Groover’s Paradise is a great music blog. It’s a collaborative effort by a bunch of knowledgeable music bloggers, featuring short posts around a single song. I’ve liked just about every song they’ve featured. Recently, they went from awesome to absolute must-read when they featured a song by the most wonderful Freddy Fender. I liked the Texas Tornados. And I liked Doug Sahm a lot. But I knew about Freddy long before I’d ever heard of either his future band or his future band mate. One of my favorite records from my teens was Freddy’s excellent Before the Next Teardrop Falls.
Here’s about the best cover you’ll ever hear of What’d I Say. Tell me that doesn’t rock. Seriously, if you don’t love that song, you better call 911.
One of the contributors to Groover’s Paradise is the guy from The Adios Lounge, the music blog that I have repeatedly raved about. Another excellent music blog I discovered via Groover’s Paradise is The Rising Storm. Any blog that dedicates posts to Mountain Bus and this fantastic record (here’s my take) is a must read. I don’t know these dudes, but I wish I did.
John Doe (of X fame) and the Sadies have a new record of classic country covers and originals, called Country Club.
The other night organicsue, one of my favorite Blip.fm DJ’s, played a great Gretchen Peters/Tom Russell song off of their new record. I immediately bought the record, once again proving that these social network sites are good for musicians. The song that made me buy the record is Sweet & Shiny Eyes, but every song on the record is good. Update: Even though I bought the record and gave it good press, I got a take down notice from Gretchen and Tom’s record label. No more sales or good press here, folks.
Album covers, much like science fiction book covers, can attract me to buy a record by someone I’ve never heard of. Here’s the latest example of that. You can hear all the
songs on the record on Ronnie Fauss’s web site. Or you can buy the record off iTunes like I did- before I listened to the songs. The songs are as good as the cover.
Obviously, one of the records everyone has been waiting for is Potato Hole, Booker T. Jones‘ new record on which he is joined by The Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young. Neil’s ever-growing political weirdness is starting to wear on me a bit, but he is still one of my all-time favorites. And anyone who reads this blog or knows me in the real world knows how much I dig the DBT. It’s an amazingly effective mashup of styles, with a definite DBT vibe surrounding Booker T’s organ and keyboards. It’s an instrumental record, as should be expected. I don’t know that I’ll sit and listen to it over and over, but it’s clearly good car music. My favorite track so far is Warped Sister.
Rarely in my life have I discovered a musician I like some and dislike some any more than Colonel Bruce Hampton. Cold Mountain is one of my all-time favorite songs. Many of his records have some great stuff- I’m talking about as good as it gets, intermingled with songs I really don’t like. Yesterday I heard Colonel Bruce do an awesome version of Skip James’ I’m So Glad. The version I found for sale is off the Code Talkers’ 2007 record, Dee-Lux Uh-dish-un. That song completely rocks. I bought the record and so far, it sounds consistently good. Really good, actually.
Newsome.Org 