In this issue:
Johnny Cash - Personal File
Natacha Atlas - Mish Maoul
Jolie Holland - Springtime Can Kill You
The Wreckers - Stand Still, Look Pretty
The Ditty Bops - Moon Over the Freeway
Drive-by Truckers - A Blessing And A Curse
Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way
Bird York - Wicked Little High
Casey Dienel - Wind-Up Canary
Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
Eleni Mandell - Country for True Lovers

Johnny Cash - Personal File

Amazon: The recordings Johnny Cash started making for Rick Rubin's American label in 1993 launched a journey through the Great American Songbook--from traditional tunes to alt-rock--that continued until, literally, the end of his life. What wasn't known at the time was that Cash had anticipated the American Recordings concept 20 years earlier. A series of informal private sessions he recorded in 1973 featuring just voice and guitar--with a few numbers added between then and 1982--were left untouched at his House of Cash studio, unearthed only after his death in 2003. These 49 songs, labeled "Personal File," show him exploring 19th-century parlor tunes, Tin Pan Alley pop, gospel, little-known Cash originals, classic and contemporary country, and even a recitation of Robert Service's poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee." On many, his spoken introductions reveal personal ties to a given number. Cash reprises early country fare like Jimmie Rodgers's "My Mother Was a Lady" and "The Letter Edged in Black." He also revisits later country classics like the Louvin Brothers' "When I Stop Dreaming," close friend Johnny Horton's hit "When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)," John Prine's "Paradise," and stepdaughter Carlene Carter's "It Takes One to Know Me." The second disc is a virtual hymnbook, blending traditional gospel and A.P. Carter tunes with a sacred composition by Rodney Crowell and Cash gospel originals. For those enchanted by the illness-ravaged soulfulness of Cash's later American recordings, hearing him in his prime is not only breathtaking--it underscores the depth of his still-remarkable musical vision.

Product Description: Deep within the House... [ Read More (1.4k in body) ]

Working at Muzak sounds like a blast!

“The first time I explained to my mom what I do for a living, she said, ‘They pay people to do that?’"

There's a certain General Memetics quality to it.

The Well includes seven hundred and seventy-five tracks recorded by the Beatles, a hundred and thirty by Kanye West, three hundred and twenty-four by Led Zeppelin, eighty-four by Gwen Stefani, a hundred and ninety-one by 50 Cent, and nine hundred and eighty-three by Miles Davis. It also includes many covers—among them, versions of the Rolling Stones’ song “Paint It Black” by U2, Ottmar Liebert, and a late-sixties French rock band with a female vocalist (who sang it in French) and approximately five hundred versions of the Beatles’ song “Yesterday,” which, according to Guinness World Records, is the most frequently covered song in the world.

A few years ago, Tom was looking for covers of Paint It Black.

Have you tried The Well?

The Soundtrack of Your Life | The New Yorker

This is no joke!

4/1/2006 - RONI SIZE | MARKY | ARMANNI: Buzzlife presents April Fools Rinseout at the 930 CLUB

Roni Size, This Saturday at the 9:30 Club

For the innocent listener who hasn't been convinced by the noisy claims and special pleading for the artistic significance of jazz improvisation, Miles Davis' My Funny Valentine is one of the most persuasive arguments. With this recording, Davis was never to be captured playing again with such virtuosic command of varied emotional detail. It is hard to imagine another rhythm section improvising with more adventurous looseness and equal sensitivity to each moment of the music, and it is equally difficult to imagine another young tenor saxophonist, unaware of the tempo and rhythmic freedom that was going to rise about him, responding with more ease, formal beauty, and eloquence than what we hear from George Coleman on selection after selection. It was, as they say in the business, "One of those nights."

Miles Davis, Romantic Hero

This album is just a big happy fun ball. Go Norah!

Amazon wrote:

One of the freshest country albums of the year comes not out of Nashville, but rather New York, from a sporadic band with the unlikely (and somewhat suggestive) moniker of the Little Willies.

Throughout, the record maintains the slightly inebriated, bar-band feel of a live club performance, especially on "Lou Reed," a very funny saga of a cow-tipping incident possibly involving the dark rocker.

This is an extraordinary record, not only for its musicianship, but for the infectious joy and exuberance of performers who remember just how fun it is to play music from the inside out.

It's probably better if you didn't expect it, but now that I've spoiled that aspect of it, you've got to check out "Lou Reed."

NB: The iTunes version of the album features two exclusive tracks.

The Little Willies

The review I'm linking here has mixed feelings about this album. I'll just say I was quite pleasantly surprised. On this album, often with only the sparest of acoustic instrumentation, he sounds like Cash on Unearthed. And for me, that's a good thing, as Martha would say.

Whatever happened to that maverick Nashville songwriter, and why don’t we hear gut-level honesty like that on country radio anymore?

Kris Kristofferson was, after all, one quarter of The Highwaymen; a country Mt. Rushmore, if you will, that included Willie Nelson, as well as the late Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Musicians have been known to dabble in acting now and again, it’s true, but Kristofferson immersed himself so fully into the thespian life, he almost completely abandoned his songwriting past—at least until now.

If you're sampling at your favorite site/store, try "Thank You for a Life" for starters. And while you're listening, consider how the visual element in music has been constrained by the shift from LPs to MP3s, and how the video iPod may eventually bring it back in a new and compelling way.

Kris Kristofferson: This Old Road

From his web site:

William Orbit's new forthcoming album "Hello Waveforms" will be released February 21 on Sanctuary records.

His first solo release since 2000’s critically acclaimed ‘Pieces in a Modern Style’, the new album was performed and produced by William. ‘Hello Waveforms’ is ethereal, ambient, subtle and distinctive in style, fusing strong melodies with electronic synths to produce his definitive signature sound.

Recorded in London and America, the new album features a collection of collaborations and influences - the track ‘Humming Chorus’ is taken from Madame Butterfly, ‘Spiral’ features the Sugababes and Kenna on vocals, while Finley Quaye plays acoustic guitar on the dreamlike ‘Who Owns The Octopus’.

William has also reunited with his former Strange Cargo band member Laurie Mayer, who plays piano and synthesizer on ‘Surfin’ and provides vocals on the tracks ‘Bubble Universe’ and ‘Who Owns the Octopus?’.

The music streams directly from his web site. The album is on iTMS, Rhapsody, etc.

PopMatters doesn't care for it, though:

There’s no denying that Hello Waveforms is nice. It is nice. It’s like musical Zoloft, actually. It’s white fluffy clouds, kittens and ponies, rainbows and pots o’ gold.

William Orbit - Hello Waveforms

A warm welcome to new MemeStreams user Ben, who pointed me to these:

Two full-length tracks from Neko Case's album releasing in early March.

Star Witness

Hold On, Hold On

Samples of all the tracks are already online at Amazon.

Two Tracks From Neko Case's New Album

Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.

News coverage of this article is here, here, and here.

Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market

FYI, Neko Case's new album, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood", is due out March 7. Her tour begins on March 17, with stops in Boston (at the Roxy) on April 5, DC on April 9 (at the 9:30 Club), Atlanta's Variety Playhouse on April 14, and Memphis on April 15.

She'll be on the Tonight Show on March 9.

An early review of the album gives it four and a half stars, which is the same as they gave a year ago to U2's "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb".