This post goes out to my friend Jesse, who is a big Croce fan. Big Jim was a radio staple in the 1970s and I was always a big fan as well. Unlike a lot of the pop-folk of the 1960s, Croce’s limited works (he died in a plane crash at the age of 30 on 20 September 1973) were simpler productions and much more down to earth. Facets was originally released independently in a limited 500-copy pressing by Croce in 1966. This 2-CD re-issue that I found posted over at Frisians Other Favorites includes bonus tracks from Jim & Ingrid Too. Download CD1 | CD2
Track Listing:
1) Steel Rail Blues
2) Coal Tattoo
3) Texas Rodeo
4) Charley Green, Play That Slide Trombone
5) The Ballad of Gunga Din
6) Hard Hearted Hannah (The Vamp from Savannah)
7) Sun Come Up
8) The Blizzard
9) Running Maggie
10) Until It’s Time For Me to Go
11) Big Fat Woman
12) Child of Midnight
13) It’s All Over, Mary Ann
14) Railroads and Riverboats
15) Hard Times Be Over
16) Railroad Song
17) Maybe Tomorrow
18) Pa (Song For a Grandfather)
Baptism (1968) is probably the most stand-out item in the entire Joan Baez catalog, perhaps even the whole Vanguard catalog. It is certainly the most dark and compelling concept album I have ever heard. I have the original vinyl LP, but it has seen better days. I have been looking for a better copy for years but have never found one. I just found this 128 kbps mp3 rip from a CD re-issue. It’s not as nice as having the CD, but it certainly beats the old LP. If you can find the CD or a decent LP copy, I highly recommend picking this up. This is a sit-down and pay attention album - headphones if you like, but you definitely need to be prepared for a dark and intense journey. A really great gem from Baez and Peter Schickele.
Original music composed and conducted by Peter Schickele
Selected and edited by Joan Baez
Conceived and compiled by Maynard Solomon
Track Listing:
[1] Old Welsh Song (Henry Treece)
[2] I Saw The Vision Of Armies (Walt Whitman)
[3] Minister of War (translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley)
[4] Song In The Blood (Jacques Prévert)
[5] Casida Of The Lament (Federico García Lorca)
[6] Of The Dark Past (Ecce Puer) (James Joyce)
[7] London (William Blake)
[8] In Guernica (Norman Rosten)
[9] Who Murdered The Minutes (Henry Treece)
[10] Oh, Little Child (Henry Treece)
[11] No Man Is An Iland (John Donne)
[12] from Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (James Joyce)
[13] All The Pretty Little Horses (Negro Lullaby)
[14] Childhood III (Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Louise Varèse)
[15] The Magic Wood (Henry Treece)
[16] Poems From The Japanese (Translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
[17] Colours (Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi)
[18] All In Green Went My Love Riding (e. e. cummings)
[19] Gacela Of The Dark Death (Federico García Lorca, translated by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili)
[20] The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young (Wilfred Owen)
[21] Evil (Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Norman Cameron)
[22] Epitaph For A Poet (Countee Cullen)
[23] Old Welsh Song (Henry Treece)
[24] Mystic Numbers: 36. Wedding Song (Henry Treece)
[25] When The Shy Star Goes Forth In Heaven (James Joyce)
[26] The Angel (William Blake)
Review by Bruce Eder:
Joan Baez’s most unusual album, Baptism is of a piece with the “concept” albums of the late ’60s, but more ambitious than most and different from all of them. Baez by this time was immersed in various causes, concerning the Vietnam War, the human condition, and the general state of the world, and it seemed as though every note of music that she sang was treated as important — sometimes in a negative way by her opponents; additionally, popular music was changing rapidly, and even rock groups that had seldom worried in their music about too much beyond the singer’s next sexual conquest were getting serious. Baptism was Baez getting more serious than she already was, right down to the settings of her music, and redirecting her talent from folk song to art song, complete with orchestral accompaniment. Naturally, her idea of a concept album would differ from that of, say, Frank Sinatra or the Beatles. Baptism was a body of poetry selected, edited, and read and sung by Baez, and set to music by Peter Schickele (better known for his comical musical “discoveries” associated with “P.D.Q. Bach,” but also a serious musician and composer). In 1968, amid the strife spreading across the world, the album had a built-in urgency that made it work as a mixture of art and message — today, it seems like a precious and overly self-absorbed period piece. Baez lacks the speaking voice to pull off an album’s worth of readings, though her interpretations of Federico García Lorca’s “Casida of the Lament” and “Gacela of the Dark Death” show her achieving a level of compelling expressiveness that is lacking elsewhere; and the recording of Countee Cullen’s “Epitaph for a Poet” features some beautiful accompaniment by Schickele. Additionally, the sung portions, including “Old Welsh Song,” “Who Murdered the Minutes,” “The Magic Wood,” and “Oh, Little Child” by Henry Treece, “Of the Dark Past” by James Joyce, “All in Green Went My Love Riding” by e.e. cummings, and the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses” are beautiful and sustain those portions of the album. Baptism is primarily for Baez completists, however, although it is also a singular reminder for ’60s history buffs that not all of the antiwar movement’s music, or the work coming out of the folk scene in 1968, was necessarily loud, harsh, or bitter.
“Back in the day” when LP’s were still the norm, there were two truly great record stores that I would frequent in Toronto: Peter Dunn’s Vinyl Museum and Incredible Records.
Dunn’s (which closed more than 15 years ago) sold so many records at his three locations that his plastic LP protectors and inner sleeves still turn up on used albums sold in the Toronto area.
Ironically, it was Incredible Records that was a true museum. The walls were plastered with rare concert posters from the 1960s and 1970s and the main counter contained various memorabilia that was unmatched anywhere in Toronto at the time.
One of the items that always caught my eye was a copy of Charles Manson’s LP that was released on the ESP label. Every time I walked into the store, Manson’s contorted face (on the faux-LIFE mag cover) would taunt me.
I always wanted to hear what that album sounded like, so I did a bit of blog-o-trolling and came across a decent FLAC download [part-1|part-2] at the Stadium Studios blog that I converted to mp3 format. This CD re-issue is made from an LP and not the master tapes, but the quality is still worthy for download.
Incredible Records moved to Sebastopol, California (west of Santa Rosa, which is north of San Francisco) in the 1990s.
Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (actual title Charles Manson Sings) is the debut album by Charles Manson, originally released by ESP-Disk. Recorded on September 11, 1967 and August 9, 1968 (overdubs), its distribution began during the Manson murder trial.
The cover is a copy of the 19 December 1969 Time Life front cover, only with “LIFE” substituted with “LIE”.
“Cease to Exist” had been previously recorded by the Beach Boys under the name “Never Learn Not to Love”, and appears on their 1969 album, 20/20, and as the B-side of the single of “Bluebirds over the Mountain”. The single gives songwriting credit to Manson and Dennis Wilson. Manson is not given co-writing credit on the album. It is worth pointing out that the Beach Boys’ version does include significant changes (including a bridge that wasn’t part of Manson’s version, and changing the line “Cease to exist” to “Cease to resist”, which does alter the meaning of the song).
Portions of the album have been sampled by many other artists, such as Front Line Assembly. Many of the songs have also been re-recorded; a version of “Look at Your Game, Girl” appears as a hidden track on Guns N’ Roses’ cover album “The Spaghetti Incident?”, while GG Allin covered “Garbage Dump” for his 1987 album You Give Love a Bad Name and Redd Kross and The Lemonheads have both covered “Cease To Exist”. Dilute released a cover of Home is Where You’re Happy in 2002 on the CD compilation If The Twenty-First Century Didn’t Exist It Would Be Necessary To Invent It (5 Rue Christine). The Brian Jonestown Massacre does a slightly reworked cover of “Arkansas” (called “Arkansas Revisited”) on their 1999 album Bringing it All Back Home - Again. The band’s leader, Anton Newcombe, has expressed interest in Manson’s songwriting.
