"He Looks Like an Allman Brother"

I turn on MSNBC and see that Paul Davis has died at the age of 60. Back in the day I loved this song and I used to dart back and forth from CKLG and CFUN just to see if I could catch it playing. I know. Brutal days before having iTunes and playing music on demand.

This song is about the suckiest song you're gonna hear on this blog - so indulge me. No hate mail please. And by the way, had I'd known what a horrific lid he had (God bless his soul), I probably wouldn't have loved the song as much as I did.



Don't even get me started - I'll be posting Ambrosia and Player videos soon.

"Hungry for Change"

Echobelly - so if you don't have any Echobelly, go to HMV and seek out your copy of their 1995 album "ON". It's fantastic front to back, but I have to say "Pantyhose and Roses" and "Something Hot in a Cold Country" are my favorite singles. Oh yes, and "Four Letter Word" is also very good. But then there's "Nobody Like You". It totally reminds me of something Morrissey himself would love.

Now that's something for Morrissey to go do. Team up with Sonya Aurora. What a duo they would make!

Honest Roots Rock: The Jayhawks

One of my musics greatest disappointments is the disappearance of The Jayhawks. Rainy Day Music was the album I first bought of theirs and I played it to death. Jayhawks' frontman, is Gary Louris who reminds me in his looks, of Paul Westerberg. What crazy hair eh? I don't know what it is about them - whether you call it folk or roots rock - they ain't country-western - but they just have an easy-going and such a harmony. You can't find actual Videos of their songs on YouTube, just a bunch of badly recorded live set stuff.

Jayhawks' lyrics are fantastic and most of their stuff I listen to and think "Hey, does that guy know me?" Particularly with "Save It For A Rainy Day" or "Stumbling In The Dark". You can check out their website on Lost Highway HERE, where better quality recordings can be heard.

That's the Jayhawks. Nothing fancy, honest just roots rock.

Blue Merle...

Besides the new Morrissey Greatest Hits completely breaking my heart, so is the fact that the little band that could, Blue Merle, is no longer. They've got a collection of cool roots rock songs that'll please anyone. Except if you're missing your cool bone. If you have the need to do some grave digging, get on the http://www.bluemerle.com/main.html bandwagon. They're fantastic.

Inside The Smiths: They're never getting back together - get over it.

In the crowded downtown HMV store, the pulsating guitar intro of “Irish Blood, English Heart” is amplified over the sound system and with immediate detection I’m grinning to myself. Besides the tattooed and pierced twenty-something employee spinning today’s new CD picks, I am perfectly alone in recognizing Morrissey’s renaissance single from 2004’s You Are The Quarry. Today the single plays as the fourth song on his latest recording, yet another Greatest Hits album.

Considering his solo career has spanned twenty years now, Steven Patrick Morrissey is still far from being a North American household name; typically identified as the former lead singer for The Smiths. Under a veil of uncommonness, Morrissey languishes in the safekeeping of his devotees, sanctioned by ex-Smiths’ patriots and a fierce brigade of Latinos. He has become an icon among the survivors of the by-gone 1980’s rave culture and indeed the most successful out of the former Manchester quartette.

Picking up the pieces immediately following the 1987 demise of The Smiths, issuing his first solo album “Viva Hate” in March of the following year, Morrissey contrives a formula of releasing original albums with B-side compilations and best-ofs in between. Now, several record labels later, he still finds it reasonable to pander an eighth compilation – this one under London’s imperial Decca Music Group. The packaging is gorgeous and features a heavenly black and white close up photograph of Moz with eyes wistfully closed – from about ten years ago albeit. But sadly, the song selection here is quite dumbfounding, too cumbersome with material from his last two studio recordings which aren’t the definitive of Morrissey for anyone. When it finally whirls its way through to track 7, we revive the faithful standby “Everyday Is Like Sunday” and three other interchangeable best-knowns. Thank God for the bonus CD, Live At The Hollywood Bowl and that gorgeous packaging. I ached over his oversight of Piccadilly Palare, At Amber, Boxers and my treasured Late Night, Maudlin Street. It’s simply puritanical of him to omit those and include his cover of Patti Smith’s Redondo Beach on a Greatest Hits.

And as if this were all not enough to make me completely despondent, I then subjected myself to watching the lop-sided documentary film Inside The Smiths, Through the Eyes of Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, which seemed more like an attempt at time travel for the neglected “rhythm section” of the band than an upright documentary. Curiously devoid of any Smiths soundtrack (more royalty quibbling), the most poignant tangible is that Rourke and Joyce come out as the most devoted of Smiths fans. Yet this doesn’t stop me from wincing at their raw refusal to move on with their careers and lives.

The same cannot be said for Morrissey, who may routinely toss in classic Smiths’ songs at live concerts, he emphatically revolts the idea of reuniting. As for his latest and greatest; this Greatest Hits is a pulverization that shows little of his brilliance and proves his contentment in being the commander-in-chief of his own eccentric musical machine. I love him but I’d never recommend this album-I’d stick with the 2001 The Best of Morrissey.
- Stephanie Kiernan