Certain General - Stolen Car

This, of course, should also have been in the Top Ten but now it gets a post all to itself:

"Along with the Band Of Outsiders Certain General were scions of early 80s downtown New York, holding on to the torch of Television and Patti Smith, twisting their vision further through dark, intense Village back-ways, while forcing wide the doors for Sonic Youth.Based around an axis of Parker Dulany, Phil Gammage, and Kevin Tooley, they have reappeared periodically but now come up with a record of skill and invention, of instrumental virtuosity that renews our belief that music as a savage art can empower."

Robyn Hitchcock covers streaming inside The Museum

Robyn and Scott

For Xmas Robyn Hitchcock has a set of twelve recently recorded, unreleased covers available to listen to.  The new tracks are streaming from his Audio Bus at the bottom right of The Museum Of Robyn Hitchcock.  

There's the Dead's 'Candyman' with Peter Buck, John Paul Jones, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, three Bowie tracks from The Feghorn in October, plus three guest vocalists in Scott McCaughey on 'I Still Miss Someone',  Mike Heron with 'Very Cellular Song', and Nick Lowe on 'Blue Moon Of Kentucky'.

Below is a track listing:

1 Be Here Now 3:40

2 Blue Moon Of Kentucky 5:02 

3 Candyman 7:16 

4 Changes 3:42 

5 Copper Kettle 4:44 

6 I Still Miss Someone 3:48 

7 Life On Mars 4:49

8 Pink Moon in C 3:40 

9 Quicksand 5:50

10 Song For Bob Dylan 4:29 

11Very Cellular Song 12:38 

12 Wang Dang Doodle 7:07

WINTERLUDE - the flyer

Top Ten of 2010 plus

 

RECORDS OF THE YEAR: what a palaver. I started off with about three and it's just grown, with three sub-sections. So you're not going to hear that much about any of them. If I was to be so picky as to have a favourite of the year it would be Trembling Bells. More often than not they haven't quite done it live, though they were right there at Cecil Sharp and for much of the End of The Road set, but there is nothing even slightly off about the album.

Never the biggest Czars fan, but John Grant's Queen Of Denmark is opulent and gorgeous and its lustre doesn't fade. 'Where Dreams Go To Die' is to die for.

It's been a five year wait for a new Miracle 3 album, though Steve Wynn has been busy in the interim. This and the shows bought it all back home. 'Resolution' nestles in quite nicely next to 'Amphetamine' and 'John Coltrane Stereo Blues'.

Wilderness Heart from Black Mountain. A highlight and a discovery at End Of The Road. Like Deep Purple were they on SST and a lot more besides. A band to make you jump in the air.

A psychedelic delight and aural kaleidoscope from the ubiquitous Carwen Ellis' Colorama. 

Okkervil River provided the setting for what turned out as fascinating a mining of Roky’s cultural milieu and personal odyssey as Time Out Of Mind was of Dylan’s. 

An album that celebrates a personal history that’s also a shared history. A deeply romantic set of songs that good-naturedly hymn the rock'n'roll archetypes, with the same joy in the best of England that infused Nikki Sudden and Ronnie Lane.

Two wilfully eccentric performers providing quite beautiful readings of their and our favourite songs.

The patently close-knit group, now definitely a group rather than a collision of talented individuals, bought us this new exploratory, celebratory collection, drenched in soul, recorded in the sympathetic air of Bearsville.

Richard Warren's Laments is a record imbued with a Memphis feeling, with a vibe similar to that aspired to by Primal Scream on Give Out But Don't Give Up but here perhaps bettered. While there was an immediate recognition of some of the influences , and touchstones being worked from, it took a few listens to latch on to how good it really is.

The Wolf People's Steeple is their first album proper. A tour de force of intelligent, ebullient, progressive music

A 2009 album in all but UK release date. Rowland was dead before the year began but Pop Crimes, the work of a questing, living artist, enhanced our lives in 2010.

Quite simply the purest country singer practising his art on these islands, and the finest.

Utterly reliable in his unreliability, teasing and questing, never far from that Tucson dryness, Howe Gelb wanders free through cities of Europe and a plethora of musical side-roads.

REISSUES & EXCAVATIONS: It seems that seldom a year passes without a new version of Buffalo Bill surfacing. This double vinyl set from Munster in Spain is the definitive version. With Rowland Howard’s death four of the participants are now gone but as the years go by this 1986 recording gains the respect it deserves. Among many things it should be considered the proto-alt.country record.

A five CD set of the legendary show celebrating the 5th birthday of the UK's greatest ever music magazine. Lovingly restored by Tony Poole. A beautiful package with sleevenotes from John Tobler, Pete Frame, Andy Childs, Tom Sheehan, Deke Leonard, and Nigel Cross (without whom).

A remarkable piece of archeology from Mark Linn. Recorded at Bradleys Barn in 1970. Riley Watkins and Gary Stewart as a rootsy Moby Grape.

