He was foul-mouthed too, dropping enough f-bombs to make me glad my mother had decided to stay at home instead of coming with us. br / br / Throughout the three day journey, he played a cornucopia of Irish music ndash; from Van Morrison to U2 to Snow Patrol and some traditional Irish fiddle tunes ndash; all of which made me imagine myself as a bus tour driver. br / br / If I had a captive audience for a few days, what kind of music would I subject them to?
What kind of statement would those choices make about me? These are the types of things I think about on a regular basis. Music, it seems to me, is intensely personal and the types of music, and even the very songs one loves, says something explicit about the type of person you are.
br / br / The bus driver was very likely given instruction to play only Irish music for us tourists, and who knows he may have been given the very albums of which to play. But I can rsquo;t help but think a little of who he was also came out of that selection. He did seem to have a pretty fat booklet full of CD of which to choose from.
And by his constant singing of Van Morrison lyrics, I rsquo;m pretty sure he was a fan. br / br / He didn rsquo;t play any Pogues on this trip, though I wonder what I would have thought of him if he had. br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/174/411860923_fb56e811cd_o.
jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" align="right" / ldquo;Close to Me rdquo; ndash; The Cure br / From i Mixed Up /i br / br / In my school 7-8th grade was considered Jr. High while High School properly started in the 9th grade. This was mainly due, I suspect, to the number of classrooms available in each building, and as there was space in the ldquo;Middle School rdquo; building for 8th grade classes, but none for the 9th graders, the division became plain to see.
br / br / As such going to the 9th grade meant moving to a new building with an all new set of rules, and social norms. The popularity contest also got very bigger. Waiting for the bus also took on an all new meaning.
In the lower grades you simply left class to the parking lot and climbed right onto the correct bus. But in high school you had to wait outside the building for the bus to come and pick you up. br / br / Standing outside waiting for the bus, day after day, I befriended a kid named Justin George.
We shared several things in common, namely our brothers were friends, and a similarity in humor. Turns out our lockers were near each other and we spend many a moment between classes and waiting for the bus goofing on each other and strangers. br / br / The year came and went, and I came to find out that during our sophomore year, Justin had changed.
Or rather, his popularity had. Suddenly, inexplicably, Justin had landed in the cool crowd. Just as inexplicably, he began ignoring me.
It was like he outclassed me now. I felt like I was in some Jane Austen novel and my friend had just married a noble woman. br / br / The Cure, that rsquo;s what had initiated those early bus waiting conversations.
He had a t-shirt from their compilation re-mix album, i Mixed Up /i , that had this cool little collage on it. I asked about it and we became friends, until he became cool anyways. br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/153/411860914_95757cfd32_o.
jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" align="right" / ldquo;Playin rsquo; In the Band rdquo; Bob Weir br / From i Ace /i br / br / My Grateful Dead obsession finds me asking all sorts of weird questions to strangers. Upon seeing a young lady in a training class I was giving at work a few years back, I asked whether she liked the Dead (for she was wearing a Dead shirt) for the music or the cute little bears. br / br / You see many years ago, a friend and I decided that a great many people liked the iconography of the Dead ndash; which partially consists of these cute little teddy bears ndash; without actually understanding that they belong to a roving band of hippies (or that the bears first appeared on acid tablets.
) br / br / The girl replied that she dug the band, and I began to drill her about it, until I was convinced she actually did know some of the music (her favorite song was ldquo;Looks Like Rain rdquo; an obscure enough number to prove she at least knew more than the average bear wearer.) br / br / We became pretty good work friends after that and I even made her a copy of this Bob Weir solo album, containing the original version of ldquo;Looks Like Rain. rdquo; A few months later, she changed desks, moving way across the office from me and we lost touch.
Strange that only a few extra feet would end a friendship, but sometimes relationships work like that. br / br / ldquo;Harvest rdquo; ndash; Neil Young br / From i 2-27-71 /i br / br / It is really rare anymore than I bond with someone over music. Getting married had a lot to do with that, I rsquo;d say, for the wife doesn rsquo;t look to fondly at me waxing poetic with the cute girl at the other table in the coffee shop about my weird fixation with Gillian Welch.
br / br / Time is the other factor, I just don rsquo;t have as much time to obsess over music and musicians and certainly not the time to find others who share similar obsessions. br / br / Recently, however, I have done such a thing. And you could say my wife is completely at fault.
