Dave Alvin: King Of California - 1994

By

I can't believe this album has passed me by for so long. I have only just discovered after reading a comment from someone saying that it is the album contemporary-era Bruce Springsteen would love to have written. You know what - they are dead right. If Springsteen had released this instead of Western Stars it would be received as a work of genius. 

Alvin and his brother Phil were in a group called The Blasters, and I have to admit ignorance of both them and their work. He then decided upon a solo career and what he delivers here is country blues with tinges of rock here and there. Alvin has an expressive voice and writes some seriously good lyrics in the Springsteen-esque cinematic, character-driven style. A fine example to choose to reflect this is the superb, atmospheric, character-driven Fourth Of July. 

Other standouts are King Of California, East Texas Blues, Bus Station, Little Honey and the truly superb, Springsteen-esque Border Radio. 

There are influences of Bob Dylan, bluesy Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder and later-era Johnny Cash floating all around the album. In turn I am sure both Springsteen and Mark Knopfler will have heard this and been influenced by it. Mary Chapin Carpenter too. Mexican and Tex-Mex sounds make occasional appearances too. It is a highly atmospheric slice of little-known (to many people) Americana. I am delighted to have come across it. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Punk: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
From 1977 to 1979, pretty much all that mattered to me was punk - the next 45 rpm release, the next gig, the picture sleeves, the coloured vinyl, the badges. It didn't last long though, did it? Almost as soon as punk had begun it was morphing either into new wave or post punk. If punk groups didn't diversify they got left behind. However, what a wonderful couple of years they were - they began with a music cult that hated the world and ended with those very acts on Top Of The Pop s. Was it all bollocks? Probably. Fucking glorious, euphoric, pogoing bollocks.  So, as Johnny Rotten might say - get a load of these fucking singles, you cunts... ⑩ BABYLON'S BURNING - THE RUTS (1978) The Ruts were one of many punk bands to form in the wake of The Clash’s first album and they ploughed that punk merged with white reggae furrow that Stiff Little Fingers also worked so well. The singer Malcolm Owen - who tragically took his own life - had a gruff, throaty Joe Strummer-type voice whic
View Full Post »

The Beatles: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
As with my "Red Album" review, before progressing to the album, a little background for you.... I have always had a strange relationship with The Beatles. On the one hand, aged about five, I owned a plastic Beatles guitar, so they were the first musical memory I had, along with a vague knowledge of Elvis. A lot of their output was easy for a young child to sing - the puerile "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" was probably the first I learnt, to the frustration of my parents, who hated me saying "yeah" instead of "yes" . The accursed Yellow Submarine was number one in primary school playgrounds all over the country. In the mid sixties, The Beatles were simply everywhere, even for five-six year old kids like me. On the other hand, as the years went by and I started to develop a musical taste, I found the edgy, bad boy, rebellious appeal of The Rolling Stones far more attractive. Even at eight or nine, I viewed The Beatles as "goody-goodies&
View Full Post »

The Rolling Stones: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Ah, The Rolling Stones. Where do I start? I guess I was first made aware of them as a seven or eight year-old in the 1966-67-68 period when they started to appeal to my heightening sense that the all-conquering Beatles were goody-goodies and The Stones were proper bad boys. My developing tastes found this to be an admirable thing. Even at that age, there was a nascent feeling that if the older generation - parents, teachers and the like, even the judiciary - despised them, they must have something about them. Ironically, though, my Mother loved The Stones.  Then, of course,  there was the music - loud, punchy, riffy, buzzy and singalong, but not in a "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.." way, but in a "he can't be a man because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me" style. The Stones always had a healthy cynicism and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour that appealed to me no end.  Here we go with my crossfire hurricane top ten..... ⑩   UNDERCOVER OF THE NIG
View Full Post »

Rod Stewart: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Firstly, a brief intro to Roderick David Stewart.... As for many of my contemporaries, it was actually Maggie May that first captivated me as a twelve year-old, watching soon to be legendary cocksman kick footballs around on Top Of The Pops . I liked his flamboyant, laddish cheekiness and it was just such a great song, wasn't it? I duly bought the single and then the equally good (if not better) You Wear It Well , followed by What Made Milwaukee Famous and Oh No Not My Baby as they duly came out. I became a Faces fan too, unsurprisingly. Rod was a lad. The Faces were lads. I was a lad. The deal was sealed. As the decade continued, I faced the dilemma that faced many Rod Stewart fans as he turned up on Top Of The Pops in make-up to sing The First Cut Is The Deepest just as punk was beginning to take off and, by 1978 was coming out with the awful cod-disco of Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? What to do? A hugely credible artist was becoming a preening self-parody in front of our eyes
View Full Post »

