By Don Jacobson

1. The last time we checked in with Chatham County Line, they were just coming down from a high they got from smoking high-grade bluegrass. The telltale smell of trad purism was all over them. And their skinny neckties were drawn so tight, it kind of hurt just to see it, although you got a vicarious thrill listening to them work through their obsessions. It was beautiful but scary, as well.
Now, however, the band seems to be loosening those cravats a bit, and switching their substance of choice from pure grass to boozy jam. The thing that really stands out in Chatham County Line’s new album, IV (to be released in March), is that Dave Wilson and company appear willing to relax their grip a bit on the tight strictures of the bluegrass song rulebook, kick back with a little Jameson’s and drift where the muse takes them. The result is a bit less Doc Watson and a little bit more “Country Honk.”

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Posted on February 4, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Back to the Egg was Wings’ swan song and, to me, always a criminally underrated record. But because it followed a true stinker, 1978’s soft-boiled London Town, the then-all-powerful handful of music critics of the day were predisposed to hate it, and to use it as an example of how the icons of ’60s rock were going corporate in an era when punk was redefining tastes.
And to be sure, there are a few fine examples of Paul McCartney’s soon-to-come descent into Michael Jackson-esque wankery here (such as “Baby’s Request” and the syrupy “Arrow Through Me“). But for my money, Back to the Egg is Macca’s final burst of unbridled rock energy, a fascinating coda to the part of his songwriting oeuvre that produced some of the late-period Beatles’ hardest-edged songs, like “Helter Skelter,” “Birthday” and “Back In the USSR.”

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Posted on January 29, 2008

A Tribute

“The song was originally intended to be about Ronald Reagan’s pride in America’s military power but Bono had been influenced by Stephen B. Oates’s book Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as by a biography of Malcolm X. These caused Bono to ponder the different sides of the civil rights campaigns, the violent and the non-violent,” according to the song’s Wikipedia entry. “In subsequent years, Bono has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lyrics, which he describes, along with another Unforgettable Fire song ‘Bad,’ as being ‘left as simple sketches.’ He blames this on being swayed by Edge and producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who played down the need to develop the lyrics as they thought the impressionistic nature was more important to the songs’ ‘feeling,’ particularly when heard by non-English speakers.”

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Posted on January 21, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Oh, Canadian female rockers (CFRs). How we love thee.
Anyone who reads the Beachwood with any regularity knows that editor Steve Rhodes has a fascination with Avril Lavigne that at times goes so far as to confuse her with Paul Westerberg. While I’m not willing to go quite that far, I will admit that I, too, have a thing for Avril and her skull fetish. She is so rock ‘n’ roll and hails from the True North Strong ‘n’ Free. Oh, Avril, I stand on guard for thee.
But she’s not the only CFR on the prowl. Thanks to Canwest News Service, we have a list of what some of the other members of this coolest of all clubs are up to in this coldest of all months, as the Alberta Clippers whistle through the broken window glass in the Chicago tenements of our souls, chilling and thrilling us with their loon-like trillings. These ladies make me proud to be someone who wishes they were from Moose Jaw.

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Posted on January 17, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Originally published on January 4; now updated with comments from Patterson Hood.
*
“I have never quite loved the Drive-By Truckers,” Jesse Fox Mayshark writes in the latest No Depression. “For one thing, I have always been a little put off by the awkward self-awareness of Patterson Hood’s ambitions. God knows the moral and cultural geography of the modern South cries out for cartographers, but it’s one thing to talk about a map – he talks about it a lot – and another to draw it.
“Hood is a messy draftsman, sometimes relying on broad lines when he needs shading, sometimes counting on vague gestures to carry meaning that he himself hasn’t really thought through. (‘The duality of the Southern thing’) sounds smart enough when you hear him say it, but it doesn’t actually communicate much.)
“And like Paul Westerberg, one of his obvious influences, he’s gotten less funny as he’s gone along, maybe mistaking a straight face for seriousness.’
Here, here, Jesse Fox Mayshark! Finally a critical word for the critics’ darlings.
I have never understood the appeal of the Drive-By Truckers; I watched in horror and depressing amazement as they rose in popularity and stature within the alt-country community. I mean, these guys?

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Posted on January 14, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Atlanta’s Ben Coleman is one of those musicians who seem to be at a vortex of a coolness swirly-gig. Not only is the native Londoner a member of two very active and well-received Atlanta-based bands, Judi Chicago and Early Modern Witch Trials, he’s also the best classic rock DJ on the Internet with his show Stonehenge, which is broadcast locally by WREK-FM, the student-run, non-commercial station at Georgia Tech University.
Stonehenge goes out live every Friday night at 7 p.m. CST on WREK-FM, and is also available after-the-fact here on the station’s mp3 show archives and as a podcast here.
Coleman’s live sets with Judi Chicago, a band that seems to be either an homage to or a spot-on, over-the-top parody of disco dance acts, have been described by Creative Loafing as spectacles of “sweat, booty-tight shorts and pasty-white legs,” dominated by much pelvis thrusting and shouting of garbled lyrics. Early Modern Witch Trials, meanwhile, couldn’t be more different. There, Coleman goes the shoegazy, psychedelic route, channeling the Monks and ’70s European avant-rock, complete with squawking saxophones and spacey keyboards.
Either way, it’s kind of strange that Coleman’s bands are so loud and dissonant when his Stonehenge DJ persona is so low-key, intellectual and laid-back as he unfurls an encyclopedic knowledge of the most obscure deep, druggy classic rock. One of the best things about the three-hour weekly show is that he starts it off with an album played in its entirety. In recent weeks, these have included such crispy classics as Fleetwood Mac’s first album (1968), Jethro Tull’s Stand Up (1969), and Gentle Giant’s Octopus (1972). All treated with the historic respect that they deserve!

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Posted on January 11, 2008

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.
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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