Music Calendar

June 5: Lucinda Williams released Essence in 2001

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

Essence,

I envy the wind
That whispers in your ear
That howls through the winter
That freezes your fingers
That moves through your hair
And cracks your lips
And chills you to the bone
I envy the wind

June 5: Lucinda Williams released Essence in 2001

Essence is Lucinda Williams’ sixth album. It was released in 2001. It is a wonderful album, one of the best albums that year, hell, one of the best albums that decade!

Essence was highly anticipated coming after a three-year gap from her lauded Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and the critical reviews reflect that. Although positive, none rate the album as highly as her breakthrough. Robert Christgau, who raved about Car Wheels, called the album “imperfect” but still praised her artistry saying “[she] is too damn good to deny.” Reviewers noted the difference in tone between the two albums with Rolling Stone citing the “willful intimacy” of the music while Spin contrasted its “halting, spare” presentation with Car Wheels “giddy, verbose” one. In a review posted by Salon the album was called “an emotional mess of a masterpiece”.

Q listed Essence as one of the best 50 albums of 2001. 

Personnel on the album include Tony Garnier and Charlie Sexton, best known as part of Bob Dylan’s live backing band then and now. The album also features session drummer Jim Keltner, another Dylan collaborator.

Fantastic album!

Lucinda Williams – Essence (Live):

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June 5: Blues legend Sleepy John Estes passed away in 1977

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

sleepy_john_estes_robert_crumb
Artwork by the legendary Robert Crumb

June 5: Sleepy John Estes passed away in 1977

It ain’t but the one thing,
That give a man the blues.
He ain’t got no bottom
In his last pair of shoes.
But someday baby,
You ain’t worry my mind any more.
~Someday Baby Blues (trad) first recorded by Sleepy John Estes

Someday Baby Blues (audio):

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May 21: Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On (album) in 1971

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

Marvin Gaye - whatsgoing

 

May 21: Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On (album) in 1971

What’s Going On is not only Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, it’s the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices, a man finally free to speak his mind and so move from R&B sex symbol to true recording artist.
~John Bush (allmusic.com)

… Marvin Gaye then did something no other Motown artist had ever dared. With What’s Going On (1971), he started a revolution. Although it spawned three hits—the antiwar title song, the ecological plea “Mercy Mercy Me,” and “Inner City Blues”—this was Motown’s first true album. Its blend of unembarrassed spirituality and unflinching social realism, as well as relentless percussion set against lush orchestration, was unlike anything that came before it in both form and content. For Gaye, it was a self-produced declaration of independence.
~ The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

What’s Going On:

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May 19: Van Morrison released Avalon Sunset in 1989

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

avalon-sunset

May 19: Van Morrison released Avalon Sunset in 1989

“You have to remember that writing those sorta songs is not reality, it’s more like trance, dream, y’know, like dreamwork. The mythical thing can enter the creating but there’s the mythical place and the real place. And there’s both…I get it between waking and sleeping. Or, when I’m doing something else. I don’t sit down and think I’m gonna write about subject X or subject Y. I could be doing something and an impression comes in from outside and the song emerges out of that. It’s never thought about or contrived.”
– Van Morrison (NME, 1989)

Avalon Sunset is the nineteenth studio album by Van Morrison, it was released May 19, 1989. It is one his finest!

It is not on Spotify, but let us go through the album song by song.

The album opens with “Whenever God Shines His Light“, issued as a successful single that charted at #20 in the U.K. and was a duet with Cliff Richard.

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May 18: Warren Zevon released Warren Zevon (album) in 1976

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

warren zevon album

And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill.

May 18: Warren Zevon released Warren Zevon (album) in 1976

We love Warren Zevon here at BTL and today it is 40 years since his big studio debut Warren Zevon (the album). A classic album that really has stood the test of time.

Though only a modest commercial success, the Browne-produced Warren Zevon (1976) would later be termed a masterpiece in the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide and is cited in the book’s most recently revised edition as Zevon’s most realized work. Representative tracks include the junkie’s lament “Carmelita”; the Copland-esque outlaw ballad “Frank and Jesse James”; “The French Inhaler”, a scathing insider’s look at life and lust in the L.A. music business (which was, in fact, about his long-time girlfriend and mother to his son Jordan); and “Desperados Under the Eaves”, a chronicle of Zevon’s increasing alcoholism.

Warren Zevon (with Jackson Browne) – Mohammed’s Radio live on British TV in 1976:

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