February 2010 Newsletter ------------------ Yesterday & Today Records P.O. Box 54 Miranda NSW 2228 Phone: (02) 9531-1710 Email: [email protected] www.yesterdayandtoday.com.au We still have a fax but not permanently connected given that most prefer to send emails and most of the faxes we do actually get are spam, but if you do need to send a fax please call first on the above number so we can have the fax to the ready. Seems like only yesterday it was telexes! ------------------------------------------------------------- Postage 1cd $2/ 2cds $3 / 3-4cds $6.50 ------------------------------------------------------------- Country music has changed. Even with a genre that has seemingly always had a fixation for crossover there has been a continued degrading of the roots of the genre, so nowadays what they call country music is virtually indiscernible from pop music. I mean Britney Spears may have a little more bassiness in the recording but she is in essence the same as Taylor Swift (where the bassiness is replaced by the 2 second fiddle solo, which is of course played over a heavily synthesized backdrop.) But most of the Nashville scribes take the Emperor’s New Clothes approach and pretend there is nothing wrong. Well, they do have to protect their jobs I suppose, but there can be no denying that the basic entities of country music, fine songs and sincere down home delivery are but for the odd, make that very odd exception, no longer exist. This phenomenon has been ten years in the making. The late eighties to three quarters of the way through the 90s produced some of the greatest country music ever made. Artists such as Ricky Van Shelton and Randy Travis ruled the charts and there were a swag of new artists coming through of similar talent. There were secondary labels such as Hightone producing traditional style music with a contemporary edge which we all embraced. How times have changed! Some mornings when there is something on the antiques roadshow that I have already seen I switch over to the country music channel where I try and stomach what I can see for as long as I can. Some young thing with precious little obvious sign of talent is dancing around trying to express some form of sincerity with some song totally lacking in melody and seemingly having the same beat and tempo as the preceding one. So at Yesterday & Today Records we just do not embrace this at all. Why should we, it is not country music. We offer you an alternate universe if you like where everything we have is good and is country…real country music where the “now taboo” subjects of drinkin’, lying’ and cheatin’ are still embraced and where tradition and sincerity are a must have ingredient. We get the independent labels from Nashville and Texas where talent and great songs rule. Where the needs of country music fans are satisfied, where artists such as Merle Haggard are kings and great songs rule. If you like we are the Choice Magazine for country music fans and I don’t mean those who turn the CMT on all day every day and think they enjoy it. So settle back and have a read. If you are convinced you are a real fan then take our word for what is great and reap the reward. By all means give us a call if unsure. If you are a Merle Haggard fan you will love Kenny Seratt, if you are a Ray Price fan you will love Darrell McCall. If you are a Connie Smith or Loretta Lynn fan you will love the likes of Heather Myles and Amber Digby. If you are worried that you haven’t heard them, don’t! Fans of traditional country music will unreservedly love what we carry. You will find a great selection of cds from $5 in our sales section. No rubbish, and they are genuine bargains. So settle back, rest a spell take your shoes off and give the list a peruse. Thank you. 2009 Albums of the Year 1. Ron Williams – The Longer You’re Gone.$30 Ron for the uninitiated is the son of Leona Williams, who of course was married for a time to Merle Haggard. Now, having Merle as a step dad may not have been all smooth sailing but it certainly instilled a spirit of true country music greatness in Ron. If he had been around at the end of the 80s he would have been on a major label and as good and popular as say Ricky Van Shelton. He has it all. Good looks and those peculiarly personal country music nuances that make for individuality and superb country. A must. 2. Dotty Jack – With Every Heartbeat $30 Just superb. 3. Joey Allcorn – All Alone Again $30 The best Hank III or Wayne the Train album ever is this. That demeans Joey but it is true. If you like Wayne or Hank III you are guaranteed to love this. 4. Darrell McCall – Keeping With Tradition 5. Jake Hooker – Lost Along the Way $30 the superb vocalist is equally adept as a band leader and musician. 6. Amber Digby – Another Way to Live Reissue of the Year A tie!! Mel Street - “Mel Street/ Country Soul” $34 Sons of the Pioneers/Roy Rogers – Complete Commercial Recordings 1934-1943 $240 Two different era, the classic honky tonk of Mel Street and the unsurpassed trio singing of Roy and the Sons of the Pioneers. Best Roots/Americana Album Loudon Wainwright III “High wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project” 2cds + stunning package $35 For a small contrast this is the Swedish Cowboy’s Top 5 1. Ron Williams: The Longer You’re Gone 2. Teri Joyce: Kitchen Radio 3. Darrell McCall: Keeping With Tradition 4. Dottie Jack: With Every Heartbeat 5. Various Artists: Hillside Records Country Song Roundup Kenny Seratt “The Best Of Kenny Seratt” $30 The reactivated Hillside label has been a blessing in this world where real country music is hard to find. Many bought and loved the “Hillside Country” cd from last year. Most of those were absolutely in awe of Kenny Seratt. Here was a man who sang like Merle Haggard and in his own right was every bit as good as the man. Merle himself has been quoted as saying “ Kenny sang like Lefty & me way before I did!”. The good news is we now have this superb cd. It came out right at the end of December in 2009 so technically it is a 2009 release but realistically a 2010 release and you would almost call the rest of 2010 off and proclaim this album of the year right now. A few years ago I had a cd by an indie guy called Rick Stancil. Now the cd was good but I could help remarking that one track, “Just a Damn Good Drinking Song” was as good as example of that fabulous honky tonk sub-set that I had ever heard, well lo & behold it was a Kenny Seratt song and the original is here! There is a mix of originals and covers. Some of the originals are by songwriters S Stone & J Cunningham. The latter could be the bloke who wrote the David Allan Coe classic “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile”, as his & Stone’s “I Found Heaven in a Texas Honky Tonk” is a highlight in an album where nothing is less than a highlight. He does a wonderful job on the Tommy Collins song, recorded by Merle Haggard, “Goodbye Comes Hard to Me”. He has the voice and the songs. Why wasn’t he the biggest star in country music? As the late Benny Hill so often said , “How do you define the intangerine?”. So friends, you get 17 songs and so it is like getting 1 ½ of the best albums Merle Haggard or Lefty Frizzell ever recorded. He is that good. Just amazing. Justin Trevino, who is no slouch himself, reports that on a recent benefit show in Texas, where the absolute crème de la crème of Texas artists performed, Kenny Seratt absolutely stole the show. Said Justin, “People were asking who was he and where has he been!”. Well, you can find out. As far as I know he only ever had one lp (though a few singles of which only one made the Top 40) and now this cd. As good as it gets…maybe even better. Mickey Newbury “Live at the Hermitage” DVD $38 Now, sometimes it is hard to understand how an artist such as the aforementioned Kenny Seratt is a virtual unknown, but twice as hard to work out how Mickey Newbury could have made it given that his lifestyle was not conducive to being discovered and now that he is gone the handling of his material in the hands of his somewhat less than functional family. Good news though is that it is being handled by someone who is a little better than the family member who was handling things last year when in the end we had to give up on obtaining his product. So things are kind of on track, or so it seems. The dvd, recorded in Tennessee’s Hermitage ballroom goes for a mighty 147 minutes and features Mickey performing all his best known songs including “American Trilogy”, “Cortelia Clark”, “Just Dropped In” and “Frisco Mabel Joy” a joyous song about a woman of the night. 22 songs plus interview. Mickey Newbury – “The Mickey Newbury Collection” 8Cds box set. $160 Nicely miniaturised and remastered versions of all his Elektra albums recorded between 1969 and 1981.