For my new friend is one of my wife rsquo;s oldest and dearest. Interestingly, this very girl, Holly by name, is the same girl whom my sister told me I was destined to marry many a year ago. At the time I shrugged it off, as I was in full adoration mode with the girl who became my wife.
br / br / But now, I kind of see what she was talking about. br / br / You see Holly started writing cute and quirky things on my wife rsquo;s Facebook wall, and so I decided it was time I became friends with this girl. Turns out Holly has the same weird fixation with Gillian Welch and Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams, and Lyle Lovett, and.
.. Americana.
br / br / We rsquo;ve become really great friends through our shared love of music. We rsquo;ve even created a little Gmail account of which to share various songs and create a sort of long distance mix-tape. She sent this astounding version of ldquo;Harvest rdquo; the other day and has since promised to send the entire show, for which I am grateful.
br / br / Friends it seems, may come and go over such trivial things as popularity or even shared distance in an office space, but music somehow conquers all. br / br / img src="http://farm1.static.
flickr.com/171/411860921_7ff47c4477_o.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="196" align="right" / ldquo;Snowin rsquo; On Raton rdquo; ndash; Townes Van Zandt br / From i At My Window /i br / br / I suppose I came to know Townes through the artists that love him, his friends if you will.
I know ldquo;Pancho and Lefty rdquo; through the Willie Nelson version. Nancy Griffith does a marvelous, beautiful rendition of ldquo;Tecumseh Valley. rdquo; I rsquo;ve got versions of ldquo;If I Needed You rdquo; by Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris.
I rsquo;ve heard Robert Earl Keen sing ldquo;Snowin rsquo; On Raton rdquo; and Gillian Welch will break your heart with it. After awhile I started figuring if so many artists I admire are singing Townes songs, then I ought to check him out, too. br / br / Thank God I did.
Townes sings like an old man who has seen the world, and is ready to leave it. He was writing songs like a sage before he was old enough to shave. His lyrics cut plain and clean, to the heart and marrow of it all.
His voice is rough and ragged, and maybe that rsquo;s why so many know his songs, but not the man ndash; they often come through prettier through other voices. But it is Townes voice I most appreciate now. It rsquo;s a voice that knows.
br / br / ldquo;Snowin on Raton rsquo; is one of those songs that sounds like it was written long ago. Like it just came out of the earth and the mountains on it rsquo;s own. It rsquo;s lyrics are sad, and lonely, and true.
It rsquo;s wisdom and poetry and more than a man can describe. br / br / Townes feels like an old friend, though I never met him and he rsquo;s long since dead. His music stays with us, you and me, and talks and laughs and cries.
And will continue to for years to come. br / /p div id="authorbio" img src="http://farm1.static.
flickr.com/153/338536060_64ed79da71_t.jpg" align="left" Mat Brewster is the treasurer for the a href="http://mondoproject.
com/" Mondo Project /a . He spends most of his time wishing he was still in France sipping cheap wine and pretending to be Ernest Hemingway. /div br style="clear: both;"/ p ldquo;Cash on the Barrelhead rdquo; ndash; Dolly Parton br / From i The Grass is Blue /i br / br / The following story is true.
As in it really happened. Based in fact, without falsehood. br / br / Many years ago, a family member ndash; a second cousin if I have my facts straight ndash; lived in east Tennessee.
That rsquo;s mountain country ndash; the Great Smokey Mountains ndash; God rsquo;s country. This family member used to play a mean guitar and formed a band with another gentlemen, and a blonde haired country gal named Dolly Parton. This was before she was big, and I rsquo;m talking about her musical popularity not the size of her hellip; well, you get the picture.
br / br / They developed a pretty good local reputation and the two men decided it was time to go to Nashville and acquire a record contract. Through some connections, of which the details I cannot recall, they landed a record deal and signed the contract ndash; all accept Dolly who had stayed back in the mountains, unable to go to Nashville this particular time. br / br / The men, thrilled they had a contract and would soon be on their way to country stardom, rushed back home only to find that Dolly had met one Porter Wagoner and signed a contract with him, leaving the men in the dust.
br / br / Dolly, of course, went onto international fame and fortune, with a music and acting career, while my cousin became another working stiff who had almost made it as a musician. br / br / Either because of this story, or due to some malfunction in my musical integrity, I rsquo;ve always loved Dolly. Even in her flash, tacky 1980 s period, I could say no wrong (her duet with Kenny Rogers on ldquo;Islands in a Stream rdquo; to this day brings a tear to my eye.
However, I was surely, ever so glad when she returned to her roots with the Grass is Blue. Her voice fits perfectly in the bluegrass tradition, and the picking is pure Tennessee beauty. br / /p p The detail may be absolutely false in reality, as this story has been passed around my family for years, what is true is that my cousin did, in fact sing with Dolly while they were growing up.
. br / img src="http://farm1.static.
flickr.com/132/388362006_20226efda3_o.gif" alt="Woody Guthrie - early masters" title="Woody Guthrie - early masters" width="200" height="200" align="right" / /p p ldquo;Going Down The Road (Aint Gonna Be Treated This A rsquo;Way rdquo;) ndash; Woody Guthrie br / From i Early Masters /i br / br / I love the fact that I came to know this song through the Grateful Dead.
Here is this hundred year old folk song finding a new audience amongst stoney eyed hippies looking for the next jam. Say what you will about the dead and their fans, but they are certainly musically literate. br / br / Guthrie, of course is a folk icon, and musical hero.
Compatriots with Pete Seeger, inspiration to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and millions of others. The voice of a generation and to the common man. br / br / Yet I have to say that I don rsquo;t really know a lot of his work.
Or, rather, I don rsquo;t know a lot of his work, coming from his own mouth. He rsquo;s been covered by a myriad of musicians, and I rsquo;m quite familiar with his songs, and his legacy, it rsquo;s just that his own recordings are relatively scarce and often not in the best of quality. This song, for example, comes from a very scratchy recording, where Woody sound as if he is singing in a tin can out on the farm.
It rsquo;s worthy a listen, but not something I find myself digging out all that often. br / br / Whereas, recordings of this song by the Grateful Dead, or the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration of Guthrie songs are things I listen to and cherish regularly. br / br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/143/388361997_883507dcd8_m.
jpg" alt="DECD028" width="200" height="200" align="right" / ldquo;Not Fade Away rdquo; ndash; The Grateful Dead br / From i Dicks Picks Volume 4 /i br / br / Speaking of the Grateful Dead covering classic American music, here they cover the late, great Buddy Holly. Though, like most things Grateful Dead, they have morphed it and changed it into something wholly different than the original. br / br / If you look close enough in this 13 minute mass of psychedelic madness, you can see a little of the original rockabilly, but for the most part, this is it rsquo;s own beast.
Which is just fine in my book. br / br / One of the great things about the Dead was their ability to take all sorts of genres ndash; folk, bluegrass, early rock-n-roll, jazz and even harder rock ndash; and merge it into it rsquo;s own unique blend of American music. br / br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/173/388362003_30c0d1cac9_m.
jpg" alt="willie-nelson---songbird" width="200" height="200" align="right" / ldquo;Stella Blue rdquo; ndash; Willie Nelson br / From i Songbird /i br / br / Speaking of the Grateful Dead and cover songs, if I were to make a list of artists least likely to cover the Grateful Dead, Willie Nelson would probably find his way on it. I love both artists, fully, madly, deeply, but on their surface they are completely different beasts. br / br / Both Willie and the Dead are music lovers, covering everything from folk to pop standards and jazz in their repertoire.
Both have made careers out of touring non-stop across the world, and their performances can drastically change from show to show. Truly, both groups are distinctly American, and showcase the pantheon of our musical heritage. br / br / So, when I begin to think about it, the two aren rsquo;t really all that different at all.
br / br / I rsquo;m not really sure how Willie found his way into covering one of the prettiest of the Dead ballads, though I suspect the producer on this record, one Ryan Adams, had a great deal to do with it. It rsquo;s an interesting, and quite fantastic version, too. Ryan Adams and his band the Cardinals, crank out the guitar and spacey effects which sits perfectly for this song.
Though I can rsquo;t say I rsquo;ve ever heard Willie sound this way in all my life. br / br / Could a Willie and the Dead collaboration be too much to ask? br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/186/388362001_3587bebd7c_o.
jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" align="right" / ldquo;This Is The Sound rdquo; ndash; Juliana Hatfield br / From i Become What You Are /i br / br / My New Years Resolution for 2007 was to write more letters. Real, genuine, written on actual paper letters. Not e-mail.
Not text messages. Not instant messaged. But honest to goodness letters.
br / br / I used to be a really brilliant letter writer. I received, on average one letter per day incoming, which means that I wrote something like three letters every day. I got creative too.
