Slowly Going Bald

I'm fascinated by the fact that The Beatles' albums were often released in dramatically chopped and repackaged ways to manufacture more content in the United States. I know that even today, albums can have slight changes between their U.K. and U.S. versions, but this seems like an extreme that hasn't been matched in years. The Beatles' U.S. records feel like history from an alternate universe, and I'm now hooked on collecting them.

I love hearing good covers of great songs, and am especially enamored of how this happens more often within the boundaries of country and spirituals, with original works or traditional arrangements passed among artists. Here's another wonderful example of a talented artist performing an earlier work: The original "Lodi," from Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 record Green River, and a subsequent version by Emmylou Harris, who also included the tune on her 1992 live release At the Ryman. (If anyone has another cover they're fond of, let me know.)

This one admittedly might take some fiddling, but once the ad ends, you should be able to click the play button and see the Emmylou performance:

I'm looking for as many songs as I can find about California. I started out with those songs that featured the state's name in the title, and here's what I got:

"California Stars," Billy Bragg and Wilco
"California," Josh Ritter
"Going to California," Led Zeppelin
"California Dreamin'," The Mamas and the Papas
"California Girls," The Beach Boys
"California," Rufus Wainwright
"Back to California," The Wallflowers
"All the Gold in California," Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers
"California," Phantom Planet
"California Love," Tupac and Dre
"California," Mason Jennings
"Come to California," Matthew Sweet
"Just Like California," Old 97's

Then I narrowed the list to Los Angeles:

"Los Angeles," Denison Witmer
"Los Angeles Is Burning," Bad Religion
"Los Angeles," Counting Crows

I'm looking for more, but am also willing to take songs that mention the state in the verses and not the title. (Like, for example, Ryan Adams' "La Cienega Just Smiled.")

Let me hear it.

The best way to start this is with some background.

I attended Abilene Christian University from 2000-2004, and in the fall of my sophomore year, I pledged one of the school's local fraternities. (ACU calls them social clubs, since they're not part of a national system and they require a good deal more willingness to wear satin and harmonize, which is a whole other thing to unpack, but whatever.) I was a member of Gamma Sigma Phi, and choosing that club was one of the best choices I made at school.

Our rival club was called Galaxy, because why not. We were the two biggest men's clubs on campus, and each passed down their dislike of the other guys every year to the new pledge class. I pledged in the fall of 2001, and there happened to be at that time a large number of douchebags who were one or two years older, both in my club — a tall, slope-faced asshat named Cade Thompson — and in Galaxy. One of the elder members of Galaxy who was known for giving their pledges and ours a particularly hard time was a guy named Ted Misledine. There are all manner of stories of him harassing guys and being generally dickish; a guy in my pledge class who would go on to become club secretary made jokes about Ted in a few of our weekly newsletters, and was subsequently told through a mutual acquaintance to "watch his back." But as much grief as he gave GSP and our pledges, he was much worse to the incoming Galaxy guys.

So that's Ted.

Every fall, each club has a party called a grub; it's a costumed and catered affair centered around a theme chosen by the pledges, who are also responsible for planning the event and providing the entertainment. (For reasons I could go into but don't have the space for, the guys' grubs tended to have better acts.) A guy my age named Austin Lawrence who was pledging Galaxy had had enough of Ted's all-purpose douchery and decided to write a song called, simply, "Ted Misledine" and perform it at their grub. It's a funny, sweet-sounding little song that talks about hitting him in the crotch with a baseball bat and accuses Ted of cruising for underage girls and cross-dressing. It's basically what you'd expect a 19-year-old to write, and it's great.

Sometime before or after the grub, Austin recorded the song in his dorm room and put the mp3 on his shared folder, and I grabbed it and have had the pleasure of listening to it ever since. I can't quite remember who's doing back-up vocals; my gut says Chad Huston, but I'm prepared to be totally wrong and would welcome correction from any Wildcats who know better. Also, I should confess I never met Ted, or at least I don't think I did. (I'm not even sure I'm spelling his surname correctly.) If I met him now, he'd just be some guy about my age, but because of what he put my friends through, his legend has grown until he's become a mythic name connected with memories I forgot I ever made.

For your listening pleasure, I tossed a few random photos of Abilene together and set it to the song and put it on YouTube. But really, the cheap visuals are just a placeholder. Enjoy the song, and for those who knew the singer or the subject, pass it along:

Here's an explanation, and here's a playlist from my drive:

"Talkin' to the Moon," Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers
"Horses," Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers
"Cherry Lane," Ryan Adams
"Coahuila," Old 97's
"Babydoll," The Fratellis
"The New Kid," Old 97's
"Little Thing," Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds (live)
"Every Morning," Jon Nolan
"Wishing," Hootie and the Blowfish
"Runnin' Down a Dream," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
"It Wasn't Me," Jenny Lewis
"Lost in Space," Fountains of Wayne
"Looking Forward to Seeing You," Golden Smog

Having an iPod-ready stereo is one of the greatest things imaginable in Los Angeles, where you spend a lot of time in your car. And as much as I love having every album I own one click away, I've been falling in love all over again with my collection via the shuffle feature. Some days it's just an entertaining mix, but every now and then the randomly generated playlist is just what you feel like hearing. There's admittedly some pretty easy science behind this: I like all my music, which is why I own it and have put it on my iPod in the first place, so the shuffle feature is going to necessarily be jumping between songs I'm predisposed to love. But there's always the X-factor of how the songs sound together, and sometimes you just get lucky and find yourself coasting through 10 or 12 songs you wouldn't have thought to assemble but which nevertheless become the perfect soundtrack for that brief drive to work, to home, to anywhere. Whenever those moments happen, I plan on posting the playlist here.

Here's what I heard on my drive to work this morning:

"Take Me for Longing," Alison Krauss & Union Station (live)
"Three Days," Thermadore
"Long Black Veil," The Band
"Good Ol' Boy (Gettin' Tough)," Steve Earle
"Joe Bean," Johnny Cash (at Folsom)
"For You," Bruce Springsteen
"For No One," Emmylou Harris
"ELT," Wilco
"Fall Down Easy," Uncle Tupelo
"If You've Got the Money (I've Got the Time)," Merle Haggard
"Let's Go Dancing," Teitur
"One Ray of Sunlight," Phantom Planet
"Evaporated," Ben Folds Five

Because I just needed another online outlet, I am now on Blip.fm.

So, you know, add me and stuff.

"Mystery Dance," Elvis Costello:

"Barrier Reef," Old 97's:

This week's song is a classic, and one of the many from its era I can remember hearing my father sing along with on the radio.

"Tracks of My Tears," Smokey Robinson and the Miracles:

And as a bonus, here's Billy Bragg's cover:

In the fall of 2007, I wrote about the first time I saw Emmylou Harris in concert. It was a great show, and it turns out clips of the eventual BBC program have now turned up on YouTube. I'm posting a couple here because, well, you can never get enough Emmylou, and I also feel lucky to have been at a show that was filmed.

"For No One":

These aren't embeddable — which I think we'll agree is kind of dickish — but you definitely want to click through:

"The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn"

"Sin City"/"Wheels"

Total albums purchased/acquired in 2008: 78
Of those, albums released since 2000: 53
Albums from before 2000: 25

The number of albums I got this year bumped my total collection to somewhere in the neighborhood of 370 records, meaning that something like 20% of my total collection came from 2008. Weirdly, I wound up with the same ratio of acquired albums to total library last year, which I didn't think would happen and would be impossible to continue to repeat unless I bought a storage unit and started stockpiling CDs like a madman. But if anything, it's a reminder that the collector in me still enjoys keeping track of the numbers and seeing what I've got, where it came from, what the trends are, etc.

And because I still feel the same way, here's what I wrote last year:

"I do know that the sheer amount of music released last (and every) year, combined with the atemporal and personal-discovery nature of music, means that my list of the top albums of the year almost never looks like the ones compiled by the aging critics at Rolling Stone or the hipsters over at Pitchfork. My best albums of the year were quite literally my best albums of the year, the ones I bought and listened to and couldn't take out of my car stereo without just one more listen. Music is personal like that, and this was what last year was for me. I can't even really make a top 10 list or anything; all I could hope to do would be to trim a few disappointments and leave the many good albums I came up with. But since I can't do that, here's a selection of tracks from my year in music."

And I still hold to that. It would be impossible to list here all the songs I loved last year, but these are some of the best. (Instead of embedding the clips, I've linked to them where available. It saves space and load time, so deal.)

Gary Louris, "She Only Calls Me on Sundays"

Billy Bragg, "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key"

Justin Townes Earle, "South Georgia Sugar Babe"

Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, "Two Different Things"

Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, "Something Less Than Something More"

Willie Nelson, "Time of the Preacher"

Muddy Waters, "She's Nineteen Years Old"

Gin Blossoms, "Cajun Song"

Blind Boys of Alabama,"Way Down in the Hole"

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, "Once in a While"

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, "Sweetest Waste of Time"

Ben Folds Five, "Song for the Dumped"

Eytan Mirsky, "(I Just Wanna Be) Your Steve McQueen"

Hank Williams III, "Broke, Lovesick & Driftin'"

Old 97's, "Here's to the Halcyon"

Tift Merritt, "Broken"

Tres Chicas, "Foot of the Bed"

(Almost done. I got a lot of music this year.)

This year, my sister and I didn't buy each other that many albums as Christmas gifts. We realized that some of the CDs we wanted were already owned by the other sibling, and that we'd be a lot better off just swapping music en masse. So when we met up at the family homestead, I brought my laptop, she brought a couple dozen of her favorite albums, we bought some blank CDs, and that was that. I had bits and pieces of a few of these albums (the Dylan, the Chicks), but for the most part they were all new to me. As such, I haven't even begun to process all the music she gave me apart from liking it as much as I figured I would. (I also think it's pretty clear from the release dates that she buys a lot more new music than I do, so I really won out. It's like I got great records from 2008 for free simply by waiting.) So here then is a list of the albums I ripped from her, and that I'm sure I'll be spinning throughout 2009:

Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin' (2008)

Ray LaMontagne, Gossip in the Grain (2008)

Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (2008)

Alison Krauss and Union Station, Live (2002)

Lewis Black, Anticipation (2008)

The Fratellis, Here We Stand (2008)

R.E.M., Accelerate (2008)

M. Ward, Post-War (2006)

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

She & Him, Volume One (2008)

Bob Dylan, Love and Theft (2001)

Patsy Cline, The Definitive Collection (2004)

My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (2008)

Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal (2008)

Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (2008)

Dixie Chicks, Wide Open Spaces (1998)

Dixie Chicks, Fly (1999)

Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982)

Johnny Cash, My Mother's Hymn Book (2004)

Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight (2007)

Coldplay, Viva La Vida (2008)

The Killers, Day and Age (2008)

November

Murry Hammond, I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm On My Way (2008)
The best way to describe it is ethereal roots music, shot through with images of lonesome trains. That reads like nonsense, but the music is great.

Mindy Smith, Long Island Shores (2006)
A beautiful, accomplished follow-up to her debut One Moment More. I wish I could come up with something smarter or more engaging to say than that, but right now, I can't. Just pick it up if you get the chance.

Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison (1968)
Untouchable classic. I already owned At San Quentin, and needed this to feel complete.

Ryan Adams, Cardinology (2008)
Ryan Adams has been almost startlingly prolific in the past few years, churning out albums and EPs like a depressed little machine. He's mellowed into the sound that defines his current era — countryish rock with a faint '70s vibe — and he makes it work for him, even on an outing like Cardinology, which is more adequate than anything. He doesn't hit the songwriting heights of, say, Jacksonville City Nights, but this also miles better than 29. It's a solid little Adams record, and I'll take that any day of the week.