Devo are alleged to have plagiarized their song “Mechanical Man” from Manson’s composition of the same name.
An acoustic version of the song “Sick City” was recorded by Marilyn Manson but has never been officially released. The Marilyn Manson song “My Monkey”, from the album Portrait of an American Family, contains samples of Charles Manson speaking, as well as lyrics from the track “Mechanical Man”.
All proceeds from one reissue of the album, released by Awareness Records, are donated to a California fund for victims of violent crime (California law prohibits Manson from collecting any money or royalties for his work).
Artist: Charles Manson Title: LIE Label: Awareness Records Catalogue No: 08903-0156 Year: 1974 (CD Release 1987)
Lineage: Original Silver CD > Nero > Wav > BonkEnc > Flac
Track Listing:
1) Look At Your Game Girl
2) Ego
3) Mechanical Man
4) People Say Im No Good
5) Home Is Where Youre Happy
6) Arkansas
7) Ill Never Say Never To Always
8) Garbage Dump
9) Dont Do Anything Illegal
10) Sick City
11) Cease To Exist
12) Big Iron Door
13) I Once Knew A Man
Everyone knows the famous Donovan cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Universal Soldier”, but how many remember his Dylanesque cover of Mick Softley’s “The War Drags On“?
Mick Softley was a figurehead during the British folk scene. He set up his own folk club, only to have it shut down by the police in its first year. Shortly thereafter he began singing at The Cock, a pub in St. Albans, where he met a young Donovan Leitch, and they began singing together on many occasions. Donovan later cited Softley as a “major influence”.
This recording was ripped from the Marble Arch LP: Universal Soldier (1967), which was a mixed-bag re-issue of Donovan’s 1965 EP of the same name and other UK-issue B-sides.
The War Drags On
by Mick Softley
Let me tell you the story of a soldier named Dan.
Went out to fight the good fight in South Vietnam,
Went out to fight for peace, liberty and all,
Went out to fight for equality, hope, let’s go,
And the war drags on.
Found himself involved in a sea of blood and bones,
Millions without faces, without hope and without homes.
And the guns they grew louder as they made dust out of bones
That the flesh had long since left just as the people left their homes,
And the war drags on.
They’re just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they’re doing it, it don’t seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country’s known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
Last night poor Dan had a nightmare it seems.
One kept occurring and re-occurring in his dream:
Cities full of people burn and scream and shoutin’ loud
And right over head a great orange mushroom cloud.
And there’s no more war,
for there’s no more world,
And the tears come streaming down.
Yes, I lie crying on the ground.
Gordon Lightfoot dominated Canadian AM radio when I was growing up in the 1970s. His success led to excess - both in his personal and professional life. After signing a million-dollar deal with Warner Brothers in 1970, Lightfoot hit the road for touring and hard and fast living. In the studio it led to grander and grander productions that took Gord farther and farther away from his roots and the incedible presence of his voice. A similar thing happened to Glenn Campbell in the 1960s when he was transformed from a country/bluegrass guitarist into a pop-star.
Like many “folkies”, Lightfoot got his start in coffeehouses that featured a beatnik mix of folk, poetry, spoken word, jazz, and blues. His 1966 debut album on United Artists (UAS-6487) featured a track called “Oh, Linda” that has been indelibly stamped in mind since my childhood.
I can remember sitting on the living room rug (the basement rug came later) and listening to the warm tones from Bill Lee’s bass booming out the right speaker (a tube-based Imperial/Telefunken console stereo), and Lightfoot begging for his lover on the left. The stereo mix has Bill’s bass bleeding slightly into the left channel, with an echo effect on Gord’s voice bleeding to the right. A simple, clever, and powerful configuration.