I rsquo;d draw little cartoons in the margins, plaster the envelopes with stickers, quote song lyrics and poetry throughout, and once even did a chip exchange with a friend from Arkansas. br / br / I used to go to several weeks of summer camps and youth retreats across middle America which granted me loads of pen-pals from across the globe. Just in case you were wondering who the crap I was writing all those letters too.
br / br / But ever since electronic communication has taken over, I never receive a decent letter. As convenient and quick as e-mail and the like are, there was always something really special about opening the mail-box and finding something more than bills and magazines. A letter meant that the person cared enough to put pen to paper, dig out your address and buy a stamp.
E-mails mean so much less. br / br / It rsquo;s been an interesting experience going back to the old methods. I am finding it difficult to cover enough topics to fill a whole page.
I rsquo;ve come accustomed to writing in small packets of information over multiple e-mails. And it rsquo;s tough finding information that is both interesting and won rsquo;t be covered in a similar e-mail or blog posting. br / br / Juliana Hatfield always reminds me of one of my old pen-pals, Jennifer Woody.
A great writer she was, and one cool chick. She rsquo;s also one of the few people I was ever able to talk into sending me a mix-tape. And you know they rsquo;re a good friend if they take the time to put 90 minutes of music on a tape.
br / br / I lost track of Woody many years ago, but I think of her often. I rsquo;d like to write her a letter and see what she rsquo;s up to. But alas, even with all this sophisticated communicating equipment, there isn rsquo;t anywhere to send the letter to.
br / /p div id="authorbio" img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.
com/153/338536060_64ed79da71_t.jpg" align="left" Mat Brewster is the treasurer for the a href="http://mondoproject.com/" Mondo Project /a .
He spends most of his time wishing he was still in France sipping cheap wine and pretending to be Ernest Hemingway. /div br style="clear: both;"/
" While the joke is far from politically correct and offensive to livestock, I break it out for you because Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer, Artimus Pyle, is known as one of the wilder skin-bashers around. Yet, on his new album i Artimus Venomus /i (to be released March 13), Pyle shows us there is another side to his persona. /p p i Artimus Venomus /i just flat out rocks.
The CD is a winner from start to finish. While many of the songs often echo the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd, they are also more complex. Elements of country show up periodically throughout the disc's twelve tracks.
I would also venture to say the album will please the often fickle jam-band crowd, as the album is filled with extended solos and song structures that go a step beyond Skynyrd's radio-friendly numbers. /p p There is a lot of southern mentality to be found on i Artimus Venomus. /i I don't mean that in an insulting "this is redneck music," sort of way.
What I mean is the southern ethos of "live free or die" is present throughout the album. Songs like "Blood Sucking Weasel Attorneys," "Dead Rock Stars' Widows," "Giggolos," and "Pocket Money" remind me a lot of the work of the late great Warren Zevon. /p p While I find the drummer stereotype of only being interested in playing and partying is dead on more often than not, one listen to i Artimus Venomus /i proves that Pyle is an exception to the rule.
i Artimus Venomus /i is a highly worthwhile listen. /p div id="authorbio" Music writer and all around good guy from D-town, Colorado! Mon, 12 Feb 2007 04:20:08 EST p i Dream /i -- wow, that s a big name to fill, but fill it he does.
This disc contains sixteen tracks with some top musicians from every aspect of the music spectrum, folks like Bob Weir, Bela Fleck, Michael Franti, and the String Cheese Incident. With a line-up like that, I must be dreaming, but it rsquo;s not just my dream because Williams fulfills many of his by playing with all these amazing artists. /p p Each track has a totally different sound from the one before it, giving the CD a cool mix style.
Play This is the first track and it starts off fast and hard, which Williams explains why in the liner notes. I ve often wondered how an artist gets idea for songs. Play This was something that came about after he was asked if he could write a song that could be played on the radio.
Williams listened to a certain station for a while and that s what gave him the inspiration. It kind of has that Punk-Shout-Rock-Sing quality you might find on any billboard-pushing FM station nowadays, but Williams gives it a little twist. /p p Switch over to Cadillac and you find the trio of Williams, Bob Weir, and Bob s dog, Jackson Hamlet Weir, recorded at Weir s house in California.
The root of this tune has a definite blues sound with a little bluegrass feel to it. I love to cover Dead songs, and to have Bob Weir sing one of mine is a dream come true, rdquo; Williams says on the liner notes. He also said that he wrote the song with Weir in mind.
The story is about a guy going to pick up his Cadillac. Red and white/ creamy leather/ Roof stuck down/ praying for better weather. Both men play acoustically as Jackson barks in the background for effect.
