December 08 Newsletter ------------------------------------ Yesterday & Today Records P.O.Box 54 Miranda NSW 2228 Phone/fax: (02) 95311710 Email: [email protected] Web: www.yesterdayandtoday.com.au --------------------------------------- Post 1cd $2/2cds $3/3-4 $6 1 dvd $2/ 2/3 $6 --------------------------------------- Thanks to all those who have supported us over the years. We may be the last vestige for true country music. So please read on. Apart from our new releases we have a stack of bargains & deletions. LP records?? Trying to find anyone who is still into vinyl as I have a stack to sell. All great including a dozen Mel Street lps and 40 or so Porter Wagoner!! Don’t forget the first newsletter of 2009 will have our year’s best cds in it. Naturally there will be a few from this newsletter which will come into calculations and certainly these from our last couple of newsletters will be knocking at the door. These are in alphabetical order. *Tony Booth – Is That All There Is *Peter Cooper – Mission Door *Claude Diamond – On the Loose *Amber Digby – Passion Pride & What Might Have Been. *Fayssoux - Early *James Intveld – Have Faith *Jamey Johnson – That Lonesome Song *Patty Loveless – Sleepless Nights *Miss Leslie – Between the Whiskey & the Wine *Songs of the Year (Randy Travis does “Chiselled In Stone”, George Jones does “Murder on Music Row” etc) **Leona Williams – New Patches Hank Williams III – “Damn Right Rebel Proud” $32 This is Hank 3’s 4th Curb country cd and he continues the fine quality of the first 3. He hates what is referred to as mainstream country and if I were to meet him I would congratulate him that his views paralleled mine 100%. I mean what right have the record companies got to call someone such as Taylor Swift a country artist. They are just faceless politically correct symbols of inanity but that (with exceptions you can count on the finger of one hand of a bad butcher) is what 2008 Nashville is all about. I think Hank is parodying a lot of this. I mean if his lifestyle were really exactly as he sings he would make Courtney Love seem like Mother Theresa. Hank is damn funny. Despite its crudeness the opening “The Grand Ole Opry (Ain’t So Grand)” is darn right laugh out loud funny. Great acoustic and electric interplay from Randy Kohrs and Johnny Hiland for starters. Joe Buck, formerly of punk rockabilly group “The Shack Shakers” is tremendous throughout on slap bass and forms a tight rhythm section with Shawn McWilliams on drums. “Wild & Free” has some serious great picking with Marty Stuart on mandolin & electric guitar and former BR549 multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron on fiddle. Andy Gibson plays the staple of many swing bands, the stand up steel guitar (Aussies will remember it as a feature of the Dancehall Racketeers). “I Wish I Knew” is Hank’s version of a love song and a darn good one to boot though an apologist he is certainly not. “Candidate for Suicide” may be seen on two levels. It may be Hank winking at us or it may be true. I suspect it is more of the former with Hank reiterating what people have said to him. You could just imagine what some of the conservative elements think of him. Tracks 8 & 9 veer away from the country. Country fans (and I don’t mean members of the Jimmy Wayne fan club) will love this album bar these 2 tracks. “Stoned and Alone” has a similar theme and comes from a similar stance to “Candidate for Suicide’. “PFF” is a breakneck rebel stance song that may be a little too wild for some. The album concludes with probably the two straightest songs on the cd. “3 Shades of Black’ is just Hank 3 and his guitar. The bluegrassy “Workin’ Man” is a genuine classic. As good as it gets. The hackneyed theme is given new life. Brilliant. This album comes with an “Explicit lyrics” warning as Hank likes to drop a few “words”. This worries the Americans. A four letter word means a lot. Bankrupting the world’s economies is acceptable provided the language is okay. If you do a radio show you may like to buy a “clean” version which edits out the swear words. Mind you statistics prove the explicit outsells the clean by a factor of 50 to 1. BUT, if the swearing worries you then the clean version is ok. Also, for those wanting a great gift or whatever, Hank’s first 3 cds (the third “Straight to hell” being a double) come packaged in a very attractive tin for the ridiculous price of $40. We have a few. “Always Lift Him Up – A Tribute to Blind Alfred Reed” $32 This was missed. It was a late 2007 release to commemorate Blind