The recording itself took place in a dank New York city studio in 1964 that you can read more about in the liner notes below. You can listen to Oh, Linda from the player below while you are reading:
This two-disc, 49-song collection combines Lightfoot’s first four albums into one specially priced package and offers a comprehensive look at the Canadian singer-songwriter before he achieved pop stardom. These late-1960s recordings are more pared down than his better-known 1970s work, showing Lightfoot to be a thoughtful songwriter who was equally comfortable with personal love songs and more political fare. A much stronger folkie sensibility is on display here, which may be a revelation to those only familiar to his glossier folk-pop work, but a boon to his longtime followers. –Marc Greilsamer
Liner Notes from Lightfoot! by John Court
“So you come home from work or whatever to your favorite chair, open a cold beer and energize the telly. There is the ostensible World News and all the unrest it provokes, followed by a suggestion that Ice Blue Something is what we must look to for security in this nuclear Age of Anxiety. And as if that’s not enough of the Big Lie from the Big Eye for one gulp (we must of needs deduce that Katy Winters moves in a fairly odoriferous circle), there is next this purportedly candid footage of some fellow protesting that he gets forty shaves from this extraordinary razor blade. Now we know, you and I,in our placid personal truths, that we won’t get anything like forty shaves ourselves, but that this fellow has cornsilk growing out of his face and therefore possibly is not personally lying; the big grain of salt we must wash down with our beer,though, goes with the protestation that we must also get about forty shaves, or the honers of this extraordinary blade will be unhappy to buy us a pack of Coo-coo brand, the bona fide inferior blade. It can wear you down, this kind of opportunity to have a bad experience with a razor blade and then send away for your free supply of The Inferior. It can wear you down.
Which brings to mind the first recording session for this album, at the risk of mentioning the real-world fact of a phonograph record’s birth pangs. It was a kind of melancholy Fall night that nobody could do anything about, and we were in the small Studio D of a large and impersonal New York recording company. Since there were only to be another guitar and a bass accompanying Gordon, we thought that a small studio might conjure a musical intimacy worth going for. But the moon was pulling too hard on everybody that night, and the color of the walls in this particular studio successfully captured the mood of gloom we thought we’d left outside. Our assistant engineer, an older fella, seemed none too emotionally involved in this kind of music, maybe none too involved even in this business of recording. From all that was apparent, he might have been happier in his work had it been cobbling shoes or trimming trees; he meant no harm, neither did he mean especially well. And anyone not born and bred in New York City can be extremely sensitive to this kind of split hair.
Anyway, the first tune Gordon put down that night was his Rich Man’s Spiritual and in filling out the “take” sheet this assistant engineer guy wrote “Richman’s Spiritual”, by which he probably didn’t mean to suggest anything about the implicit Brotherhood of Man, but only that, if indeed he tuned in on anything at all anymore, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to tune in on that night’s activities. So alien were they to anything that had ever moved him. Now, apart from all else, that’s a reasonably sad circumstance for a man and probably much too common a one in these times of magnified opportunity; that the man with, say, the soul of a baker should get caught up in the role of an assistant sound engineer. And because it’s a sad proposition, there was an essential sadness felt for the man when he went on to transcribe our artist’s name as Gordon Whitefoot rather than ask what was it again. That kind of sympatico can serve to distract even the most insensitive among us, and the night in Studio D had definitely taken on such a cast. But what’s remarkably more, and the single important fact at the bottom of all this meandering, is the privilege to report that, later on, blossoms of a sort were made to grow in such a cold and angular atmosphere. Gordon’s eventual delivery of, among other tunes, his own Early Morning Rain seemed to make just the right use of those grey walls. And the great wealth of feeling he’s written right into that song is about the same shade of grey as was that entire session. Oh, there were many more happy sessions after the first, but it has been mentioned here in morbid detail to demonstrate the shadowy ways in which a real artist can find virtue lurking out the other side of predicament.
