 4.3M PATSY CLINE - 083 - You Belong To Me [1962].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 084 - Heartaches [1962].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 085 - Your Cheatin' Heart [1962].mp3 4.3M PATSY CLINE - 086 - That's My Desire [1962].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 087 - Half As Much [1962].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 088 - Lonely Street [1962].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 089 - Anytime [1962].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 090 - You Were Only Fooling (While I Was Falling In Love) [1962].mp3 4.2M PATSY CLINE - 091 - I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You) [1962].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 092 - You're Stronger Than Me [1962].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 093 - When I Get Thru With You (You'll Love Me Too) [1962].mp3 4.1M PATSY CLINE - 094 - Imagine That [1962].mp3 4.2M PATSY CLINE - 095 - So Wrong [1962].mp3 4.9M PATSY CLINE - 096 - Why Can't He Be You [1962].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 097 - Your Kinda Love [1962].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 098 - When You Need A Laugh [1962].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 099 - Leavin' On Your Mind [1962].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 100 - Back In Baby's Arms [1962].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 101 - Tra Le La Le Triangle [1962].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 102 - That's A How Heartache Begins [1962].mp3 4.1M PATSY CLINE - 103 - Leavin' On Your Mind [1963 Radio Transcription].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 104 - Tennessee Waltz [1963 Radio Transcription].mp3 5.2M PATSY CLINE - 105 - Faded Love [1963].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 106 - Someday (You'll Want Me To Love You) [1963].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 107 - Love Letters In The Sand [1963].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 108 - Blue Moon Of Kentucky [1963].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 109 - Sweet Dreams (Of You) [1963].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 110 - Always [1963].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 111 - Does Your Heart Beat For Me [1963].mp3 3.9M PATSY CLINE - 112 - Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home [1963].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 113 - He Called Me Baby [1963].mp3 3.4M PATSY CLINE - 114 - Crazy Arms [1963].mp3 4.2M PATSY CLINE - 115 - You Took Him Off My Hands [1963].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 116 - I'll Sail My Ship Alone [1963].mp3 6.3M PATSY CLINE - 117 - Just A Closer Walk With Thee [Unknown live).mp3 4.3M PATSY CLINE - 118 - Have You Ever Been Lonely [& JIM REEVES - dubbed].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 119 - I Fall To Pieces [& JIM REEVES - dubbed].mp3 total 155M 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 015 - Dear God [1956].mp3 4.6M PATSY CLINE - 023 - Walkin' After Midnight [1957 TV Show].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 024 - Try Again [1957 TV Show].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 029 - Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray [1957 TV Show].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 034 - Walkin' After Midnight [1957 TV Show].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 041 - Then You'll Know [1957 TV Show].mp3 3.6M PATSY CLINE - 042 - Too Many Secrets [1957 TV Show].mp3 3.0M PATSY CLINE - 043 - Come On In (And Make Yourself At Home) [1957 TV Show].mp3 2.8M PATSY CLINE - 048 - I Don't Wanna [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.7M PATSY CLINE - 049 - Your Cheating Heart [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.5M PATSY CLINE - 050 - Don't Ever Leave Me Again [1958 TV Show].mp3 2.0M PATSY CLINE - 051 - The Man Upstairs [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.3M PATSY CLINE - 052 - Stop The World And Let Me Off [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 053 - Down By The Riverside [1958 TV Show].mp3 4.2M PATSY CLINE - 054 - Write Me In Care Of The Blues [1958 TV Show].mp3 2.6M PATSY CLINE - 055 - Ain't No Wheels On This Ship [1958 TV Show].mp3 4.0M PATSY CLINE - 056 - Hungry For Love [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.2M PATSY CLINE - 057 - Walking Dreams [1958 TV Show].mp3 3.8M PATSY CLINE - 084 - Come On In (And Make Yourself At Home) [1961 Live].mp3 7.3M PATSY CLINE - 085 - A Poor Man's Roses (Or A Rich Man's Gold) [1961 Live].mp3 4.7M PATSY CLINE - 086 - Bill Bailey (Won't You Please Come Home) [1961 Live].mp3 7.6M PATSY CLINE - 087 - I Fall To Pieces [1961 Live].mp3 4.5M PATSY CLINE - 088 - Lovesick Blues [1961 Live].mp3 5.5M PATSY CLINE - 089 - Shake, Rattle And Roll [1961 Live].mp3 7.0M PATSY CLINE - 090 - There He Goes [1961 Live].mp3 5.7M PATSY CLINE - 091 - San Antonio Rose [1961 Live].mp3 5.6M PATSY CLINE - 092 - Stupid Cupid [1961 Live].mp3 7.5M PATSY CLINE - 093 - I Fall To Pieces [1961 Live].mp3 4.3M PATSY CLINE - 094 - If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child) [1961 Live].mp3 5.9M PATSY CLINE - 095 - Walkin' After Midnight [1961 Live].mp3 8.3M PATSY CLINE - 096 - Foolin' Around [1961 Live].mp3 7.2M PATSY CLINE - 097 - When My Dreamboat Comes Home [1961 Live].mp3 3.1M PATSY CLINE - 112 - Crazy [1961 Radio Transcription].mp3 1.8M PATSY CLINE - 113 - San Antonio Rose [1961 Radio Transcription].mp3 2.7M PATSY CLINE - 114 - I Love You So Much It Hurts [1961 Radio Transcription].mp3 2.7M PATSY CLINE - 115 - I Fall To Pieces [1961 Radio Transcription].mp3 84K PATSY CLINE - 200 - The Ultimate Patsy Cline Collection (rev. 3).doc