San Saba County, ...Though Cheating Was Never an Option (2008)
This is a great alt-country record with a mature sound that's often reminiscent of Son Volt or other harder-edged outfits. But I love the way I came by it. I mentioned in an earlier post how I'd picked up San Saba County's first record online, and a couple days later I got an email from frontman John Saba asking if I'd like a copy of their new one. Things like that rarely happen to me, a guy who runs a small blog mostly read by people he actually knows, so for that kind of connection to happen through the magical tubes of the interweb was cool. And it's a good album, to boot.

December

Steve Earle and the Dukes, Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator (1991)
Steve Earle live. Enough said.

The Jayhawks, Sound of Lies (1997)
This is the first record The Jayhawks put out after the departure of Mark Olson, but the leadership of Gary Louris proved itself over and over in this group of fantastic songs. Edgier but more polished than the band's previous efforts, it's a wonderful example of how the group stayed together and reshaped its sound even in the absence of one of their guiding lights. They wouldn't top this album until 2003's Rainy Day Music.

Mark Olson and the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, My Own Jo Ellen (2000)
A total value find at a CD Exchange on the north side of San Antonio. CD Exchange is a decent but mostly ratty chain of used music stores, and their shelves run mostly toward mainstream pap from a decade ago; basically, imagine your iTunes library hijacked by a baby boomer. But most stores have a small Americana section carved out toward the back, and it's there that you can find some genuinely good albums like this one.

Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend: 1951-1964 (2003)
This is a greatest hits collection that's packed with great songs, from a couple of spiritual Cooke did with the Soul Stirrers to classic tracks from the era, like "Twistin' the Night Away" and "Another Saturday Night." Good stuff.

Muddy Waters, Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live (2003)
If this double-disc reissue of Muddy Waters live doesn't grab you, I don't know what will. Powerful, blistering blues from a master.

The Drams, Jubilee Dive (2006)
I didn't pick this up until I saw the Drams open for the Old 97's, even though I was familiar with Slobberbone, a great Texas band that's since broken up and re-formed as the Drams. They put on as good a show as ever, and most of their raw energy is pretty well captured in their album.

The Welcome Wagon, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon (2008)
The producing talents of Sufjan Stevens are evident from the first note, and that's a good thing. Stevens' songs already brush up against modern religion, and this album by the husband and wife team of The Welcome Wagon is the reverential flip-side to Stevens' pop-infused explorations of Americana. Good stuff.

Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue (1998)
This is another one of those records for which I already owned a few songs — "California Stars," etc. — but not the whole album. So I picked it up, and of course the rest of it was just as wonderful.

August

Justin Townes Earle, The Good Life (2008)
As I wrote for John: Justin Townes Earle's The Good Life is everything you’d expect from a man fathered by Steve Earle and named after Townes van Zandt, which is to say, it’s a solid collection of story songs, alt-country, and old-school sounds that’s completely listenable. “The Good Life” has a Hank Williams swing to it, while “South Georgia Sugar Babe” has a bluesier stomp that would be right at home on one of the elder Earle’s records. Justin Townes Earle is determined to do right by his dad, his namesake, and his influences, and every song on the album can be pegged to one of those sources. However, the resulting record doesn’t feel fragmented; rather, it feels like a young musician — the kid is like 25 — exploring the music he loves and trying to figure out how to tie it all together.

Laura Cantrell, Humming by the Flowered Vine (2005)
A wonderful record and great gift from a friend. Giving music is hard, but my buddy Collins is the best.

Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, Begonias (2005)
I'd had this album in the back of mind as something I needed to buy for more than two years, but it didn't come into my life until a friend gave it to me. As is often the case, it arrived at what turned out to be the perfect time: The sound, lyrics, and general sensibility — a mix of brilliant alt-country and vintage style — were exactly what I needed. The album is one of shattering duets, songs that are so sweet and sad that listening to them is a bracing, stirring activity. It's in the gentle sway of "Please Break My Heart," or the lovelorn worry of "Something Less Than Something More"; it's in the heartbroken but proud swagger of "Party Time," or the resigned ultimatum of "Whatever You Want." Most of all, it's in the hard-earned wisdom of "Two Different Things," the song that opens the album and sets the honest tone for what's to follow: It's just perfect.

