Mar 9, 2011
Mar 8, 2011
Left Lane Cruiser - Junkyard Speedball
Left Lane Cruiser's Junkyard Speedball is grimy, grungy, dirty and nasty. It's full of reverb, vocal effects and organs. In some parts, it even sounds like White Zombie showed up at some southern dive, drunk on Jack Daniels. So why should the average Farce the Music fan have any interest in a band that sounds like this?
Well, those things are actually plusses in my book, but Left Lane Cruiser also provides lots of bluesy, country-tinged goodness in their songwriting. Sometimes you have to listen closely through the haze of fuzzed out guitar and echoey vocals, but it's there. Lots of slide guitar, plenty of rural subject matter, countryside grit and grime. These guys rock, to put it in a cliché neater and nicer than anything you'll hear on this album.
The sliding tones of "Circus" will get you tapping your foot and craving a hard shot of something. "Shine" will make you feel like you showed up at the wrong bar, one with a band behind chicken wire playing dirty blues as you dodge bottles and attempt to find a seat near the least scary looking bunch to enjoy the tunes.
"Weed Vodka" gets you stoned on both with Brenn Beck's relentless drum beat and and a blues riff the devil himself piped straight into guitarist Joe Evans' fingertips. "Shredding" isn't the term for this style of playing… it's more like "grating"… as in grating cheese, not grating as in "annoying."
"Cracker Barrel" is a bucket thumping number full of more grade-A filth. It's a lot more "barrel of crack" than it is the well-known chain restaurant found at your nearest Interstate exit.
This is stepping in cow shit and liking it; it's fist fighting in a mud puddle with your best friend after a six pack, while a hottie waits at the side to give her lovin' to the soiled victor. I don't know any better way to describe it.
Grab you some Junkyard Speedball and get nasty.
Ninebullets.net has some free tracks and a review here.
Mar 6, 2011
Feel Bad for You Mixtape: March
Here is this month's edition of the Feel Bad for You mixtape.
This episode features great tracks from Gregg Allman, Slithering Beast, Duane Jarvis
and the Geto Boys. Here's the blog (with a download link and a place for comments):
Mar 3, 2011
Mar 2, 2011
Mar 1, 2011
John Rich's Songwriting Tips #49
Sizzle baby sizzle. If you have problems writing songs with depth, gravity or lasting significance, at least have the good sense to slap in as many puns, hip phrases and well-known axioms as humanly possible. If you can't do any of those things either, find yourself a duo of attractive females who appeal to the prime demographic and have them sing whatever crappy pop-country song you pull from your creativity-barren soul and foist them upon the unwitting public with a flashy video and well planned promotional campaign. Street teams are also helpful. In no time at all, these seeds should reap you a harvest of radio adds. Take it from Rich, even if you've got a Vienna sausage, if you talk it up enough, people will think it's a 2-foot kielbasa. Wisdom from the man who's slung it.
*Not actually written by John Rich.
Feb 28, 2011
Feb 27, 2011
Country Doppelgangers 11: Alt-Country Day
Ryan Moore Adams has the whole Harry Potter thing going on.
Roger Clyne of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers strongly resembles Encino Man era Pauly Shore.
Neko Case reminds me of actress Debra Messing.
I have a feeling Justin Townes Earle will look a lot like actor Harry Dean Stanton in about 40-50 years.
Ben Nichols, lead singer of FTM favorite Lucero, and Sabretooth aka Liev Schrieber.
Sorry, Lucinda...
Feb 26, 2011
YouTube Gems: Drive-By Truckers
Happy Birthday Johnny Cash! (not that this song has anything to do with him)
(It's my birthday too, but JC's is more important :))
Best of 2011 So Far
It's shaping up to be yet another great year in music, if the first two months are any indication. This list is pretty top-heavy, but anything in my top 12 or so is highly recommending listening.
Favorite Albums of 2011 as of Feb. 26
01. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Here We Rest
This album will be released in April, and I'm here to tell you... it's awesome.
I think I'll have to stop making a separate list for live albums as of now. This one's too good to exclude from the main chart.
06. Social Distortion - Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes
07. Amos Lee - Mission Bell
08. The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Kickass southern style rock with strong melodies.
10. Left Lane Cruiser - Junkyard Speed Ball
11. Owen Temple - Mountain Home
12. Pearl Jam - Live on Ten Legs
13. Gregg Allman - Low Country Blues
14. Cage the Elephant - Thank You Happy Birthday
15. Drive-by Truckers - Go-Go Boots
16. North Mississippi Allstars - Keys to the Kingdom
17. Middle Brother - s/t
18. Ian Axel - This is the New Year
19. Cake - Showroom of Compassion
20. The Baseball Project - Vol. 2: High and Inside
21. Josh Kelley - Georgia Clay
22. Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Take that one with a grain of salt. My jeans aren't skinny enough for me to enjoy the last few Radiohead albums very much.
Feb 25, 2011
YouTube Gems: Black Spiders
From their shredding new album Sons of the North, here's Black Spiders with "Stay Down."
RIYL: AC/DC, Soundgarden, Viking Skull, Spinal Tap, Jet, Airbourne
Feb 24, 2011
Larry Lee the Primitive Baptist Reviews: Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson
Jason Aldean w/Kelly Clarkson - Don't You Wanna Stay
"If we can make forever feel this way/Don't you wanna stay?" Basically what they're saying here is "Let's do the nasty one more time and see if that's enough to make our elicit relationship continue." Naw, naw, Larry can't get with that. It's never said in this song if the couple reconsidering their love/lust is married or not. I suspect not, given the decay of these formerly great United States of America. I tremble in fear of where we're headed, children. This song sounds to me like the background music in one of them soap opry's when two unmarried people are spending a few PG-13 moments in each other's steamy, hot, naked… uh, excuse me… when they are commencing sex outside the bounds of a Holy union before the sight of the Almighty. They wanna "hold each other tight" and "fall asleep with me tonight"… don't be fooled; they will most certainly not be sleeping until the man has uh, consummated the fleshly interchange and rolled over to go to sleep. The way these two's vocals play off one another is also entirely humanistic and sexual in nature. If I am, as I so rarely am, wrong… and the couple is married, this invitation to trade bodily fluids is in error as well. God intended intercourse only for procreation. It should never be used for Satanic pleasures… and most assuredly not be used as a tool to help a man and wife resolve their differences. This is sin, my friends. Seed spilled not in continuation of the human race for the parental passage of the Lord's message is no better than masturbation. One might as well listen to secular music… this song, for instance. Holy Jesus, I pray for the sanctity of marriage in this country and the souls of both Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson. I also pray that Ms. Clarkson learns that the body is a temple and should be treated as such; not as a storage facility for Hostess cakes and Steakhouse burgers.
F
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