By Don Jacobson

The early ’70s was the era when rock ‘n’ roll became old enough to have “comebacks.” Elvis established the precedent in 1968 with his famous NBC television special, which set up the good news-bad news paradigm of pretty much all of the rock ‘n’ roll comebacks that have followed. The part of special where he sat in the round, reminisced with his old bandmates and played acoustic versions of his early hits was great and timeless. But that was more than offset by a ton of schmaltzy production numbers that presaged his “Fat Elvis” Vegas years.
By 1972, the inevitably tragic arc of the rock ‘n’ roll comeback wasn’t yet fully understood, but after Sonny and Cher followed Elvis on that sad journey, no doubts remained.

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Posted on February 1, 2007

By The Beachwood Marfa Affairs Desk

Jeff Tweedy
January 21, 2007
Liberty Hall
Marfa, Texas
*
Home of Marfa Public Radio
General Manager: Tom Michael, Chicago-born Friend of the Beachwood
*
1. Be Patient With Me
2. Remember The Mountain Bed
3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

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Posted on January 23, 2007

By Don Jacobson

They call themselves “Illinois’ premier rock trio.” Untoward hype from Backyard Tire Fire? Or a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation from the Bloomington-based alt country group? I’m leaning towards the latter because, although I have no idea how many rock trios there are in Illinois, I’d have to guess there are at least as many of them as there are three-car garages in Normal.
At least.

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Posted on January 21, 2007

By Don Jacobson

There is a strain of Nashville country music that to me, as a dyed-in-the-wool rock ‘n’ roller, was always one of the least objectionable of its forms. That was truckin’ country. And Del Reeves, who died on New Year’s Day, was its Beatles.

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Posted on January 9, 2007

By Don Jacobson

Daniel Lanois’ artsy take on Chicago meets Hank Williams’ traditional take on hellfire and the city.
Rocky World/Daniel Lanois
It’s not too often that Chicago is included in song lyrics of the truly artistic stripe. In most cases, I have to say, the city is called out in songs with the simplest of intentions. It’s kind of a sad state of affairs. Despite some apparent progress in sophistication that the city has made since, say, the 1920s, Chicago as a lyrical metaphor still seems to appeal to songwriters who merely want to employ its image to bash across some simple message, usually having something to do with pain, loss, human depravity or some combination thereof. Every time I see a song lyric that refers to Chicago as a gangster haven or as some kind of poverty-stricken wasteland (and there are so many), I have to shake my head and say, now I know how it feels to be typecast.
That brings me to “Rocky World” by Daniel Lanois. How refreshing it is to find a lyrical reference to Chicago that’s artsy enough to make me scratch my head and wonder, at least for a few seconds, what it really means. Basically, Lanois name-checks the city in what I believe is an articulation of a Canadian’s vision of the United States as something like a battlefield where you can win a living but lose everything that really matters.

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Posted on January 2, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

I spent some time on YouTube this Christmas Eve and ended up watching the following.
1. Thunder Road/Bruce Springsteen. Live 1976. Greatest rock song ever. The piano is hope; the harmonica despair.
2. Thunder Road/Shannnnon lip synching in her backyard. “I guess bruce springsteen is all i think about.” The comments are priceless.
3. The River/Bruce Springsteen. Live 2003, Milan. The economy with which Bruce tells this story is breathtaking. Each line is more haunting than the last.
4. Badlands/Bruce Springsteen. Live 1980, Landover. Lights out tonight, trouble in the Heartland.
5. Backstreets/Bruce Springsteen. Live 1984, Toronto. Dreams, promises, faith, love, desperation, and betrayal. Tying faith between our teeth, sleeping in that old abandoned beach house, getting wasted in the heat. We swore forever friends.

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Posted on December 26, 2006

By Kathryn Ware

Listening to Christmas carols on Internet radio all day at work.
11: 07 – Man, Xmas carols from my youth suck. Carols to the tune of electric guitar, triangle, boing-boing bass, harpsichord and a chorus of generic white voices are the worst. And three decades ago while we were listening to these holiday songs, we (meaning me and my family) were eating iceberg lettuce and pancakes from a box. Ugh.
11:19 – Holy yule log, is Mel Torme ever boring! He’s like the William Hurt of crooners.
11:27 – Ah, my absolute least favorite holiday genre . . . adults singing like children. Nails on a friggin’ chalk board. It’s beyond me how this was ever seen as cute or charming.
12:30 – Yet another choral carol where it sounds like the group slammed a case of Red Bull and then SANG AS FAST AS THEY COULD!!!
12:33 – Followed by Elvis on quaaludes singing a verrry melllllow “Silent Night.”

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Posted on December 18, 2006

By Don Jacobson

“Do you know what you’re looking for? Will you know it when you see it?”
These questions, asked by the disembodied voice of a little girl, are the opening lines of Andrew Douglas’ love letter of a documentary to a certain downbeat side of alternative country music, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Most seem to think Douglas starts his fine film, released late last year, with these lines because they pretty much sum up what they see as its raison d’ etre – an attempt to examine the poverty-stricken white Southern culture that produced singer-songwriter Jim White’s haunting oeuvre of sparse, gloomy acoustic country songs.

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Posted on December 14, 2006

By Don Jacobson

Once upon a time, Jerry Jeff Walker ushered in the spirit of a musical movement with the cry, “Up against the wall, redneck mother!” And all the cool kids in the South, indeed the whole country, responded to this satire of hippie-bashers by getting rip-roaring drunk, lighting one up, and buying the album Viva Terlingua! by the hundreds of thousands, securing Jerry Jeff’s place in the world of cosmic country music.
Nowadays, though, it seems Walker is the one doing the bashing.

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Posted on November 29, 2006

By Mick Dumke

At one time, “Lady Marmalade” was unquestionably one of the great tracks from the ’70s: a sexy, four-minute funk party with a hot streetwalker whose lovers just can’t stop thinking about her or her come-on line: “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” But if you actually really listen to “Lady Marmalade,” you’ll sense that this character and her story are also fleeting and sad.

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Posted on November 27, 2006