The Two Dollar Pistols With Tift Merritt, The Two Dollar Pistols With Tift Merritt (1999)
A solid record of country duets between Tift Merritt, who's got a voice like a damn angel, and John Howie Jr., the frontman for Two Dollar Pistols who's got a crazy swagger to his powerful baritone. The titles tell you everything you need to know: "If Only You Were Mine," "Counting the Hours," "Suppose Tonight Would Be Our Last." Yep.

Tres Chicas, Sweetwater (2004)
An alt-country group comprised of Lynn Blakely, Tonya Lamm, and Caitlin Cary. What more do you need to know?

Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger (1986)
The classic concept album that will have you singing along through the tears. Willie gets me every time with, "He cried like a baby / he screamed like a panther in the middle of the night." And "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain?" Damn.

Hank Williams III, Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' (2002)
Talent clearly skips generations. Hank III is a fantastic heir to his grandfather's heritage, fusing classic-sounding riffs and swing with a modern edge. "Broke, Lovesick & Driftin'" and "5 Shots of Whiskey" will get you where you need to go. Completely great.

September
Nothing. Broke, exhausted, stressed, and just never able to make time.

October

Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)
This is one of those albums that always existed on the periphery for me, even though I was familiar (like everyone) with "Brick" and "Song for the Dumped." But when I found a cheap copy, I happily picked it up and plugged the gap in my collection.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, Under the Covers: Vol. 1 (2006)
A strong, simple collection of well-done covers of 1960s pop and rock, and the same great sound that Sweet has been making all along. Their rendition of "Monday, Monday" is fantastic.

The fourth installment in the list of albums I acquired this year:

July

Trish Murphy, Crooked Mile (1998)
I bought it at Second Spin for $4 based solely on design and track listing. Every now and then you get lucky like that, and though this isn't a fantastic album, there are a couple decent tracks, like "Date With an Angel," that made it worth the purchase.

Gin Blossoms, Dusted (1989)
This is the band's first album, released indepently and it's great to hear the origin of their sound and listen to the raw, quicker, unpolished stuff that would later become so definitive of early-1990s pop. The early versions of "Cajun Song" (a favorite) and "Found Out About You" are awesome.

Jon Nolan, When the Summers Lasted Long (2005)
Impulse buy after hearing a couple tracks on Pandora. (And I just wanted to buy an album with my iPhone. Sorry.) Still, not too bad.

Various Artists, The Wire: ... And All the Pieces Matter (2008)
Good songs and great dialogue cuts from the best show in history. It's got all the versions of the theme song, "Way Down in the Hole," as well as the Pogues' "Body of an American," which I demand be played at my funeral while my friends drunkenly carouse in the aisles.

Hal Ketchum, Past the Point of Rescue (1991)
Nabbed it in the clearance rack for $2 solely because I've had the title track stuck in my head since I was 9 years old. (I am not lying. My mom listened to country radio when we were kids, so if it charted from Nashville between 1987-1995, I know it.) And it's still a fun song, as is "Small Town Saturday Night." It was a total flashback buy, and a good one.

Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky (1975)
Emmylou Harris went on a flawless run of records from 1975-81 or so, and this is one of those. Damn, but there's some good stuff here, like "Boulder to Birmingham" or the honky-tonk laments "If I Could Only Win Your Love" and "Bottle Let Me Down." A wonderful album.

Mark Olson and the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, Pacific Coast Rambler (1998)
A quiet but often beautiful album from one of the founding members of The Jayhawks.

Merle Haggard, Roots: Volume 1 (2001)
It's always great when classic artists return to the styles and sounds that were big back in the day. This album is simple, honest, and completely great. It's nothing but Merle doing vintage songs by Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, like "Hey Good Lookin'" and "Always Late With Your Kisses." Good stuff.

The Blind Boys of Alabama, Higher Ground (2002)
A great gospel album worth buying just for the opener, "People Get Ready."

Steve Earle and the Dukes, The Hard Way (1990)
Another decent one that I picked up just to add to my Earle collection.