I play first each time I turn the power on my player. /p p From here we ll jump over to Cookies, a jam tune where Williams laid down the tracks and then sent it onto to Fareed Haque, an associate professor of guitar at Northern Illinois University. Haque is an accomplished guitarist but he also plays an instrument that is a cross between a guitar and a sitar.
The sounds off this track are unbelievable and though it s time is just less than five minutes, I still consider it a damn good jam. /p p Williams didn t set out to make an album with all his favorite people doing what he thought they should do. He made it with them in mind, and gave them the freedom to use their talents, and if that changed the original way he first had a track, then so be it.
He found out that by letting the other artists add to his dreams, they became more vibrant and colorful. /p p Keller Williams is a great jam artist with witty lyrics and a light-hearted tone who brings fun back into music. i Dream /i can be described only by its name because it was a dream for him to have worked with his hall of fame, and it is a dream for those who hear it.
An abundance of sound that is sure to please the ear, the mind, and the soul. As crazy as this world can get, sometimes we just need to kick back and dream, and here s the soundtrack to do that. Have fun.
/p p ldquo;The Main Ten (Playing In The Band) rdquo; ndash; Mickey Hart br / From i Rolling Thunder /i br / br / The difference between a studio track and the same performed live, in front of an audience, can be enormous. With different musicians, equipment, and even arrangements, a live version of a song can become an entirely different beast. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Grateful Dead.
br / br / The Dead were innovators and vast experimenters in the studio. They created new sounds by mixing recordings of their live concerts with studio performances. They were some of the first in rock and roll to use multi-track recording and often went to great lengths in order to capture a certain sound (Bob Weir once famously tried to capture the sound of ldquo;heavy air.
rdquo;) While live, they often turned their songs into altered beasts. ldquo;Dark Star rdquo; became well known for it rsquo;s lengthy, wild, psychedelic ventures into the deepest areas of musical space, yet it is a fairly simple, three-minute pop song on the studio single. br / br / Which brings us to this Mickey Hart ldquo;solo rdquo; project.
I put the quotes there, because like most Grateful Dead solo projects the rest of the Dead wound up playing on it, at least in part. Being a Hart project it is full of interesting percussion stemming from the world about us. ldquo;The Main Ten rdquo; became the Grateful Dead standard ldquo;Playing In the Band, rdquo; but here it bears little resemblance to the live monolith it would become.
It starts with an almost calypso intro followed by what can only be described as some weird noises which, in turn becomes the familiar structure to the song we would later know (complete with Weir singing some of the versus) followed by another interesting percussion outtro. br / br / img src="http://farm1.static.
flickr.com/157/358861311_bbdd2d4b29_m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="240" align="right" / ldquo;Kung Fu Fighting rdquo; ndash; Carl Douglas br / From i Kung Fu Fighting /i br / br / Okay, so yeah, this is a dumb song.
A very dumb dance song. But how can you not love it? How can you not do some chop-sockey moves while listening to it?
br / br / One of the great things about music of all types (and one things most critics seem not to grasp) is just how amazingly fun it can be. It doesn rsquo;t all have to be Mozart and Dylan and freaking John Coltrane. Having a nice beat that you can dance to is, sometimes, all you need.
br / br / In college one of the local sororities used ldquo;Kung Fu Fighting rdquo; extensively in their pledge week. Every morning they rsquo;d play it at full volume and make the girls do a little karate dance to it. Every morning I rsquo;d see them on my way to class.
It was cute as first, but like most things involving sororities, completely obnoxious with repetition. br / br / Yet, even after way too many listens, this songs still cracks me a smile. br / br / img src="http://farm1.
static.flickr.com/156/358861315_15c35a99d6_m.
jpg" alt="" width="240" height="235" align="right" / ldquo;Don rsquo;t Think Twice, It rsquo;s Alright rdquo; ndash; Ramblin rsquo; Jack Elliott br / From i A Nod To Bob: An Artists Tribute to Bob Dylan on His 60th Birthday /i /p p I have at least half a dozen cover versions of this Bob Dylan classic. It has been played by the Indigo Girls with Joan Baez, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Social Distortion, Johnny Cash and countless others. It is sad, and bitter, and comforting in its own little way.