Gordon Lightfoot is his name, ladies and gentlemen. Gordon Lightfoot. Remember it well, as certainly you will because it’s that kind of name. He sings them all like he wrote them and in most cases he did. what’s even more important,and not always the case, he usually sings his own songs better than anyone else does. Which fact says a lot about the directness with which they come from the heart, or wherever that place is where artists are most comfortable with their thoughts and themselves. But whether he wrote it or not, when Light-foot the singer takes up a song there is an authority that the ear is quick to accept and relax behind. Gordon’s vocal talent is doubtless a sensational example of that elusive quality that puts a chasm between the amateur and the sheerly professional. Like must also be true for really great bakers and assistant sound engineers, to cloak the whole thing in terms of the necessary doing for the necessary living, and how a good feeling about one lends itself to a good feeling about the other.
Yes, Gordon Lightfoot, with ample gifts and gratitude, has good reason to be a happy guy. A Canadian happy guy with Swedish wife and a season as star of an English-made Country and Western tv show under his wide-buckle belt (as well as his own monthly special currently on Canadian tv). He wears cowboy boots most of the time, like Tyson of lan and Sylvia, his friend and hand-up-the-ladder. And he says “oot” for out, like Tyson and Goulet and Bobbie Burns. But, along with Tyson, he understands about the cowboy and the psychology of open spaces that makes up the mood of life in the biggest part of Canada, as it did and does in the American West.
It’s these guys who have become the poets of that way of life, filtered as it now necessarily is through the Ice Blue democratic news of the world that affects us all, regardless of race, creed or color. And it’s gratifying to see the songs of a Gordon Lightfoot begin to receive the attention they deserve.
For, hung as they so often are on a wide-open-spaces metaphor, they nonetheless deal most poetically with the way life is for all of us, in one way or another. We won’t get hung up here reciting how Peter, Paul and Mary, a fairly well established branch of folk musical royalty, have had two substantial U.S., Canadian, Australian and European hits with Lightfoot tunes (in France, they sing “Tu N’ Aurais Jamais Du M’Aimer” when they mean That’s What You Get For Lovin’ Me). Or that Marty Robbins’ version of Gordon’s Ribbon of Darkness was number one on the Country and Westem charts for several weeks recently. Suffice it to say that, at the very moment of this writing, other artists of awesome stature and diverse interests are recording his originals. And meanwhile, back at the Lightfoot, Gordon’s treatment of the work of his songwriter contemporaries gets and keeps the respect of audiences wherever he is heard.
So, then. Of the fourteen songs on this, the first time out for an important artist, eleven are his own. All fourteen might just as easily have been his own, but in three instances Gordon felt strongly enough about other people’s work to want it included in his first collection. Nor, interesting to note, were the three exceptions chosen simply for reasons of musical variety. The album is not that kind of album, really. And frankly not the sort that is paced fast song-slow song-fast song for maximum and most symmetrical contrast. It is, rather, more like a statement; a collection of thoughts most importantly on Gordon Lightfoot’s mind these days. Ones he was anxious to organize in a single place and record for posterity before getting on to more adventurous projects, longer works in the ballad and talking blues vein, along with occasional and deft forays into the jungle of Top Forty competitions. Elsewhere, the expression “Country and Lightfoot” is already in use among the cognoscenti, and those who predict that a subtle amalgam of ‘Rock and Country is next in sight on the Pop horizon are well aware of the work of Gordon Lightfoot. For that matter, several of the aforementioned tunes on this album are already on their way to becoming standards. It’s just that the guy who wrote tnem would like to take the next little while and sing them for you, like they’re supposed to be sung, before he gets on to the next thing. And that, one supposes, is the logical content of a creative life in the real world. Coo-coo him no blades.”
LIGHTFOOT!
by Wayne Francis
It was the fall of 1964. Lightfoot enters a downtown New York recording studio on a gloomy evening to begin work on his debut album. They choose a small room in the studio to record, thinking that the smaller room might capture the intimacy of Gordon accompanied only by two guitars and bass.
