Etta James Rocks the House Live Nashville

Simply put, this might be the best live recording ever.

It was recorded live on the night of September 27-28, 1963 at the New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee.

Plus...uh...look how fucking cute she is on the cover!

Gillian Welch/Revival (Almo Music)

Back in the day, Emmylou sang about being the Queen of the Silver Dollar…

“the scepter is her wine glass…
and the bar stool is her throne.”

As did Waylon Jennings, Dave and Sugar and even Dr. Hook.

Townes Van Zandt more than eloquently displayed his desire to hop aboard a steaming White Freightliner. Well I wouldn’t be surprised if she was riding bitch with him, sipping on some sour bottle of Kentucky regret and Yankee inspiration.
There is something of an Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe and even Arthur Miller in her well-worn turn of phrase.



Of whom do I speak? Why none other than the fabulous Ms. Gillian Welch. She is the heir to the bar stool throne of which Emmylou so elegantly spoke. She is the White Freightliner of Townes wearied road. She is the dead baby taken by the lord too soon and the chalk gray slate of Poe’s last craven scrawl. She is the preacher and politician speaking the words of the people…who works her grift on suckers at the carnival on the weekends.

This is high lonesome stuff folks.

Stand out tracks, which amount to the whole of this recording, are;

Paper Wings, a dusty post depression era lament of regrettable actions.

Annabelle, which might have been penned by Poe or Washington Irving, gems of misfortune, etched into a tombstone that will never be forgotten

By the Mark, which could soften the hardest of sinners hearts, if only they would hear the words of the lord.

One more dollar, an ode to Cesar Chavez and John Steinbeck.



Revival is the debut recording by Ms. Gillian Welch and partner David Rawlings. It is a sad and damp car ride through the patchwork of American failure, American tragedy, American foolishness.
If you’re looking for beautiful harmonies, well theirs is nothing short of wondrous, like a hummingbird siding up to a magnolia, they flit and they flirt and they come up smelling of god’s work.
Stripped away from bullshit pretension and idea, Revival is a testament to the true spirit of the American songwriter and an historical recording of purity and the truest and most sincere sentiment.

Antony and The Johnsons/I am a bird now (Secretly Canadian)

When I was a kid, whenever my grandparent’s would come for a visit, I would hide. I would hide for a very good reason. Whenever dear old grandma and grandpa would visit, my mom would make me sing for them. She would always make me sing that song, “Rose Garden." It’s not that I objected to this song, I actually love it still. It’s just that my mom would make me feel like a freak. Parading me in front of visitors and making me sing for them. I had a hard time even then trying to understand the fascination for the human singing voice. My grandfather, an otherwise cancer-filled monster would turn into a melting pile of gushing goo, while my grandma would set up so proudly, throwing her back up like a prancing p-hen, struttin’, the moment I would open my voice to sing for them.



It was the strangest thing. I still ponder the power of this magical thing called the human singing voice. Its illusive and intangible qualities seem to cut through the grimiest, the saddest of situations, rendering everything beautiful, if not momentarily. When I first heard Antony Hegarty’s voice I was utterly repulsed. It was too queer. Almost sickly? Something dying. So I ignored it and relegated it…elsewhere. That was Antony’s first cd, the one with him painted all white with a little tutu or whatever the fuck that is he’s wearing, with the painted bright red nipples. The image, suffice to say, did not help the situation. But then, somehow, somewhere, I began listening again. Somehow it began to assert itself on and in me.



Suddenly I could not stop listening. And I had to stop myself. I was sickening myself! And then something truly miraculous happened. Antony and The Johnsons released their second full-length cd called, “I am a bird now.” This cd, in short, changed my life. I realized that it was not Antony nor any of The Johnsons who slugged me mercilessly in the gut each and every time I would play the damn thing. It was me! The slow and extremely powerful descent of this illusive power of the human singing voice…spoke to me…spoke directly to me.



