Great Album

August 25: Lucinda Williams released Sweet Old World in 1992

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

LucindaWilliamsSweetOldworld

August 25: Lucinda Williams released Sweet Old World in 1992

See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world The breath from your own lips, the touch of fingertips A sweet and tender kiss The sound of a midnight train, wearing someone’s ring Someone calling your name Somebody so warm cradled in your arms Didn’t you think you were worth anything See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world

Sweet Old World is Lucinda Williams’ fourth album, it was released 25 August in 1992. It is a fantastic album. It is a record that I bought after buying Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and her eponymous 1988 album, I love them all (and all she has given us since then). She really took her time between the albums, and the wait for new music from Lucinda Williams has often put my patience to a test. She never delivers bad stuff, most often she gives us fantastic songs. Sweet Old World is even better than its predesessor and almost as good as Car Wheels… and that is a masterpiece! Here’s a great performance of the title track, Sweet old World (live at Austin City Limits):

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August 17: Miles Davis Released the Masterpiece “Kind of Blue” in 1959

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

kind-of-blue

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“It must have been made in heaven.”
– Jimmy Cobb

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Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The sessions featured Davis’s ensemble sextet, which consisted of pianist Bill Evans (Wynton Kelly on one track), drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, and saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.

Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been described by many music writers not only as Davis’s best-selling album, but as the best-selling jazz record of all time. On October 7, 2008, it was certified quadruple platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has been regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz album of all time and Davis’s masterpiece.

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The album’s influence on music, including jazz, rock, and classical music, has led music writers to acknowledge it as one of the most influential albums ever made. In 2002, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2003, the album was ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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August 11: Leonard Cohen – New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

leonard cohen old skin

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]…I must say I’m pleased with the album. It’s good. I’m not ashamed of it and am ready to stand by it. Rather than think of it as a masterpiece, I prefer to look at it as a little gem.
~Leonard Cohen (to Melody Maker’s Harvey Kubernik in March 1975)

That miraculously intimate voice has become more expressive and confident over the years without losing its beguiling flat amateurishness. Some of the new songs are less than memorable, but the settings, by John Lissauer, have the bizarre feel of John Simon’s “overproduction” on Cohen’s first album, which I always believed suited his studied vulgarity perfectly. A-
~Robert Christgau (robertchristgau.com)

.. The lyrics are filled with abstract yet vivid images, and the album primarily uses the metaphor of love and relationships as battlegrounds (“There Is a War,” “Field Commander Cohen”). Cohen is clearly singing from the heart, and he chronicles his relationship with Janis Joplin in “Chelsea Hotel No. 2.” This is one of his best album..
~Vik Lyengar (allmusic.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Chelsea Hotel #2

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.
Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don’t need you,
I need you, I don’t need you
and all of that jiving around.

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June 8: Van Morrison: Too Long in Exile (1993)

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

too-long-in-exile

Too long in exile
Too long not singing my song
Too long in exile
Too long like a rolling stone
Too long in exile

I  love this album and I dig John Lee Hooker’s presence. Some wonderful songs & as always loads of interesting lyrics.

Released 8 June 1993
Recorded The Wool Hall Studios, Bath, England;
The Record Plant, Sausalito, California
Genre Rock
Length 77:04
Label Polydor
Producer Van Morrison

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April 24: David Bowie released Diamond Dogs in 1974

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

When this came out in 1974, it was roundly dismissed as Ziggy Stardust’s last strangled gasp. In hindsight, Diamond Dogs is marginally more worthwhile; its resigned nihilism inspired interesting gloom and doom from later goth and industrial acts such as Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails.
~Mark Kemp (rollingstone.com in 2004)

All this hopelessness and annihilation would be suffocating if it weren’t for Bowie’s exuberance. He throws himself into Orwell’s draconian hell as if strutting around in Kansai Yamamoto’s Aladdin Sane-era bodysuit; it fits his skeletal contours. Determined to reaffirm his relevance in spite of his setbacks, the singer sparkled so brightly that he offset the darkness of his material. Just as Watergate was coming to a boil, singer-songwriters and prog-rockers were glutting the charts, and ’60s resistance was morphing into ’70s complacency, this sweet rebel (rebel) made revolution strangely sexy again. Glaring at you from Dogs’ cover with canine hindquarters and emaciated features like the circus sideshow Freaks he footnotes in the title cut, he served notice that rock’s outsiders remained more compelling than the softies who increasingly occupied its center, even as his ever-growing popularity chipped away at it. You can bet Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Television sat up and took notes.
-Barry Walters (pitchfork.com)

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April 23: The Rolling Stones released Sticky Fingers 1971

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Sticky Fingers was never meant to be the title. It’s just what we called it while we were working on it. Usually though, the working titles stick.
~Keith Richards 1971

While many hold their next album, Exile On Main St., as their zenith, Sticky Fingers, balancing on the knife edge between the 60s and 70s, remains their most coherent statement.
~Chris Jones (bbc.co.uk)

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