A Dozen Albums From The Edge Of Folk

Because it intersects with so many different kinds of music, Folk is difficult to define with any real accuracy. In its broadest meaning, Folk is traditional music that’s been passed down through the generations, and is played acoustically. But Folk influenced so many musicians during the 1960s that hybrid forms of it started to appear, and other genres of music began to absorb elements of its sound and style. Here are a dozen (or so) albums that live on the fringe of Folk, but probably wouldn’t be recognized as such by the purists…

Graham Parker | Howlin’ Wind – Parker’s debut lives at the crossroads of Punk and Folk, and is the kind of music that Bob Dylan might have made during the 70′s if he’d gotten hooked on the Ramones instead of religion.

Listen: Howlin’ Wind

Tom Waits | Nighthawks At The Diner – Waits perfected his drunken piano man/beat poet routine during the 70s, before turning to darker subject matter in the next decade. Recorded live in the studio, Nighthawks… is the zenith of his Beat phase, and songs like ‘Putnam County’ and ‘Big Joe And Phantom 309′ represent a unique – and very inebriated – brand of Folk.

Listen: Big Joe And Phantom 309

Iron & Wine | The Shepherd’s Dog – Sam Beam released three albums of relatively straight-ahead acoustic Folk before unleashing this shimmering, kaleidoscopic jewel. The Shepherd’s Dog is rooted in Folk, but built upon layers of sound that would make Brian Wilson and Phil Spector smile.

Listen: Boy With A Coin

Los Lobos | Kiko – One of Folk’s dirty little secrets is that by definition it includes only European or North American-based songs. But I for one don’t buy that country club-style exclusion – Los Lobos have been crafting soulful roots music for decades, and with Kiko they made an album that carries itself like a smart, serious, and sometimes sentimental Folk record.

Listen: Kiko And The Lavender Moon

Bruce Springsteen | Nebraska – Originally recorded as the demo tracks for an album The Boss planned to record with the E Street Band, these stark songs tell the stories of sympathetic losers stuck in a world beyond their control. The sleet grey horizon pictured on the album cover sets an appropriate tone.

Listen: Nebraska

Michelle Shocked | Short Sharp Shocked – The dividing line between folk and country is particularly foggy, but Michelle Shocked deserves consideration for the former category because of the literate, humorous, and warm nature of her music. If Woody Guthrie were to make a sudden, dramatic recovery from death, I have to think he’d be a big fan of her music.

Listen: Vx Fx Dx

Dave Alvin | Public Domain – Dave Alvin is the heir to Folk gods like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, who could take any song and make it a Folk tune just because they were so damned folksy. Here he dusts the cobwebs off 15 traditional songs, restoring their natural sparkle for all to enjoy.

Listen: What Did The Deep Sea Say?

Lou Reed | New York – Yeah, I know – Sweet Lou would probably punch me in the face for daring to brand him a folkie, but dude has a way of telling the stories of the down and out. With New York, he spun cryptic tales of life in the Big Apple that were full of greasy, troubled, and colorful characters who wouldn’t otherwise have their say. He might not like the designation, but Lou Reed keeps it as real as any folksinger.

Listen: Dirty Blvd.

John Martyn | Solid Air – Martyn was a pure folk singer for his first few albums, but by the mid-70s, he was adding such heavy doses of jazz, world music, and electronic effects, that his music could only properly be described with the help of many hyphens. Still, beneath all the jazz phrasings and echoplex feedback beats the heart of a real folksinger…

Listen: Over The Hill

Grateful Dead | Reckoning – Forget the drugs and the dancing bears, Reckoning most definitely is a folk album. It consists of acoustic renditions of both traditional and Dead songs that were recorded in New York City and San Francisco in September and October of 1980. These are fine, understated performances that reveal the folkies behind all the psychedelia…

Listen: Deep Elem Blues

Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence | Oar – Fractured folk from a fragile mind that was slowly losing the thread, Oar features meandering, broken melodies, cryptic lyrics, and songs that fall apart in midstream. This is where Folk enters the dark halls of the asylum…

Listen: Little Hands

Dino Valente | Dino – This feedback drenched record by the would-be and future lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service only passes through the most remote corners of Folk. But with ‘Me And My Uncle’ – a chilling portrait of robbery and murder – Valente created a Folk masterpiece that still sends off heat waves.

Listen: Me And My Uncle

Steve Earle | El Corazon – Dadgumit, if Steve Earle didn’t sound like a guy from Texas, he’d probably get a lot more consideration as the rabble-rousing folkie he really is. He’s certainly got the moral compass, soapbox personality, and storytelling genes that mark the best folksingers.