Rich Man’s Spiritual is the first tune laid down on that night. It is the type of song Lightfoot enjoyed playing live in those days, going back to his days as one half of the Two Tones, when they would close their sets with Children Go Where I Send Thee, the traditional folk spiritual. Lightfoot had also written other songs in that vein such as Where Are All The Martyred Children, but Rich Man’s Sprirtual was clearly his best song of that genre.
Then it was Long River, with Bruce Langhorne, the highly sought after session guitarist of that era, weaving beautifully with Lightfoot’s guitar. This song would be the first on record to document Lightfoot’s fascination with the wild and untamed beauty and solitude that was Canada. And in the last verse we find the singer telling us that he’d “give it all to you, if her love were true”. Ah yes, love and nature. A theme Lightfoot would return to many times in the coming decades, with startlingly beautiful results!
The Way I Feel with its gentle folk guitar arrangement cradling the tender lyrics of lost love and lonliness. That gloomy New York night could have easily provided a perfect backdrop for Lightfoot to convey every ounce of sadness that this song suggests.
Then into For Lovin’ Me. By this time For Lovin’ Me had already been recorded by Ian & Sylvia and made a hit by Peter, Paul and Mary. Now Lightfoot gives us the song in it’s definitive, driving form. While the other recordings of the song by other artists gave the song a delicate interpretation, Lightfoot gives us a harder edged delivery, in a style he continues to play the song in right up to the present.
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. A very nice cover of the Ewan McColl classic that later became a hit for Roberta Flack. Lightfoot’s rendidtion is set apart by his stunning vocal.
Phil Ochs’ Changes is next. Lightfoot and Ochs were friends and the already established Ochs was a strong Lightfoot supporter. Ochs wrote Changes while in Toronto and Lightfoot was one of the first to hear and record the song. Check out the article Ochs wrote about Lightfoot in 1965 in Broadside magazine.
And then Early Morning Rain! What more can be said about this song that hasn’t already been said? Covered by the likes of Dylan and Presley, it was written in 1964, but Lightfoot drew upon an experience some six years earlier when he was studying music in Los Angeles in 1958 and he found himself at LAX one early morning, more than a little homesick.
Another tale of bittersweet longing, but in a much more playful style, Steel Rail Blues. Lightfoot early on displayed a restlessness in his writing where he was either trying to get back to home and loved ones, or to escape the same. This tension between these two basic longings give much of Lightfoot’s writing that universal appeal, whereby so many of us can relate in a very direct way.
On Sixteen Miles, Lightfoot showcases a beautifully, effortless melody that on the surface seems so simple, yet it is deceptively discrete. This song finds Lightfoot seeking comfort in the wilderness from “an old love”, not unlike Long River and although he vows he “won’t remember her at all”, we realize that the urge to return will again resurface, setting up the inevitable attempt to reconcile or move on, and another song.
Lightfoot supposedly wrote I’m Not Sayin’ while watching a hockey game on TV. A strong driving melody, with some great guitar licks courtesy of David Rea that Red Shea and Terry Clements would continue to embellish for many years. The subject matter and sentiment here is not far removed from For Lovin’ Me.
Another cover, this time Hamilton Camp’s apocalyptic, Pride Of Man. Lightfoot would continue to perform this song live into the mid 70’s.
For every For Lovin’ Me or I’m Not Sayin’ there must be a Ribbon Of Darkness. Lightfoot’s stance in the former songs is softened by his ackowledgement in songs like Ribbon Of Darkness of the true nature of relationships and the peril and hurt that are the consequence. Lightfoot also demonstrates some fine whistling in this song that would resurface on later songs like Brave Mountaineers and Ghosts Of Cape Horn. Lightfoot often would whistle on many of his early demo recordings to provide an instrumental break when he was playing only guitar without accompaniment.
Oh, Linda was and is a distinct recording in Lightfoot’s long career. Backed only by an interesting bass guitar line, Lightfoot delivers a knock out vocal.
The album closes with the hopeful Peaceful Waters. It comes across as an almost folk music hymn. “May this world find a resting place, where peaceful waters flow.”