David Bowie: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Now, I am not given to making top tens, because my opinions are always changing and I find it impossible to say that one song is better than another, but I've decided to do a few, so here goes with the incredibly difficult task of narrowing David Bowie's 45 rpm output down to ten. As you can tell from this list, I'm a seventies Bowie man.  Where do I personally begin with David Bowie?  Well, it was on the 6th of July in 1972 when I saw him on Top Of The Pops doing Starman . I was thirteen years old. He was completely new to me. Funnily enough, I had no memory of Space Oddity from 1969, despite knowing a lot of chart songs from back to the mid-late sixties. That one had strangely passed me by. Now, in 1972, though, I was like many, fascinated by what I saw on the TV. Contrary to many people's experience, who found their parents despising him and his glam/androgynous appearance, my Mother loved him. A few months later I was really into the John, I'm Only Dancing si
View Full Post »

Blondie: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Dominated by keyboard player Jimmy Destri’s fairground sound Farfisa organ and drummer Clem Burke, funnily enough, blonde bombshell vocalist Debbie Harry was not the most notable thing about Blondie's sound. What was clear was that, embryonically, they had something - both music and an image. Harry, for sure, had a sort of Lower East Side tough girl with a romantic side image and a 60s girl group sensibility. It was built on the traditions of The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las - ostensibly hard housing project girls but with a sweet, loving vulnerability and a desire to find that perfect dream boy. Many punks in the New York scene at the time didn't go for this at all, preferring their female singers to be like Patti Smith, full of confrontational street grubbiness as if they have just spent the night in a seedy squat with God knows who. Debbie cooly overrode all that, she was better than that, wasn't she? Here is my I can tell you were no debutante top ten..... ⑩ ATOMIC (19
View Full Post »

Roxy Music: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
For many people, Roxy Music mean the Radio Two stalwarts of Jealous Guy, Love Is The Drug, Avalon, Dance Away and Oh Yeah! , performed by Bryan Ferry in a white tuxedo and played in lounge bars throughout the land.  For others, however, it is the strikingly innovative band that exploded on the scene with the single Virginia Plain in the late summer of 1972 that floats our boat. They are a band of two distinct halves, like Fleetwood Mac (actually they had three) - the pre 1975 incarnation and the post hiatus one of 1979 to 1983. I like both of them, as it happens, but it will always be the early years, those five great albums and the singles that do it for me. In 1973, along with David Bowie and Mott The Hoople, there was nothing my fourteen year-old self liked better. I found a danceable solution to teenage revolution..... My top ten contains material from both phases....let's take our place in the singles bar.... ⑩ BOTH ENDS BURNING (1975) Both Ends Burning is five minutes or
View Full Post »

Stevie Wonder: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
I have covered a fair bit of Stevie Wonder's remarkable career with this list, but this was not a deliberate ploy - some sixties, some seventies - it is just how it worked out. Let's get that clavinet and harmonica out..... ⑩ KEEP ON RUNNING (1971) Maybe not an obvious choice for this top ten, Keep On Running gives us the funk, big time. It's an irresistibly groovy, cookin' and most memorable number, with prominent and assertive female backing vocalists energetically helping Stevie out behind all that layered clavinet. Stevie had got really into that instrument by now, hadn't he? This sort of deep, heavy funk is very popular on today's radio, but back then stations wanted more poppy numbers. The single bombed, reaching only #90, unfortunately. That was an absolute travesty. It boils on a bubbling high heat from the first note. It is just one of those songs that, for some reason, I really like, even though it wasn't a big hit and it isn't one of those o
View Full Post »

The Temptations: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
My favourite Motown group here and another for whom a top ten is a mighty difficult one to choose songs for, and in what order. Anyway, wait a minute......hold it, wait a minute.... ⑩ JUST MY IMAGINATION (RUNNING AWAY WITH ME) (1970) Just Your Imagination (Running Away With Me) is a sublime, perfect creation and is regularly included in those "all time Motown best of" lists. Rightly so. From the bass intro, via the strings and the backing vocals through to Eddie Kendricks' beautiful lead vocal (his final one for The Temptations) the song is peerless. Oh, and how could I forget Paul Williams "every night on my knees I pray" solo vocal on the bridge? The song was also covered by The Rolling Stones on their 1978 Some Girls album and, on their performance of it on their 2007  Shine A Light live album, Mick Jagger memorably embellishes the song's killer line into "she doesn't fucking know me!" in a classic Jagger voice. Check it out.  ⑨ CLOUD NI
View Full Post »

New Wave: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Selected here are artists from the 1977-79 period whose music was not punk but was associated with that period and often labelled "new wave". Punk in attitude maybe but not punk in sound. The music was not confrontational or aggressive, it was melodic, poppy and often sing-along. Perfect chart fare in many ways. For me, all these songs are permanently associated with that fertile period for young, exciting "new" music. ⑩ IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM? - JOE JACKSON (1979) Portsmouth's bug-eyed Mekon lookalike Joe Jackson is an interesting musical character. A most unlikely-looking "pop star", his beginnings were in the "new wave" of 1979 he progressed to dabbling in jazz, world music and classically-influenced stuff. He was/is a most underrated and creative artist.  Initially, Jackson seemed to have found himself at the vanguard of the “new wave” by default, because he wore punk-era thin ties and drainpipe trousers and had the afore-ment
View Full Post »