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Ingredients in a recipe for soul - Ray Charles - 1963
In honor of my Parent's 57th Wedding Anniversary on April 5th, I dug out one of the albums that my Father has given me. My folks went to Chicago for their Honeymoon in 1963, the year this album was released. While there, they saw Ray Charles perform at the Chicago Theater. So it goes without saying that it holds a very special place in my collection. It also happily reminds me that my folks were cool! This album 57 years later, like the Chicago Theater, is still cool. Though I have seen numerous shows there, shows with Bob Dylan, Wilco, Smashing Pumpkins and on and on; my parents seeing Ray Charles there 57 years ago stands unmatched in my minuscule modern comparisons.
This album provides a sound that lingers into so many genres of the future, but holds it's own magical groove. The ingredients are country, jazz, blues, creole and reggae, all well blended and sound delicious! My grandmother always told me that the best recipes had one main ingredient...that ingredient was love. Though you can't taste love, we may all have something we have tasted and loved; but Ray Charles makes you hear love in these songs. It's love of a groove and love of rhythm that he delivers kindly to our senses.
In these very challenging times we all have found ways to stay connected, stay sane and stay focused on the future. In "Where Can I Go" Charles walks us onto the deep, rich, and baritone ground of uncertainty. Horns whale a murky melody and you can feel the smoke start to settle in as Charles pleads for a new direction. Confused by what he has know, he encourages us to journey with him into a new kind of future. Then in "I'm Busted" he reminds us with a stark and alarming reality that tough times are made for tough people. There is a bruising truth in his voice that he has lived in tough times and somehow we find comfort in his pain. My favorite part of this album is the bellowing horns and the use of a screaming trumpet to reach even those who have forgotten their own recipe for their own soul.
Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo - 1993
Many times I have thought about the legacy of Generation X. I continue to search for some sense of understanding of not only who we truly turned out to be, but also how we will be remembered. This albums stands as a true, honest record of who we are, and who we might have been. There are of plenty of cliches in here as well, but it is filled with emotions that we played out in so many different ways as our lives took on the years. There are so many telling lines in this album, but "Out looking for the shortest path to the one you're on" might be one of the most telling of all. Gen X has taken the shortest path to wealth, the shortest path to indifference and we tried all the shortest paths to love. Hell we ask for "things" before we ever ask for the key to our hearts!
This album for me, is much more about the words and the ideas than the music. The country, folk and distressed rock n roll road signs lead me to the intersection of Woody Guthrie and the Outlaws. If you take a right turn and go straight you will be on Ozark Mountain Daredevils Way and run right into the crossroads. Confused for a moment and with the sinking feeling that we've been had: turn right and you can head off down Wilco Road or hang a left and shoot down the Son Volt Highway! This album takes you so many thoughtful ways and some of the signs that directed Gen X are obvious, many are covert. "No Sense in Loving" sadly and with no remorse brings so many of our relationships into finite focus. As a generation we wanted to have angst and we had "sad smiles", but we didn't want to do the work to be long lasting. "New Madrid" binds us together in some ways. You can insert the name of the girl...you can insert the name of the fountain...but the raw emotion does not change.
30 years after Ray Charles made a Country Soul album filled with blasting horns, and velvet like lyrics, the gents from Uncle Tupelo came back with a sturdy album that criss crossed genres, sounds, echoes, generations and words. It stands as a reminder of how a small group of people can take music and shape a generation.
Closer Than Together - Avett Brothers - 2019
I have been lucky enough to be a longstanding Avett Brothers fan. To come clean, when I worked at House of Blues I was given the heads up by a promoter that they were an incredible live band. He was a guy who did not give many rousing endorsements of bands though he probably saw a dozen live shows a week. They were coming to San Diego to play and I rolled into his office and asked him if I should see them. He was finishing one of his many daily smokes, took off his headset and said "just fucking see em Parsons...you'll thank me later". He was right.
This is a powerful album. I caution those who are adverse to the truth and the reality of the American way of life...this album reveals some of our glaring weaknesses. It tells a beautiful story of the building of a nation and then tells the sad tale of how we destroyed many of its valuable principals. If your mind is open, listening to this album will bring you many different emotions and for those of us who grew up in small town America, it can be troubling story at times.
"Long Story Short" jolted me in many ways. Like Anodyne, the words are sticky and very hard to shake off. If you have anyone in your sphere who's been thru divorce, or lost a job for illegitimate reasons, or perhaps witnessed children left on their own at an early age; these song paints the pain. There are so many timely thoughts tucked into this album. "Tell The Truth" just makes me think we should all be holding hands right now. These strange days I feel their are many of us yearning for the day we can hold someones hand again. The gentle fiddle on "When You Learn" lends you comfort but you know it's fleeting. The next fiddle you hear on "Bang Bang" sounds like a gun going off in the country night. But the moment where I took a time-out was "New Women's World". This is an extraordinary exploration of a very difficult reality for many men to face. The melodic voices of the Avett Brothers at least gives our centuries of sexism, though appalling and true, some sense of twisted justification. Then they end with three songs that might just scare the shit out of you. In an eerie way it almost feels like they were foreshadowing these terrible times we are in. I find myself bracing for loneliness, every once and a while I feel like a deflated basketball and many of my edges are frayed.
Maybe "Closer Than Together" just simply by it's title gives some semblance of honesty and understanding of what we are all hoping for in the coming days and weeks ahead. I hope you enjoy some of my thoughts around these incredible pieces of art and my perspectives on how they have impacted my life. Thanks for spending some time with me and please be safe and be kind.
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