Listen: Christmas In Washington

*****

A Dozen (or so) More Albums That Might (or might not) Be Folk…

M. Ward * Transfiguration Of Vincent
Terry Allen * Human Remains
Calexico * The Black Light
Kris Kristofferson * Kristofferson
Johnny Cash * American Recordings
Syd Barrett * The Madcap Laughs
Joni Mitchell * The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Willis Alan Ramsey * Willis Alan Ramsey
Beck * One Foot In The Grave
Dock Boggs * His Folkways Years (1963-1968)
Bob Dylan & The Band * The Basement Tapes
Tony Joe White * Tony Joe White
Joao Gilberto * The Warm World Of Joao Gilberto

On The Fence: Bridge Over Troubled Water

Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water is widely considered to be their masterpiece: Rolling Stone picked it as the 51st greatest album of all-time, and AllMusic.com rewarded it with a five-star review. And yet, I can’t help feeling a little bored when the needle hits this album. Let’s investigate…

THUMBS UP: Simon & Garfunkel’s harmonic folk-rock was a big part of the soundtrack of the sixties. Not all of their material has aged well, but brilliant songwriting never goes out of style, and Paul Simon is one of the best in the business. ‘The Boxer’ is one of the finest character portraits to be found in song – a haunting take on a lonely profession. When Simon sings “Still, a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest” he gets as close to Tao/existential wisdom as any 60s rocker ever did. ‘Cecilia’ is a great tune, and certainly one of the catchiest songs ever written about heartbreak and infidelity. This was the duo’s last album together before Simon split for a wildly successful solo career, and because it was released in 1970, it’s one of the albums that have come to represent the closing of the sixties. But with or without that subtext, it’s well worth the $1 that I paid for it.

THUMBS DOWN: Bridge Over Troubled Water is a fine album, on balance. The title track, however, is the ‘You Light Up My Life‘ of the 60s – a cloying ballad that was massively successful in its time, but now has the power to drive men mad. ‘Baby Driver’ sounds like a parody of Simon & Garfunkel, and for every undeniable highlight here there’s a puzzler like their head-scratching cover of ‘Bye Bye Love’. Yawns will be stifled during ‘A Song For The Asking’, which has to rate as one of the most appropriately titled filler songs of all-time. But beyond nit-picking individual tunes, the biggest problem with this album can be summed up in four words: Paul Simon’s solo career. Simon continued to grow as a songwriter after he left Garfunkel behind, and consequently his solo albums are more adventurous and interesting than most of the S&G catalog. Why come here when you can go there?

[Calling all Art Garfunkel fans... calling all Art Garfunkel fans...]

Doubleshot Tuesday: Raising Hell/Swass

[Today: Getting hip before the internet...]

Back in the olden days of the 1980s, information about bands didn’t travel the straight line of internet wires – instead it took the winding back roads of word of mouth and personal recommendation. Cool new music was often cloaked in secrecy and enjoyed by a select group of those ‘in the know’. Now anyone with a DSL hookup and sufficient determination can be ‘in the know’ about anything, especially a new band or album. Distribution channels being what they are today, the ideas of ‘alternative’ and ‘indie’ are almost oxymoronic, and life in a small town probably isn’t quite as boring as it used to be.

But before the internet, the idea of alternative music was very real. Around my high school (Springfield High – Go Millers!) fans of groups like The Cure and Depeche Mode were sequestered away in secret societies, where membership was hard-earned and meant being a virtual outcast from the rest of the student body (it also meant buying and using copious amounts of eye-liner, regardless of gender). But in truth, discovering anything that wasn’t on the FM dial or MTV was akin to getting into a speakeasy with a secret knock and password. Metal, punk, hip-hop, and other non-mainstream genres were years away from anything approaching national marketing, and finding out even basic information about underground bands required a level of proactive effort that would stun anyone who takes AllMusic.com for granted.

And yet the stodgy old coot in me misses the days when it was harder than a couple of mouse clicks to find out everything about a band. Hip-hop started filtering into my circle of friends around 1986, a full two years before Yo MTV Raps! hit the airwaves, so any clues about rap were relegated to word-of-mouth, “listen to this” experiences. There’s no question that, because it was exotic music that lived on the fringe of the mainstream, hip-hop had extra appeal for teenagers in a slow-paced small town, and by my senior year (1987) it was definitely in the mix at every clandestine keg party. In particular, Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Swass, LL Cool J’s Bigger And Deffer, Run-DMC’s Raising Hell and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill served us and served us well.

How far is the South Bronx from Springfield, OR? It’s a distance that can’t accurately be measured in miles alone, but the gap is significantly smaller than it used to be.

