By Don Jacobson

Listening to the upcoming Jason Ringenberg solo career retrospective Best Tracks and Side Tracks is like waking up in a land where the Bubble Up is free and there’s an all-day feast of rainbow stew: The music seems sparkling and too good to be true, and yet it’s still got one foot in a slow-moving freight running past a hobo jungle somewhere down around Carbondale. That combination of punk rock exuberance and social consciousness and deep country sorrow, which has marked Ringenberg’s career since the earliest Jason & the Scorchers tracks, is still abundantly evident on this Yep Roc Records compilation, which mostly covers his post-2000 solo records.

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Posted on December 24, 2007

By The Beachwood Words & Music Affairs Desk

Singer Henson Cargill, whose 1968 hit “Skip a Rope” topped the country charts with its understated take on social problems, has died. He was 66.
Mr. Cargill died March 24 following complications from surgery, Matthews Funeral Home in Edmond, Okla., said.
“Skip a Rope” made it to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and was a top-25 crossover success on the pop music chart.
– AP, March 30, 2007
*
SKIP A ROPE
(Jack Moran/Glenn Tubb)
Also recorded by: Bobby Bare, Gene Vincent, the Kentucky Headhunters, Patti Page, B.J. Thomas, the Harden Trio, Autry Inman, Joe Tex, and Ben Vaughn.
Oh, listen to the children while they play,
Now ain’t it kinda funny what the children say,
Skip a rope.
Daddy hates mommy, mommy hates dad,
Last night you shoulda heard the fight they had,
Gave little sister another bad dream,
She woke us all up with a terrible scream.
(CHORUS)
Cheat on your taxes, don’t be a fool,
Now what was that they said about a Golden Rule?
Never mind the rules, just play to win,
And hate your neighbor for the shade of his skin.

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Posted on December 20, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

20 original hits from 20 original stars.
*
SIDE ONE
1. “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.”
Get your party started with Elton John’s version of a rock song.
2. “I’ve Got The Music In Me.”
You know, Kiki Dee had her moments. This is one of them.
3. “Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me).”
One of the great “list” songs of all-time. By Reunion. Here we go:

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Posted on December 17, 2007

By Don Jacobson

Pat Boone’s pop career didn’t really end because it was killed by the Beatles, as the conventional wisdom has it. It was already heading down the tubes as early as 1960 after his TV variety show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, was canceled by ABC. Apparently, even the McGuire Sisters and the Kingston Trio weren’t enough to keep those white shoes shining into America’s living rooms every week. After five number-one hits in the late ’50s (mostly boring, sanitized versions of black-written rock ‘n’ roll classics), it looked like Boone’s inexplicable, inexcusable run as an American Idol was finally coming to an end.
Then came 1961’s “Moody River” on Dot Records, quickly followed by an LP of the same name. Boone’s cover of a rockabilly-inflected country song by Dot labelmate Chase Webster (real name Gary D. Bruce) was his last number-one hit and, in my opinion, the only one that really deserves it.

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Posted on December 12, 2007

By Don Jacobson

I saw one of those damn Volkswagen commercials using Wilco’s music again today and I’m still not resigned to it. It still upsets me, probably because I really thought Jeff Tweedy and friends had that special something that elevates their rock ‘n’ roll art beyond crass commerce – an apparently naive belief. They’ve had a pair of Top 10 albums, after all (including their latest, Sky Blue Sky), and while I’m certainly not going to say the guys in the band should be forced to busk on the streets, wasn’t there enough money coming in?

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Posted on December 3, 2007