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Rattlin' Bones (2008)
This is easily one of my favorites of the year. Stripped-down bluegrass and country with sweet, heartbreaking lyrics. The one-two knockout of "Once in a While" and "Sweetest Waste of Time" never fails to get me, but there's also the upbeat stomper "The House That Never Was" and several other great tracks. There's even a hidden cut at the end with Kasey and Shane's toddler warbling the chorus of "No Depression." All around wonderful.

The ongoing look at the albums I acquired this year:

May

Over the Rhine, The Trumpet Child (2007)
A gift from a friend, and some good music. Check out "If a Song Could Be President."

Counting Crows, Live in Denver (1994)
My buddy Collins burned me this live recording of one of Counting Crows' first concerts in support of August and Everything After. It's awesome and wonderful to hear them back when they were just about to break, and the concert dates itself because they perform most of the album but not "Mr. Jones." It's a great recording.

Steve Earle, Train a' Comin' (1995)
A great collection of old songs and covers. Emmylou sings backup on "River of Babylon," which will make you fall in love with her for the thousandth time, and "Nothin' Without You" is another standout.

Townes van Zandt, Rear View Mirror (1993)
Recorded live in Oklahoma in the late 1970s, this is Townes doing his thing and doing it well, just like always. Try listening to "If I Needed You" and not feeling something.

Willie Nelson, Songbird (2006)
I picked this up because it was produced by Ryan Adams and features the Cardinals backing up Willie. Plus he covers "Hallelujah" and Gram Parsons' "$1,000 Wedding." Totally worth it.

Various Artists, The Unbroken Circle: The Musical Heritage of the Carter Family (2004)
Compilations like this one always have the potential to just spectacularly suck, but there are some great performances on here, including Kris Kristofferson and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band doing a sweet version of "Gold Watch and Chain." There's also Johnny Cash, George Jones, Emmylou Harris, and Marty Stuart. If you come across this one, pick it up.

June

Weezer, Weezer (Red) (2008)
Listening to self-consciously ironic music is always a little bit mind-bending, but Weezer's latest record and third self-titled release still has some good pop tracks. I'll admit, I was sucked in by the single "Pork and Beans."

The ongoing look at the albums I acquired this year:

March

Gary Louris, Vagabonds (2008)
Produced by Chris Robinson, whose Black Crowes history gives the album a Southern vibe, this solo record from former Jayhawks member Gary Louris is good overall and occasionally great. "She Only Calls Me on Sundays" is a fantastic country-blues lament, and the album features backing vocals from Robinson, Jenny Lewis, and Susanna Hoffs. You know you want to check it out now.

Tift Merritt, Another Country (2008)
Damn near perfect. I've loved Tift Merritt since Bramble Rose, and her latest album has her continuing on a path that's part alt-country and part midcentury R&B revivalist. Her vocals are beautiful on every track, but "Another Country" is the one most likely to make you pull over while driving just to listen.

The Jayhawks, Live From the Women's Club (2002)
This is Volume 1 of a set of live albums put out by The Jayhawks, and it's fantastic. It's got some of their best songs on here, from "Save It for a Rainy Day" to "A Break in the Clouds," but it also offers a fascinating look into the songwriting process by opening with "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" and closing with a previously unreleased and earlier incarnation of the song called "Someone Will." Great band, great live recording.

April

Counting Crows, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (2008)
I'm honor-bound to keep checking in on Counting Crows; I'll never stop loving August & Everything After, and they've put out a lot of good music since then, as well. I honestly expected to like the second half of this concept album more than the first, since morning-after brooding seems more in line with Adam Duritz's m.o. than weekending bar rock. But damn if he didn't change things up and frontload the record with great tracks like "Los Angeles" and "Hanging Tree." Adam, you sneaky dog.

Gin Blossoms, Congratulations I'm Sorry (1996)
I wish I'd had this album when I was 14, and could relay some kind of story of growing up with one of the best pop acts of the 1990s. But aside from a few random tracks, I didn't start collecting Gin Blossoms albums until I was in college. And that's a shame, because this album is a prime example of solid mid-'90s pop-rock. If it hews a little too closely to the pattern set out in New Miserable Experience (right down to the country excursion at the end), it's still an honest and well-written bunch of songs, from the hit singles "Follow You Down" and "Competition Smile" to the beautiful "Not Only Numb" and the upbeat "Highwire." Just a great album all around.