It is as close to as perfect as you can get in song. br / br / Ramblin rsquo; Jack lives up to his name here, with a lengthy intro about how he learned the song by being trapped in a cabin by the snow and having nothing else to do but listen to the record. He does a fine job with the song, playing it pretty much as you rsquo;d find it on the record but elongating a few of the words, and wavering here and there for effect.
br / br / I hope, and suspect the song will last long past the writer and the singers. It is a song that will last for as long as there are songs to sing. And that rsquo;s how it should be.
br / br / img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.
com/77/358861308_eb73c3de47_m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="240" align="right" / ldquo;He Went To Paris rdquo; ndash; Waylon Jennings br / From i Ladies Love Outlaws /i br / br / In college, dreaming of being the next genius writer, I took a few fiction classes, and one lonely summer, a poetry class. I had actually long given up my high school dreams of being a poet, finding it too difficult and way too embarrassing.
I took the class as a way to fill up a few missing credits, and to drive the last nail in the coffin of me pretending to have talent, and (let rsquo;s admit it here) to score chicks. Come On! Everybody knows the ladies dig the sensitive poet guys.
br / br / Anyway, there was but one other guy in the class, and he was being dragged there by his wife (see, already I rsquo;ve got all the ladies to myself). I wrote all types of poems including my now legendary ode to bananas. I still have those poems laying around in a box somewhere.
Not too long ago I dragged it out and read my really quite awful verse. Stumbling across some copies of other classmates lines of poetry I read one from the other male unit in the class. It began with: br / br / He went to Paris/looking for answers/to questions that bothered him so.
br / br / At the time I honestly didn rsquo;t think anything of it. It rsquo;s a pretty good bit of verse. It was only years later, reading the poem again that I realized this chap had completely plagiarized it.
In my foggy memory I can rsquo;t recall there being any particular attention paid to this matter. Certainly the teacher had no clue it wasn rsquo;t original, and if any of the other classmates knew, they didn rsquo;t rat him out. br / br / Sometimes I like to think I was in on the joke, that we all had al laugh at the dullard teacher rsquo;s expense, but that rsquo;s not the way it turned out.
I was as clueless as she was. If I ever do see that guy, I rsquo;m sure I rsquo;ll run up to him and shout the lyrics back in his face, laughing hysterically while he calls security. br / br / Waylon Jenning rsquo;s version always reminds me a little of that moment.
Obviously both my ill-fated poet and Waylon are fans of Jimmy Buffett. Both find some meaning in the song. Yet both of their readings of that verse fall a little flat and add nothing original to it in the end.
br / br / img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.
com/140/358861310_2831843c8f_m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="240" align="right" / ldquo;Jenny Wren rdquo; ndash; Paul McCartney br / From i Chaos and Creation in the Backyard /i br / br / As much as I adore the Beatles, I rsquo;ve really paid little attention to their solo work. Sure, i Plastic Ono Band /i is brilliant in it rsquo;s simplicity, and I rsquo;ve got a copy of i Band on the Run /i and i All Things Must Pass /i , but as a whole I rsquo;ve pretty much ignored the rest of them.
That is to say that what I rsquo;ve heard from the rest of their solo albums has never impressed me enough to really hear them out. br / br / It always seemed to me that as a group, they balanced each other out as individuals. Lennon added a much needed edge to McCartney rsquo;s silly love songs, while McCartney softened up Lennon rsquo;s sharp exterior.
Together they weren rsquo;t afraid to call each other crap, and by doing so each helped the other to greatness. Solo they seem to be surrounded by yes men (for who would dare call a McCartney song lousy to his face) and the music has suffered for it. br / br / That rsquo;s my story anyway.
Like I said I really haven rsquo;t paid enough attention to be an expert. As it goes, I heard good things about i Chaos and Creation /i and decided to give it a whirl. It rsquo;s pretty good.
In fact, it rsquo;s pretty darn good at that. I wouldn rsquo;t say it compares with the great Beatle material, but when you rsquo;re comparing things to the Beatles very little comes close. But take ldquo;Jenny Wren rdquo; for example.
It is a lovely little thing. Soft like a feather pillow and lilting like the sun. Paul rsquo;s voice sings sweetly while his guitar rushes it along like a brook in spring.
It rsquo;s never going to knock off ldquo;Get Back rdquo; or ldquo;Blackbird rdquo; but I rsquo;ll take it against ldquo;Jet rdquo; any day of the week. br / /p div id="authorbio" img src="http://farm1.static.
flickr.com/153/338536060_64ed79da71_t.jpg" align="left" Mat Brewster is the treasurer for the a href="http://mondoproject.
com/" Mondo Project /a . He spends most of his time wishing he was still in France sipping cheap wine and pretending to be Ernest Hemingway.
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