Archives for October 2022

Certain Songs #2475: Steve Earle – “The Revolution Starts Now”

October 31, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Revolution Starts Now
Year: 2004

. . .

A few months after Steve Earle released Transcendental Blues, the United States Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the Presidency of the United States, signaling that we had entered the darkest timeline. A little less than a year after that, Saudi terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, totally freaking everybody up and activating the bloodthirsty wing of the U.S. politics that drove our country ever rightward and not one, but two near-endless wars. While the 1990s weren’t as bucolic as people like to think they were, they were definitely over.

Certain Songs #2474: Steve Earle – “Transcendental Blues”

October 28, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Transcendental Blues
Year: 2000

. . .

And so I Feel Alright was basically the beginning of Steve Earle’s second act, and he wasted no time following it up with 1997’s El Corazón, which was pretty much in the same vein, and 1999’s The Mountain, which was an all-bluegrass curveball, featuring the Del McCoury band.

Both records were really well-regarded, and while they didn’t have songs I’m writing about, I’m especially fond of the harmony-drenched “Telephone Road” (which comes to mind every time we take the 101 through Ventura) from the former, and the alternate Justified theme song, “Harlan Man” from the latter.

Certain Songs #2473: Steve Earle with Lucinda Williams – “You’re Still Standing There”

October 27, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: I Feel Alright
Year: 1996

. . .

I Feel Alright wasn’t all tough-guy posturing and addiction breakdown songs. In fact the very last song on the record was a harmonica-driven pop song that always felt like it should have been a single, even if it wasn’t.

“You’re Still Standing There” opens with Earle’s utterly cheerful harmonica hook, blasting out over a bright accompaniment of guitars, organ, bass and drums. leading into an opening verse that where, like Desmond in Lost, he realizes that he has a constant.

Certain Songs #2472: Steve Earle – “CCKMP”

October 26, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: I Feel Alright
Year: 1996

. . .

While Copperhead Road showed a path forward for Steve Earle, it was nearly a decade before he well and truly walked it. Made under the cloud of his coke and smack addictions, neither 1990’s The Hard Way and 1991’s stopgap live album Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator — both titles alluding to his fucked-up life — went anywhere, and neither did Earle.

Well, that’s not true: he went to jail in 1993 on drugs and weapons charges and at that particular rock bottom, got his shit together. I’ve been reading a poorly-written biography about Earle, and he was pretty fucked up for a very long time, and when he got his shit together, he was still in terrible shape for quite some time. Which is probably why his first sober release, 1995’s Train-A-Comin’ was a low-key, acoustic affair, featuring a bunch his older songs as well as covers.

Certain Songs #2471: Steve Earle – “Devil’s Right Hand”

October 25, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Copperhead Road
Year: 1988

. . .

Like the man himself at the time, Steve Earle’s early discography is a bit of a mess: his earliest singles — including the original version of “Devil’s Right Hand” — came out on Epic, but his first album, 1986’s Guitar Town, came out on MCA. Guitar Town was a surprise success, topping the Country Charts and making #90 on the Billboard Albums chart, and so Epic put out all of the earlier songs he’d recorded for them as Early Tracks, because that’s what record companies do.

Certain Songs #2470: Steve Diggle – “Shake The System”

October 24, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Serious Contender
Year: 2005

. . .

Even before Pete Shelley passed away, Steve Diggle was definitely relegated to second banana status, even if his guitar playing as nearly as essential to the success of The Buzzcocks as was Shelley’s voice and guitar. And he did sing lead a couple of their greatest songs: the acoustic rant “Love is Lies,” the swirling “Airwaves Dream” and the immortal “Harmony in My Head,” as well.

That he was essential to the Buzzcocks was clear from the start: outside of Pete Shelley, Diggle was the only member of the Buzzcocks to play on all of their records — a reminder that they reunited in 1989 (I saw them in San Francisco, and they were awesome!) and released several albums from 1993-2014 — and in fact, he’s just released a new album under the Buzzcocks name, which, as of this writing, I still haven’t heard. And I’m not even sure how I feel about hearing it.

Certain Songs #2469: Stereolab – “Metronomic Underground”

October 21, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Year: 1996

. . .

1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup definitely showed off a new approach for Stereolab: while they were still interested in trance-inducing music, they were also interested in creating it through more artificial means, using the studio as more of an instrument than they had previously.

All of that is immediately apparent in the opening track, “Metronomic Underground,” one of those song titles that perfectly describes the song itself.

Certain Songs #2468: Stereolab – “International Colouring Contest”

October 20, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mars Audiac Quintent
Year: 1994

. . .

Way back in 2017, in the 1000th post of this blog, we discussed the eternal Into Outer Space With Lucia Pamela, and how after we heard she was living in Fresno, we made her and her album part of the KFSR ecosystem for awhile, with an tons of drop-ins and even the homegrown “Lucia Pamela in Dub.”

That said, at the time, I forgot to post a link to the website that Kirk made about Lucia — an oversight that I am now rectifying — where he called it a “startling weird concept album,” which remains truer than ever now that the album is over a half-century old (and the website is half that age!) and we’re going back to the moon.

Hopefully, the moon people are still there.

Certain Songs #2467: Stereolab – “Wow and Flutter”

October 19, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mars Audiac Quintet
Year: 1994

. . .

This is where I came onboard, having missed their earliest records, as well as Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements — maybe the greatest album title ever? — but the reviews of Mars Audiac Quintet were clearly too much for me to pass up, and I definitely loved the precise precision of the music, with everything in its right place.

Certain Songs #2466: Stereolab – “Jenny Ondioline”

October 18, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
Year: 1993

. . .

Stereolab was founded the early 1990s by English dude Tim Gane and French woman Lætitia Sadier, and released tons of singles, EPs and even a couple of albums prior to their 1993 major-label debut, the awesomely-titled Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements.

I’m not even going to pretend I’ve heard all of their music, though I do recall sifting through some of their earlier recordings — including this album –after I discovered them with 1995’s Mars Audiac Quintent. Which means that I’m not going to go nearly as deep on them as I assume some of you might have wanted me to.