continuing the alphabet project…let it B
Some more stuff…
Blanche is another husband/wife-centrific band…this time from Detroit. I found them on the Stereogum sampler tribute to REM where they do “Find The River”…which I think you can still get for free on the Stereogum site. Their only album is very nice. I especially like the auto harp mixed in with the pedal steel, banjo and twangy guitars. There’s a familiar vocal vibe here I can’t place. On their own web site there’s some mp3’s for the taking and videos to view.
Blitzen Trapper has a new album called Destroyer of The Void scheduled for June but Sub Pop may want to re-think that. It’s floating out there in the blog underbelly. There’s a free single download on the band’s website.
I don’t know what made me think the Bowerbirds were from Australia but they’re not. Raleigh, North Carolina is the home (I think) to Phil Moore and Beth Tacular, and the band also includes Mark Paulson. Or not…their website hasn’t been updated for about a year. Which is odd, because there was a release last summer. They remind me a bit of the Iron and Wine school of indie/folk. I only have their debut Hymms For A Dark Horse.
The kid nagged me to get us the Beatles Mono Box last year and I thought it to be kind of a waste. Why would we listen to mono when we can have stereo? Isn’t that full dimension, duophonic, 360 sound an improvement? The songs have started popping up in that little Apple jukebox and I’m developing an appreciation for the mixes.
Forgive me for this. Bruce Springsteen has a couple of tracks on some tributes you may have missed. Woody Guthrie’s “The Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” is on ‘Til We Outnumber Them which I picked up a year ago used for like 99 cents. Arlo, Billy Bragg, Ani DeFranco, Country Joe and others. The other track is on that Warren Zevon trib I mentioned before in the A post. This one is called “My Ride’s Here”.
My all-time favorite Butch Hancock song is “Pumpkineater” on Eats Away The Night. The CD is out of print and I don’t believe this track ever got digitized. An excellent reason why we need to start thinking about conservation of our musical heritage.
Books….I read a lot of them. For years it was strictly biographies but I’ve since migrated over to the world of mysteries. Lawrence Block has many different series in print but I’ve always enjoyed ones featuring the Manhattan private eye Matthew Scudder more than all his others. I’ve had breakfast at the coffee shops he visits in the stories, stood out on the corner of the apartment building he would live in if he was real, and tried to track down the AA meetings he attends. Its been years since Block has written about him and I’m starting to become afraid that as he gets older, it may all come to an end. (Such as with Robert Parker’s recent sudden death, I suspect we’ll soon see the end of Spencer and Hawk.) Might not have to buy a Kindle or an iPad if all my favorites pass on. Then I can devote my time to magazine reading again. Or not.