Tampa Calling

This album looks great on paper:

Legendary organist and Stax Records session mainstay Booker T. joins forces with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood is the son of Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood. Add Neil Young’s lead guitar into the mix, and the result? Gritty instrumental R&B gold, right?

Not really. Potato Hole sounds like a set of 10 rhythm tracks in search of songs — melodies, vocals, that sort of stuff. As a result, while some of the music has a certain scrappy energy, the whole affair ends up being tedious.

Versions of “Hey Ya” and Tom Waits’ “Get Behind the Mule” fare best, mostly because the aggregation has a melody to dig into.

Booker T. is not an improviser, a soloist of any particular skill. (Just listen to the Booker T & the MG’s 1962 hit “Green Onions” — it’s a quick, grabby riff with a good groove, and little else.) Read the rest of this entry »

Dad’s dig music. I’m a dad, and if I didn’t work at THEE record store (and already have them), these’d be on my Father’s Day list:

Booker T – Potato Hole
This album has it ALL. The funky soul of classic Booker T, rocking guitar of Neil Young and it grooves to the backing of the Drive-By Truckers, poignantly tying together the fact that Patterson Hood’s father, as a Muscle Shoals studio musician, was an integral part of the southern soul sound, that Booker T. spawned.  See how this Father’s Day gift has several levels to it?!

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – A Stranger Here
This is an album of blues covers. I thought I never needed to hear some of these songs again (they’d been covered SO much!), but they’ve absolutely been made fresh by Jack’s gut-bucket voice, the
musicianship of Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) and Joe Henry’s production.

From the liner notes of A Stranger Here, Henry writes: “I pitched the idea that he interpret country blues music from the Depression era of his birth… songs as dark, funny and strange as is he and the times that produced them, and also ones that still resonate in these turbulent days.” It’s amazing how someone nearly 80 years old can interpret these aged classics in such a contemporary manner. I guess that’s why we call them “artists.”

Read the rest of this entry »

CAUSE WE SEZ SO!

VINYL:

• Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted, limited edition Tori litho w/ purchase (while supplies last)!

• Booker T – Potato Hole

• Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

• Les Claypool – Of Fungi and Foe

Leonard Cohen reissues:

• Live Songs
• New Skin For The Old Ceremony
  
• Songs From a Room
• Songs of Leonard Cohen
• Songs of Love & Hate

180 gram Sundazed reissues: Read the rest of this entry »