Here was this…stately sized, wig-wearing, De Muelemester-clad faggot cooing like a dove, some queer thing locked in his throat…dying? Ready to spring forward and pounce? Well…pounce it did. And it continues to do so. Antony is now an international star, soon to perform with the London Symphony Orchestra in London. He’s performed and recorded with Bjork and is currently making his third full-length cd. It’s strange having had all these years a gift that some say came from God, not really knowing exactly what the hell it was. I think I was too busy showing off, being showed off, or just being stupid. How could I not know? How could I not at least begin to understand?
I do now.
emile

Jens Lekman/"Night Falls Over Kortedala" (Secretly Canadian)

Okay, I have to say it. I feel compelled. This kid’s a complete nerd. A complete Swedish nerd! Now, having said this, I am equally compelled to say that he is in my inestimable opinion, inarguably one of the most talented nerds working in the recording industry today. I loved, loved, loved his first cd and this one is just as good, often even better.



Using the voice of a child as prologue to a song is no new idea, but when Jens does it, mixed with his slightly eschewed time signatures and tongue in cheek sincerity, it’s just a fail proof method of making me commence to playing pocket pool. I’ve seen Jens perform several times now and I can honestly say that he never fails to deliver…and with a singularly charming and oh so clumsy expertise. Whether he’s fucking up the lyrics or perpetually tuning his cheap ass guitars, Jens Lekman always comes up smelling like a dirty magazine you got stuffed away under your mattress. You know the smell. Don’t play!



I defy anyone, and I’m talking grannies and thugs alike, to give Jens a spin, and say that they don’t love him. It’s like you’re in the waiting room of some over priced shrink’s office, with the Bacharach and David piped in, eve’s dropping on some chubby pre-pubescent who’s forced to see a shrink because she can’t stop eating vanilla zingers with peanut butter, and somehow still believes that someone will love her one day.
emile

Yelle/Pop-Up (Caroline Records)

This cd, Pop-up by Yelle makes me want to commit filthy acts of Max Ernst-style Frotage on Le Metro. I want to secretly rub up against everyone! Crusty little shit pigs with mommy’s credit cards hidden in their brassieres, those closeted queers who hide well worn copies of books by Michele Houellebecque, the boys, the girls, the quiet but decidedly evil Chinese immigrant stuffed away in the corner reading the London Times, EVERYONE!!!







Pop-up is another well placed sucker punch delivered by my bitch ass boyfriend “straight” to the solar plexus. What a cock! Once again, my bitter half has nabbed yet another sparkling diamond hidden in the mounds of human excrement that passes for pop music these days.
It’s all in the language of The Frog, but these little French twats will make anyone with a discerning ear for camp or The Pop Aesthete jump on a twelve hour flight and wind up at the front steps of The Queen on The Champs-Elysées, tossing a twenty pound Euro at the doorman and heading straight for the dance floor.



They are the French equivalent of Japan’s Pizzicato Five and the UK’s Saint Etienne. They are late night car rides with champagne and blowjobs. They are late summers, crashing out on a riverbank. They are scoring coke, good coke, good coke that still gets even me high, on the ninth arrondisement, winking at an old bird as she goes by with her shopping.
Pop-up by Yelle is a party record for those nerdy enough to get it and even worse…dance to it. If you listen to this cd and do not dance…then you are not alive. FUCKING DIE ALREADY ASSHOLES!
emile

Orange Juice/The Glasgow School (Domino)

When I first heard Orange Juice, but more specifically Edwyn Collins, I shuttered. I was ”icked out to the max!,” as I used to say when I was nine. It reminded me of sticky, hot summers with heat rash on my embarrassing little boy titties. It made me remember when I was in junior high school, constantly hiding my twelve year-old boners from everyone, especially Mrs. Goetz, an owl-eyed Biology teacher who stared at me with an all too knowing gaze. She was a Mormon.




But it creped up on me like a horny uncle in the night. In Edwyn’s simultaneously swooning and crackling voice, I found the true meaning of love. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this is meant to be a review of The Glasgow School (Domino), a near perfect collection of some of the best recording by the seminal (does this word also mean sperm?) Scottish band. But truth be told, it goes for anything they ever recorded. They are true blue in the absolutely truest sense. Northern soul is an expression often affixed to them, but I just wanta call it fuckin’ music. Fun fuckin’…know what I mean?



Anyway, It took me a while before I got it. It’s one of my very favorite things to do…(ah the simple joys of maidenhood)…go to a friend’s house who’s never heard them before, slip it into the machine and then just watch their expressions as Edwyn opens his pretty little Glaswegian mouth. Orange Juice is one of the greatest bands that ever made music.
emile