Saturday, January 18th, an amazing group of musicians gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma to pay tribute and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks album. The celebration titled “Shelter From the Storm: Celebrating 50 years of Blood on the Tracks,” was held at Cain’s Ballroom, a legendary venue located close to the Bob Dylan Center, who were presenting the evening. Continue reading »
Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
A great cover song is hard enough to pull off. Doing it over and over again enough times to make a great cover album is something like a miracle. This year, miracles abounded. We awarded only the third or fourth five-star album in the site’s history. That’s our number one, naturally. But if we’d run a full review of our number two album, it might have gotten five stars too.
Our list includes tributes to everyone from Lou Reed to Low to Tom Petty—twice. It includes jammy experimental covers of ’90s alt-rock, fingerpicked guitar covers of Kraftwerk, and skankin’ ska covers of Weird Al. It translates Leonard Cohen into Hebrew and Talking Heads into Spanish. It honors Fleetwood Mac before Fleetwood Mac and deeper Bob Dylan cuts than you can imagine. (Seriously, imagine the most obscure Bob Dylan song you can. These are more obscure than that.) It was that kind of year.
A new, expanded version of Elvis Costello’s 1986 album, King of America, includes a previously unreleased live version of the Waylon Jennings classic, “The Only Little Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.”
The box set, titled King of America & Other Realms includes 6-discs of additional material, including a January 27th, 1987 performance of the song at a sold-out Royal Albert Hall in London. And that isn’t the only cover Costello played that night. He also performed Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways,” Ray Charles’ “What Would I Do Without You,” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Your Funeral and My Trial.”
Costello’s backing band that night was not The Attractions, but instead included guitarist James Burton and bassist Jerry Scheff from Elvis Presley’s TCB Band, drummer Jim Keltner, Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on keyboards and T-Bone Wolk on accordion and mandolin. (Many of these musicians also played on the album as well.)
Costello’s version hews closely to the original, as Costello continued his exploration of American music, including folk and, in this instance, country.
King of America & Other Realms is available on November 1st.
You’ll know Jesse Malin possibly best from his address book, stuffed full the big names who are more than happy to sing alongside him. This does him a disservice, as his four-decade-plus career, two-plus of which have been as a solo artist, has produced a glut of well-received albums, nine in the studio and two live. So, regardless of heavy friends, you could say Jesse Malin can stand perfectly well on his own two feet.
Except now, tragically, he can’t. Malin sustained a spinal stroke in May of last year, effectively severing his spine, decimating any use below the level affected. He is now paralyzed from the waist down. He is 57, so still in his prime, as an exponent of muscular heartland rock and roll music.
Time to put that address book into use. Actually it was they that came to him, so as to enable Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin to exist. This package serves as both benefit and tribute, and it has quite the roster, with a list of the great and the good rubbing shoulders with the simply celebrated.
So we got Bruce Springsteen, always one of Malin’s biggest champions, side by side with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. There’s also representation from some of the seers of urban “rawk”, Willie Nile and Alejandro Escovedo. Lucinda Williams (who produced one of his albums) appears, as do a number of Brits, including Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. In fact, given it has always been the UK that has given Malin some of his staunchest support, his releases often on or for record companies based there, there is also support from a younger wave of UK artists perhaps less acknowledged this side the pond, artists like Frank Turner.
How do you begin best to describe the sort of music made by Malin, without just listening those who provide similar? My best bet is to suggest it the sort of music you would enjoy listening to in a bar, with, preferably, a bevy of electric guitars, pounding piano bolstered by an organ backdrop, impassioned vocals and, perhaps, some cheese cutter sax. That the bass and drums are driving should come as a given. So far, so E Street band, but they weren’t the first and certainly not the last. And with Silver Patron Saint boasting 27 tracks (available on triple vinyl or two CDs), where to begin? Continue reading »
Well, how about that! On the same day as a still-going Little Feat put out a blues cover album, Sam’s Place (review incoming), so too choose Sweet Relief to put out Long Distance Love, a star-studded charity tribute to their late founder and lynchpin, Lowell George. Star-studded? Well, let’s say the likes of Elvis Costello, Dave Alvin and Ben Harper are all present and accounted for, with George’s own daughter, Inara George, also putting in an appearance.