Alfred’s inauguration into the West Virginian Hall of Fame. There are 19 tracks on this cd and represents all bar one of the songs Blind Alfred himself recorded. Why the compilers would choose to leave “The Wreck of the Virginian” off this is anyone’s guess, but I am not gonna be one of them. This is, to my way of thinking, one of the very the best ever country tribute albums and there have been some great ones. The most famous Reed song is no doubt “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live” and has been covered by the likes of Ry Cooder & even Bruce Springsteen. The song still has a lot of relevance today and some pundits have even called it one of the first protest songs. It is delivered with just the right amount of irony by the very talented Tim O’Brien. A lot of Alfred’s songs were to do with conservatism and as such have a cute quaintness about them. “Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls” is seen as direct disobedience to God, who will congratulate those girls with long hair as they enter through the pearly gates. We are told that to get to heaven, “money loving Christians” must unload, not play euchre, smoke cigarettes etc. Brilliantly sung by Larry Groce (yes, he of the novelty hit “Junkfood Junkie”) it echoes similar theme to “Money Cravin’ Folks” and “There’ll Be No Distinction There”. The latter is an acapella trio performance by the Bare Bones; no doubt Alfie would approve the fact they never spent too much on instruments! Alfred was also able to tell a mean story. “Explosion in the Fairmount Mines” (featuring John Lilly) sees a father fortunately take heed of his young daughter’s advice “not to go down to the mines today” as something bad was going to happen, and blow me down she was right! Charlie McCoy is of course country music’s foremost harmonica player but proves himself a great singer on “Fate of Chris Lively and Wife”…lively no more after having driven the wagon on the track just as the east bound came along. A rather jaunty song with a rather tragic ending. All performances are great. Mandolinist Johnny Staats sounds more like Arlo Guthrie than Arlo Guthrie. Ray Benson lends his distinctive voice to the humorous “Black & Blue Blues’ about the man who took a “grumbler for his wife”. He can’t win as he cops it from his wife and his mother in law. Other artists include Tim’s sister Molly O’Brien, Little Jimmy Dickens (on the hilarious “Woman’s Been After Man Ever Since”), Connie Smith, Kathy Mattea plus several I have never previously hear of but are nonetheless excellent. It seems given his stance that money is the root of evil, Alfred must have died happy as it seems it was in abject poverty with rumours suggesting he died of starvation. No doubt he would have shortly after been welcomed by St Peter! Incidentally, my grandfather’s name was Alfred Reid (spelt differently) and I only found out last Christmas that as a youngish police officer it was he who pulled De Groot off his horse and arrested him after disturbing the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge. I do believe Blind Alfred would have approved. Chris Sprague “18 Wheelin’ Truck Drivin’ Songs” $30 Genuine truck driving albums are rare and this compatriot of Deke Dickerson has made a beauty with 18 tracks (plus a hidden 19th track). The whole album covers all gamut of truckin’ styles with a couple of great extras chucked in for good measures. One of these is an adaptation of the Coasters’ “Charlie Brown” here named “Trucker Brown”. “Speeding Truck” is a great instrumental featuring Chris’ brother (fellow Sprague brother Frank) doing a demonstrably good Joe Maphis impression. The longer it goes the faster he gets. There’s truckin’ lingo (“That’s a Big 10-4”), truckin’ double entendre (“Let’s Get Drunk & Truck”…which has an opening very reminiscent of the Dick Curless classic “Truckstop”) plus the themes echoed by the great truck driving singers in Dave Dudley and Del Reeves. There is also a certain Commander Cody feel about it and if you like any of the artists mentioned herein you will like this too. Most of the tracks are originals with a few selected covers including Red Simpson’s “Runaway Truck” and Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down”. The trucking songs are a unique sub-set of country songs with an element of danger (“Pray For Your Daddy, He’s a Trucker”), excitement (“Diesel on My Tail”), flaunting the law (“Overloaded Diiesel”) and of course the relationship between the driver and the truck is given human qualities (“This Old truck”).