Listen: Raising Hell [Run-DMC]

Listen: Posse On Broadway [Sir Mix-A-Lot]

Listen: The New Style [Beastie Boys]

Listen: Get Down [LL Cool J]

Weekend Playlist

Here’s the latest from our turntable:

Freddie King | The Best Of Freddie King

Queens Of The Stone Age | Queens Of The Stone Age

Lyrics Born | Everywhere At Once

The Temptations | Anthology

Bob Marley & The Wailers | Soul Rebel

Burning Spear | Garvey’s Ghost

Sublime | Sublime

The Who | The Who Sings My Generation

Los Lobos | La Pistola Y El Corazon

Eric Clapton | 461 Ocean Boulevard

Neil Young & Crazy Horse | Rust Never Sleeps

Lee Oskar | Lee Oskar

Various Artists | Om Chilled 2007

Big Star | #1 Record

The Four Tops | The Best Of The Four Tops
[Cover not pictured]

Moby Grape | The Place And The Time

Kanye West | Late Registration

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band | Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Mad River | Mad River

Donny Hathaway | Live

Al Green | Livin’ For You

Various Artists | Africafunk: The Original Sound Of 1970s Funky Africa

Horace Silver | Silver’s Blue

Charles Mingus | Mingus Ah Um

Masterpiece: Muddy Waters – The Chess Box

[Today: The President of The Blues...]

McKinley Morganfield had a name befitting a 19th century presidential candidate, but as Muddy Waters he created a ferocious, amplified version of the blues that became the post-WWII standard of what that music could be. The Chess Box compiles 72 songs over 6 LPs, in a chronological order that offers ample reasons for Waters’ standing as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Born and raised in the Mississippi delta, Waters moved to Chicago in 1943 and drove truck by day as he worked to establish himself on the local music scene. By 1947 he was recording for Phil and Leonard Chess, and success came quickly in the form of ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’. Over a distorted, rumbling guitar figure that could be an approaching train, Waters explains to his woman why he’s hitting the road for good. His voice is equal parts charisma and menace, a delicate balance he would strike for the next 36 years.

If Muddy Waters was a frontman with an appealing snarl, he was also blessed with one of the best bands in the business. Pianist Otis Spann, harmonica burners Little Walter and then James Cotton, guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and drummer Francis Clay were informally known as The Headhunters, and the music they made with Waters still buzzes like a fastball under the chin. Songs like ‘Mannish Boy’ ‘Got My Mojo Working’ and ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ roll and tumble, one after another, in a procession of blues greatness that is awesome to behold. ‘Rolling Stone’ inspired not only the name of a certain British blues band, but the title of Bob Dylan’s most famous song, and the name of America’s pre-eminent rock magazine. Each track on The Chess Box is a winding gravel road that leads to unexpected places.

Looking back over his career options, Waters reflected that “I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn’t play ball too good – I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn’t preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing.” Glory, glory, hallelujah…

Listen: I Can’t Be Satisfied

Listen: Rolling Stone

Listen: Got My Mojo Working

Buried Treasure: Taj Mahal

[Today: Henry St. Clair Fredericks plays the blues...]

The Blues heavily influenced the sound of many late-60s musicians, but aside from John Mayall and a few stalwarts, hardly anyone played straight-up blues during that era. But while most of his contemporaries were dressing up the blues with psychedelic flourishes, Taj Mahal (born Henry St. Clair Fredericks) was making a lean, stripped down version of the music that – aside from its amplification – was virtually indistinguishable from the Mississippi Delta Blues of the 1930s and 40s.

His self-titled debut was recorded in August of 1967, and contains no overdubs – every song was captured live in the studio. In addition to Taj’s slide guitar and biting harp, the album features Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar and Ry Cooder on rhythm guitar. Taj Mahal is made up entirely of covers of songs by the likes of Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson. Taj explained his admiration for these artists to Rolling Stone in 1968, “These men, supposed to be illiterate, Robert Johnson – a fine poet; Sleepy John Estes – a fine poet!” He recognized the power in these great songs, playing them with the spark of a rock & roller and the touch of a blues artist. ‘Leaving Trunk’ and ‘Statesboro Blues’ give the album an opening sequence that still comes blowing off the turntable like a breath of fresh air.