We've been waiting for this on CD for a long time. The classic second Dream Syndicate album featuring 'Merrittville', 'Bullet With My Name On It', 'Daddy's Girl', and 'John Coltrane Stereo Blues'. Which cheeky sod asked Steve if there was going to be a vinyl version?

Los Saicos created a monstrous concatenation of trash, surf and beat music in Peru between 1965 and 1966 cutting twelve tracks before disbanding. They're all here and remarkable.

Iggy and James playing together again. Alive doing the needful. We can perhaps retire our Radar copies now.

TRIBUTE ALBUMS: The best tribute album since Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST. I'll leave the plaudits on this to someone else:

“A great world-weariness in the vein of Jackson C Frank and Tim Hardin...if it was the 60s he would undoubtedly be on Elektra” - Nigel Cross (Founding Editor – Bucketfull Of Brains)

New REM album: COLLAPSE INTO NOW out in March

COLLAPSE INTO NOW, R.E.M.'s new studio record, is set for a Tuesday, March 8th release in the USA on Warner Bros. Records. The album, the band's 15th, will be released internationally on March 7th. COLLAPSE INTO NOW was produced by R.E.M. and Jacknife Lee and features guest appearances from Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Joel Gibb, Peaches, and Eddie Vedder. Stay tuned for more details!

COLLAPSE INTO NOW
1. Discoverer
2. All The Best
3. Überlin
4. Oh My Heart
5. It Happened Today
6. Every Day Is Yours To Win
7. Mine Smell Like Honey
8. Walk It Back
9. Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter
10. That Someone Is You
11. Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I
12. Blue

Download 'Discoverer' now from here

The Palace Guards - Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery releases solo album

After years of helping steer the lauded and eclectic careers of both of his bands, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, co-founder and frontman David Lowery has seen fit to present a collection of songs recorded apart from those iconic indie & alternative rock entities. Stopping short of calling it a solo record, Lowery has collaborated with a handful of trusted musical cohorts associated with his Richmond, VA-based studio, Sound of Music - an inner circle that Lowery has relied on for over 17 years and who’ve been instrumental in helping create the sounds heard on this album as well as past projects. David recorded and produced The Palace Guards in conjunction with John Morand and Alan Weatherhead. Key players include Miguel Urbiztondo on drums, David Immergluck on guitars and bass, Craig Harmon played organs and Ferd Moyse on upright bass and fiddle. Special guest appearances include Cracker mates Sal Maida and Johnny Hickman, as well as the late Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) who played keyboards on “Big Life.” The Palace Guards will be available everywhere February 1st, 2011 through 429 Records.

The Palace Guards took David several years to complete. Lowery felt it liberating to write the songs without the constrictions of how they might fit in with the Cracker or Camper canon of songs and performances. The easy rapport and powerful creative chemistry that Lowery shared with his studio pals allowed his introverted musical inclinations to shine through.  Apparent in this collection of nine songs is a willingness to push the envelope stylistically—from the Appalachian-woven folk of the album’s first single “Raise ‘em Up on Honey” to the swirling, languid psychedelia of “Deep Oblivion” and eclectic Syd Barrett-inspired title track, to the rocked-out “Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing to Me,” Lowery enjoys the freedom to write and record just about anything that pleases him at that moment.

“One of the reasons the album sounds the way it does is that I have pretty strong personalities playing with me,” says Lowery, “guys who I’ve worked with for years, who have done engineering or playing on Camper and Cracker albums. There’s that instant easy rapport that shines through. Working with them brought out the more extreme edges in these songs and amplified them. It was also liberating to start with no preconceived notions of what they would end up sounding like or worrying about how they might sound in a live setting, as I have to do when I write songs for Cracker."

Title track available here for download:

THE PALACE GUARDS TRACKLISTING:
1. Raise 'em up on Honey
2. The Palace Guards
3. Deep Oblivion
4. Ah, You Left Me
5. Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing To Me
6. I Sold the Arabs the Moon
7. Marigold
8. Big Life
9. Submarine

 This is all in advance of what will certainly be a very busy year for Lowery in 2011. In addition to promoting The Palace Guards, he'll also be doing a string of East Coast this January with both Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker as part of their Key Lime & Kerosene Tour, where both bands will be performing their signature albums (CVB's Key Lime Pie and Cracker's Kerosene Hat) in their entireties.  David has also currently been writing new music with Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven for upcoming albums from both bands (this will mark the first new material from CVB since their lauded 2004 New Roman Times release). In addition, David also plans to continue working on his popular 300 Songs project - a blog chronicling all of the songs he's written and recorded with both Cracker & CVB. Plans are also in the works to turn these wry, humorous and informative musings on his songs, bands and, ultimately, the music business in general, into his first published book later in the year.

The Rockingbirds and The Arlenes- together again

Saturday night was like being back at Rosie O'Gradys. So many faces from the first days of Come Down And Meet The Folks and Alan Tyler and Big Steve on the same stage. Here are a few shots from the evening and the set lists:

L -R Big Steve, Chris Clarke, Alan Tyler

                                                                  

                              

Chris Clarke

                                                                                                              

Rockingbirds

                                                                                              

Arlenes

All photos by Amy Djarf