Golden Smog, On Golden Smog (1992)
Golden Smog is one of those bands I like and whose albums I'm slowly collecting just to fill out that part of my catalog; I am anal, and I accept this. This EP of five covers was their first release. Good stuff.

Golden Smog, Blood on the Slacks (2007)
A decent outing from the band, but still, worth it for collecting.

Eytan Mirsky, Was It Something I Said? (2001)
Eytan Mirsky's been on my radar since I heard "(I Just Wanna Be) Your Steve McQueen" in The Tao of Steve, and this album is as wonderful and sad and poppy and just as great as I'd hoped it would be. The songs are all quick and biting and usually cover the same ground — guy loves girl, girl spurns guy, guy shrugs like he knew it was coming all along — but Mirsky is fantastic in the way he can create so many original songs out of the same kind of heartbreak. "Just Another in a Long Long Line" and "All the Things to Do When She Says No" are great, as is "Steve McQueen."

Old 97's, Blame It on Gravity (2008)
The latest release from my favorite working band. I wrote about the album when it was released, and still stand by my love for it. "Here's to the Halcyon" sums up like half of my 20s.

By the time I was old enough to start to appreciate music, my father's tastes had receded to Les Miserables, Handel's Messiah, and selected oldies. (The man loves The Chi-Lites' "Have You Seen Her?" more than you could imagine.) But one of the things he imparted to me in my youth was a healthy respect for Eric Clapton that continues to this day. As is probably wise, I ignore Clapton's regrettable adult pop excursions and stick to his blues, because that's where the man shines. I grew up listening to songs whose lyrical and sonic turmoil were years beyond my comprehension, but that doesn't mean I didn't love them. In recent years, Clapton has gotten a lot of mileage out of turning his older stuff inside out, offering slowed-down, lamenting versions of his blistering classics. And that's okay; the unspoken flip side to "Layla" is indeed one of gentle mourning. But nothing compares to the all-out electric fury of the original.

Anyway: All that to say that sometimes the originals are the best. This cut is from the only studio album put out by Derek and the Dominoes, Clapton's supergroup from the early 1970s. It's sad, and scorching, and downright perfect.

Here's "Bell Bottom Blues":

Last year, for the first time in my life, I kept track of what albums I bought throughout the year. I loved being able to look back over the previous 12 months and remember what I'd found in a used CD bin or purchased online or had given to me by friends; it's like a really immediate autobiography. Last fall, I wrote:

But music is different. An album has an effect on your growth in a different way than a movie or a TV show, mostly because it's something you listen to several times in order to let it begin to sink in. The best albums become somehow stuck in your car's CD player or become a default choice on your iPod, and you listen to them over and over again. Music is much more of a continued experience, which is why I decided this year to keep track of the albums I acquired in hopes of being able to step back and observe my musical habits and maybe come to some kind of half-assed conclusions about the whole thing in a musical-journey-of-life-minus-the-b.s. sense.

That reasoning still holds. As the year progressed, the music I acquired became fused with the experiences I was having/surviving at the time, and I know I'll have those sense memories with me forever. So without further delay, here's the first installment of this year's list:

January

San Saba County, Easy Does It (2004)
I found this band by visiting the site for Austin's Waterloo Records, and it was a great buy. I picked this up used at Half.com, since it's not available on the band's site any more, and it's got some pretty good songs.

Will Hoge, Blackbird on a Lonely Wire (2003)
Meh. A friend gave it to me to prepare me for a concert I went to with a larger group. Pretty forgettable. I haven't listened to it since.

February

Various Artists, Juno (2007)
What can I say, I fell for the hype. There are actually good tracks on here, too, but they're not the Kimya Dawson ones.

That Dog, Retreat From the Sun (1997)
I bought this on the strength of the recommendation it got in a blog post in which I called for reader suggestions for great guitar pop. Solid record.