More than 40 years after the release of his debut, Taj Mahal remains a dynamic, energetic performer. I had the pleasure of seeing him open for The Meters in 2001, and – expecting a frail old man to come out and sit down and play some blues – was blown away by this big, amped dude in a wide-brimmed hat, singing and dancing and playing like a man half his age. Taj stands 6’4″ tall, moves with the grace of a natural athlete, and plays and sings like someone who has discovered the fountain of youth. What you hear on Taj Mahal is still very much what you get live in person. Don’t miss it…

Listen: Leaving Trunk

Listen: Statesboro Blues

Magic Moment: Bon Scott In Drag

AC/DC made their television debut in April of 1975 on the Australian music program Countdown. They performed a blistering version of the Big Joe Williams tune ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ while lead singer Bon Scott prowled the stage dressed as a schoolgirl. When the band released their retrospective DVD Family Jewels in 2005, this clip was forever saved for posterity. In fact, it’s the first thing that appears on that set…

Doubleshot Tuesday: Summer In The City/12 Inch 3 Speed Oscillating Fan

[Today: It's like a heatwave...]

“Heat records are falling again today as temperatures soar into the 90s…” – SF Chronicle, yesterday

Listen: Summer In The City [The Lovin' Spoonful]

“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Listen: 12 Inch 3 Speed Oscillating Fan [Red Meat]

*****

The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Marijuana-Friendly Albums

In honor of 4/20, here’s a list of albums that carry the distinctly dank smell of ganja…

Bob Marley & The Wailers | Catch A Fire – Doobie brother!

Listen: Slave Driver

Dr. Dre | The Chronic – Dusty P-Funk samples + Snoop Dogg + badass album title = iconic ganja classic

Listen: Nuthin’ But A G Thang

Peter Tosh | Legalize It – “Legalize it, and I will advertise it” Peter Tosh offered in the title track of this 1976 album. And the tune and album both remain first-rate ads for the product…

Listen: Legalize It

Cypress Hill | Cypress Hill – One of the first hip-hop groups to openly and repeatedly rhyme about getting baked, Cypress Hill combine a fascination with guns and an undying love of bongs.

Listen: Light Another

Black Sabbath | Master Of Reality – This album begins with the sounds of a pot smoker coughing – the opening strains of pot ode ‘Sweet Leaf’ – but the whole album sounds like it was conceived inside a hash pipe.

Listen: Sweet Leaf

Various Artists | Reefer Songs: 16 Original Jazz Classics – ‘Sweet Marijuana Brown’ ‘Weed Smokers Dream’ and ‘Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs Murphy’s Ovaltine’ are but three of the entertaining tunes on this compilation of Jazz from the 30s that proves heads have been at it since before your grandparents were in short pants.

Listen: [No MP3 available]

Sublime | 40 Oz. To Freedom – Sublime was part punk, part reggae, part funk, and their amped cover of The Toys’ ‘Smoke Two Joints’ is just one of many weed-friendly moments on their excellent debut album.

Listen: Smoke Two Joints

The Black Crowes | Amorica – This album isn’t about pot per se, but since the early 90s The Crowes have been some of the strongest marijuana advocates on the rock scene.

Listen: High Head Blues

Various Artists | How High Soundtrack – Method Man and Redman star in the movie, and take center stage on this hilarious, smoke-filled soundtrack.

Listen: How To Roll A Blunt

Fela Kuti | Zombie – Fela Kuti smoked copious amounts of grass onstage, and his music is perfect for the activity, with deep, repetitive rhythms wrapped in black magic.

Listen: Zombie

Pink Floyd | Dark Side Of The Moon – Three generations of pot smokers have worn the shine off their bongs with this dense, heady masterpiece…

Listen: Speak To Me/Breathe

Cheech & Chong | Cheech & Chong’s Greatest Hit – The original spokesmen…

Listen: Let’s Make A Dope Deal

Various Artists | Hempilation – This NORML-sponsored compilation advocating the legalization of pot features The Black Crowes, Cypress Hill, Sublime, and more.

Listen: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 [The Black Crowes]

Weekend Playlist

Here’s a sampling of some of the music The P and I got into over the weekend…

Various Artists | Superfly Soul

Chet Baker | In Paris: Barclay Sessions 1955-1956

Peter Tosh | Equal Rights

Brazilian Girls | Brazilian Girls

ESG | A South Bronx Story

Simon And Garfunkel | Bridge Over Troubled Water

Bonniwell Music Machine | Ignition

Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 | Up Side Down
[cover not pictured]

The Black Keys | Thickfreakness

The Cars | Greatest Hits

Steve Earle | Washington Square Serenade

Dillard & Clark | The Fantastic Expedition Of Dillard & Clark

Lee Dorsey | Yes We Can

Tony Joe White | Tony Joe

Babe Ruth | First Base

HP Lovecraft | HP Lovecraft

The Meters | Look-Ka Py Py

The Clash | Live At Shea Stadium

Atmosphere | Seven’s Travels

Nas | Illmatic