Archives for October 2015

Certain Songs #348: Drive-by Truckers – “Women Without Whiskey”

October 22, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Southern Rock Opera
Year: 2001

And then there’s Mike Cooley. Especially in the early days of my DBT fandom, I underrated him and his songs. But over the years, I’ve come around.

After all, Patterson Hood was the big picture guy, and almost immediately after Southern Rock Opera, they got Jason Isbell, who came out of the gate with motherfucking “Outfit, so it took me awhile to kinda noticed the baby-faced dude with the ancient voice.

Certain Songs #347: Drive-by Truckers – “Let There Be Rock”

October 21, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Southern Rock Opera
Year: 2001

Today is the one-year anniversary of “Certain Songs.”

Conceived as a iTunes playlist; tracked on a Google Docs; written on a blog; full of embedded YouTube videos and publicized on social media, “Certain Songs” is an incredibly 21st century project. Which is why it’s ironic that the vast majority of songs I write about are from the 21st century.

Certain Songs #346: Drive-by Truckers – “18 Wheels of Love (Live)”

October 20, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Alabama Ass-Whuppin’
Year: 1999

This one really is more story than song. But it’s one hell of a story.

You see, Patterson Hood is the son of David Hood, the bassist in the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who played on a shitton of great records in the 1960s and 1970s, including at least one Certain Song, “Night Moves.” (Bursts into tears.)

But, alas, the life of a musician sometimes conflicts with the life of a family man, and Patterson Hood’s parents got divorced, throwing his mom into an epic funk, where is where “18 Wheels of Love” begins.

Certain Songs #345: Drive-by Truckers – “The Living Bubba (Live)”

October 19, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Alabama Ass-Whuppin’
Year: 1999

Almost a decade ago, I declared Drive-by Truckers my current favorite rock ‘n’ roll band, and since that time all they’ve done is release four great albums, a really strong odds ‘n’ sods compilation, and they have a career-spanning triple live album coming out while I’m writing about them.

No one cares, but Drive-by Truckers have turned out to be as consistently great of a band as America has ever produced, their legacy both unenlivened and untainted by the massive popularity their amazingly accessible music should have produced.

Certain Songs #344: The Drifters – “On Broadway”

October 17, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Single, 1963

The Drifters version of “On Broadway” was a Top 10 single in 1963, and half a century later, it’s become one of those songs that has so permeated the culture as an idea, it’s hard to imagine that there was an actual source for that idea.

Written in tandem by two teams of song doctors — Cynthia Mann & Barry Weil and Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller — “On Broadway” is one of those records where every single element is stunning by itself, and every element adds up to a transcendent whole.

Certain Songs #343: The Dream Syndicate – “Closer (KCRW 12-09-1987)”

October 16, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: It’s Too Late Too Stop Now
Year: 1987

I wish I knew where I found It’s Too Late To Stop Now. Was it at Ragin’? Or Amoeba in Berkeley? Or some record store in L.A.? All I know for sure was that it’s this weird compilation of demos, outtakes, radio performances and guys with tape recorders recording shows.

So a bootleg. Except that I seem to remember reading that it was a fan club record, or some other nudge nudge wink wink “hey, this is kinda legit.” I do know this: it’s probably the best Dream Syndicate album that isn’t The Days of Wine and Roses.

Certain Songs #342: The Dream Syndicate – “Black”

October 15, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ghost Stories
Year: 1988

While I had — and still have — no use for Medicine Show and Out of the Grey, I was happily surprised when The Dream Syndicate put out their 1988 swan song, Ghost Stories.

While it was basically yet another straight-ahead rock album (something Wynn has pretty much done for the rest of his career, with enough success that I still look forward to every release with his name on it), Ghost Stories had both a better sound and better songs than its immediate predecessors.

Certain Songs #341: The Dream Syndicate – “Drinking Problem”

October 14, 2015 by Jim Connelly

B-side, 1987

No one tried harder to like Medicine Show, the 1984 follow-up to The Days of Wine and Roses, than I did. While it now makes perfect sense in the context of the music that Steve Wynn has made for the rest of his career, in 1984, it felt like an abandonment of core principles.

And even now, the hollowness of both the production and the songs overshadows everything else. With Precoda gone — and Wynn doing great work with his pals in Danny and Dusty, I barely paid any attention to 1987’s Out of The Grey when it first came out.

Certain Songs #340 – The Dream Syndicate – “The Days of Wine and Roses”

October 13, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Days of Wine and Roses
Year: 1982

The key to The Days of Wine and Roses — and why I loved it so much — was scratched right there on the run-out groove of the album: “PRE MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT.”

In other words, The Days of Wine and Roses was basically the album made by the bastard children of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan. This, of course, was made explicit by the title track, which lifted heavily from “Tombstone Blues” but used that lifting as a starting point, not an end point.

Certain Songs #339: The Dream Syndicate – “Then She Remembers”

October 12, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Days of Wine and Roses
Year: 1982

“Tell Me When It’s Over” was the single. “Halloween” was the one that everybody covered. The title track was the one that shamelessly stole from “Tombstone Blues,” but my favorite song from The Days of Wine and Roses is “Then She Remembers”.

Hell, it’s practically my favorite song of the 1980s, if not ever.

Not for the words, which I’ve never actually known outside of the chorus — Steve Wynn screams them in such a way that I had no idea they were about an abuse survivor until I looked the lyrics up on the internet for this post — but for the ungodly exquisite noise The Dream Syndicate makes throughout.