Lightfoot! was really Lightfoot’s only true folk album, with the acoustic guitars played by David Rea and Bruce Langhorne, two of the best folk music stylists of the day, along with Lightfoot’s own folk influenced playing and last, but certainly not least, the superb acoustic bass throughout the album, played by Bill Lee (father of film director, Spike Lee). By his next album more Nashville influences are creeping into the sound, and although there would always be a folk aspect to Lightfoot’s music, in my opinion, his first album is his purest folk effort. Lightfoot would comment in the early 80’s that the folk label that persisted with him throughout his career was causing his records, which were much more rock natured by that time, to miss out on radio because programmers still had him pegged as a strictly folk artist.
Lightfoot!, although recorded in late 1964, was not released until January of 1966. The time in between was spent by his management, securing a satisfactory record deal. Although he signed with United Artists, a truly satisfactory record deal would not come about until five albums later, when he made the historic one million dollar signing with Warner Brothers in 1970, the company he has remained with to this day.
I recently picked up Mecca Normal’s Dovetail album (1992) on the K Records label and I decided to visit their website to look for more info and to check out the K Records catalog. When I got there I was surprised to find out several things: Calvin Johnson (K-founder) is still at the helm and still recording; Modest Mouse has some albums on the K label; a re-issue of the first Beat Happenings LP; and no re-issue of Beck’s incredible One Foot in the Grave, which I was able to find over at the Music on the Fringe blog - where you should definitely pay a visit! It’s odd that One Foot in the Grave has not been re-issued, as it is one of Beck’s best offerings.
One Foot in the Grave appeared not long after the noisy freak-out of Stereopathetic Soulmanure, and its quiet, folky textures couldn’t be more different than those of its predecessor, or the genre-bending Mellow Gold, for that matter. Recorded before Mellow Gold, the record showcases Beck as a postmodern folkie, and the results are revelatory. Stripped of the intoxicating production that dominated Mellow Gold, Beck’s songs prove to be wonderful, vibrant tunes, teeming with emotion, haunting wordplay, and simple, memorable melodies. It’s alternately haunting and jubilant, and Calvin Johnson’s occasional harmonies lend the record an intimate warmth. It’s a gentle record, and its collection of small gems are every bit as impressive as the songs on Mellow Gold or its 1996 follow-up, Odelay. -Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG
I recently saw Scott Cook perform at Kimbercote Farm (near Collingwood, Ontario, Canada) and I found his performance both uplifting and soul-soothing - similar to what I have found in singer/songwriters like Danny Schmidt.
Scott has an excellent voice that’s all his own, slightly spiced with tinges of Tom Waits and Johnny Cash. You can download some sample tracks below from his 2007 album: Long Way to Wander, but I strongly encourage you to purchase the CD from Bullfrog Music (CAN), CD Baby (USA), or download from iTunes. You will not be disappointed! I especially lovedfish jumpin and the bus song.
Review by Francois Marchand, The Edmonton Journal:
“Long Way To Wander resonates with a Dylan-esque verve, a Waits-ian post-modernity, Cook baring his soul in public for all to hear. The songs mostly revolve around Cook’s strings - guitar, banjo, ukelele - and his low, booming voice… His observations are spot-on and often funny, and places and people come to life vividly, whether Cook is singing about his grandmother in Alabama or about being lost somewhere in the middle of Asia… Long Way To Wander represents a huge leap forward for a singer-songwriter who has many more stories to tell.”
Gordon Lightfoot dominated Canadian AM radio when I was growing up in the 1970s. His success led to excess - both in his personal and professional life. After signing a million-dollar deal with Warner Brothers in 1970, Lightfoot hit the road for touring and hard and fast living. In the studio it led to grander and grander productions that took Gord farther and farther away from his roots and the incedible presence of his voice. A similar thing happened to Glenn Campbell in the 1960s when he was transformed from a country/bluegrass guitarist into a pop-star.