Lowell George was a slide guitar maestro, a singer/songwriter with a penchant for complex swampland boogie, polyrhythmic shuffles to delight both brain and bootheels. He formed Little Feat back in 1969, after a short spell with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. A set of well-received albums followed, until 1979, when George (a) dissolved the band, (b) released his solo album Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here, and (c) died of a massive heart attack at the age of 34. It took eight years before the relicts of what had assuredly been his band reconvened, and they remain a vital presence, with George’s songs still the ones the fans mainly come to hear. These are the songs that return to the spotlight on Long Distance Love, and the four and a half decades since Lowell’s voice was stilled have done nothing to dampen their vibe.
Continue reading »
Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.
I’m on a bit of a Nick Lowe bender at present, provoked by a question I was asked around how many versions there are of the timeless glory of (“What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding.” (A: 70, as a bare minimum, and counting.) And no, here on this page, surely I don’t have to explain that isn’t him covering Elvis Costello, do I? Take it from us.
Lowe has had a curious career, currently riding the wave of celebrated elder statesman, something that, at one time, seemed inconceivable. Indeed, pub-rock was never deigned or designed to build legendary status, being more about a rowdy night out, three-minute songs and sticky carpets. For pub-rock is where he emerged first, that early ’70s response to the prevailing mood of the music of the day, then all sprawling epics, awash with endless lookatme solos and preening prima donna frontmen, more in touch with their accountants than their audience. Pub rock was fun and uplifting, by people that looked like you, for people that looked like you, a good time, recycling the best of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country and soul. Solos were for sissies and the chorus was king.
Brinsley Schwarz, the band, had a shaky start fifty-four years ago today, but they picked themselves up and dusted themselves down. Songs and haircuts shortened, they joined a joyous circuit of largely London pubs, along with Dr. Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers and many more. Predating punk by a year or three, the enthusiasm and excitement was the same, if garbed with a touch more experience and age. Nick Lowe was bassist, lead singer and main songwriter for Brinsley Schwarz, and they made a good run for themselves before splitting. Schwarz, the guitarist who gave his name to the name of the group, hooked up with Graham Parker and was the linchpin of his band, The Rumour, whilst Lowe joined forces with Welsh retro-rock guitar man Dave Edmunds to form Rockpile.
The Rockpile years saw a stellar uplift in Lowe’s writing. Whilst his influences remained obvious, his magpie tendencies with a melody were less overt, and the run of records, whilst short, was wonderful. (Rockpile, the band, only really made one record, but Edmunds and Lowe’s solo albums were Rockpile records in everything but name, as was, arguably, Musical Shapes, an album by Lowe’s then-wife Carlene Carter.) As that band subsided, so Lowe advanced on a solo career, with more acclaim than sales.
The story goes that, down on his luck and thinking of jacking it all in, plop, a letter arrived in his mailbox. Unbeknownst to him, a cover of “Peace, Love and Understanding” had been picked up for a film. Curtis Stigers, in case you didn’t know.) And when that film is The Bodyguard, with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, a massive worldwide hit, with the soundtrack album going likewise global, the royalties on that one song were rather more than just an unexpected bonus, effectively paving the way for his career to continue.
Since then, Lowe has continued to ply his idiosyncratic path, with almost deliberately unfashionable songs of self-deprecation and sly humor, allied to melodies culled from musical styles seldom at any cutting edge, becoming a UK national treasure. His production work, with early Elvis Costello and the Pretenders, has also planted a reputation for a sound yet simple approach, where the melody is master, the surroundings there merely to reflect the song rather than to divert attention elsewhere. Content to follow his own muse, he is as likely to play live in a solo setting, just his voice and an acoustic guitar, rattling through his “hits,” as to turn up with oddball Tex-Mex rockabilly renegades Los Straitjackets, who have become an unofficially regular backing group for him.
Labour of Love is one of at least three Lowe tributes, there having been also Lowe Profile, featuring the likes of Dave Alvin and old Brinsley’s bandmate, Ian Gomm, and Lowe Country, with Amanda Shires, Ron Sexsmith and Chatham County Line, amongst others. I could have featured any of the trio, but collectively, I think this tops the other two. Curated by L.A. power popper Walter Clevenger, himself in thrall to the styles embraced by Lowe, and to the singer himself, this 2001 double disc captures most of Lowe’s moods and re-presents them in the hands of his peers, the affection often palpably obvious.