Willie Nelson, Natural Renegade (c. 2003, but who knows)
This was a total impulse buy when I was browsing Amoeba one day. It's a compilation put out by Starbucks, but it's still a fun album and one of the many, many possible combinations of "greatest hits" you could cull from Willie Nelson's life and career. The titles speak for themselves: "On the Road Again," "Always on My Mind," "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Crazy." Come on. (It also has Willie and Merle Haggard doing "Pancho and Lefty," but I still think no one will ever top Townes van Zandt's original. No one.)

Lyle Lovett, Lyle Lovett (1986)
Some people think of Pontiac as Lyle Lovett's first record, and that's a great one ("If I Had a Boat" alone makes it a classic), but his first album was actually his eponymous debut two years earlier. It's a fantastic group of songs that typifies Lovett's ability to combine country and blues with a singer-songwriter sensibility. The brush-off "God Will" is great for the sharp turn it takes, and "If I Were the Man You Wanted" is every good thing you'd expect from the title.

Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers, At the Ryman (1992)
Amazing album. I've seen Emmylou live a couple times, and it's always wonderful, but this one was recorded back before she started to lose some of the power from her upper register. Her cover of John Fogerty's "Lodi" is a standout, and "Like Strangers" will kick your ass.

The Sis and I were chatting online when, out of nowhere, she unleashed the prompt, "Ok, so saddest songs ever." We then began to list our favorite sad songs, going back and forth until I left work for the night. I tossed out a few off the top of my head and then checked my phone for more suggestions. This is what she and I came up with on the fly:

Me
"Lost Cause," Beck
"Crying," Roy Orbison
"Are You Still in Love With Me?", Tift Merritt
"Hallelujah," Jeff Buckley
"He Stopped Loving Her Today," George Jones
"Houses on the Hill," Whiskeytown
"Martha," Tom Waits
"Winona," "Nothing Lasts," "Your Sweet Voice," "Everything Changes," "I Almost Forgot," Matthew Sweet
"Steven," Denison Witmer
"Far, Far Away," Wilco
"I Should Have Been True," The Mavericks
"Oh My Sweet Carolina," "La Cienega Just Smiled," "September," Ryan Adams
"Please Tell My Brother," Golden Smog
"Salome," Old 97's
"Travelin' Soldier," "Without You," Dixie Chicks
"The Stars Above and My Heart in Your Hands," Christopher Denny (to which I attached the caveat that it's so sad I can only listen to it every couple of months)
"Sweetest Waste of Time," Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson
"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," Hank Williams
"Broke, Lovesick, & Driftin'," Hank Williams III
"Always On My Mind," Willie Nelson
"Please Break My Heart," Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell

The Sis
"Fred Jones," Ben Folds
"Casimir Pulaski Day," Sufjan Stevens
"The Lonely 1," Wilco
"Your Long Journey," Robert Plant and Allison Krauss
"Mad World," Gary Jules
"The Blower's Daugter," "Amie," Damien Rice
"She's Got You," "Crazy," "Walkin' After Midnight," Patsy Cline
"A Ghost in This House," Allison Krauss and Union Station

And that's just the stuff we came up with while bored at our respective jobs. We didn't have iTunes libraries or stacks of CDs to check. I think we came up with some respectable titles, and I'd like to hear suggestions for more. Any genre, any era. Just hit me with the sadness and we'll come up with the best damn wrist-cutting, whisky-sipping playlist anyone's ever seen.

Fire away.

Cake is one of those bands that I like but always forget about. I'll drift away and then a few months later stumble across them in my iPod and remember they've got some fantastic songs that I still really enjoy, especially this one, which has been in my possession since the days of Napster.

Here's "Never There":

I've been toying with the idea of putting together a CD's worth of songs whose titles involve women's names ever since John posted about it a couple months back. I've got a pretty sizable iTunes playlist that's just name songs, as well as one full of songs whose titles are places; there's something about the thematic arrangements that's just appealing to me. After some winnowing, I think I've come up with a decent mix, though it's only a fraction of the available material. Also, though the anal part of me really wanted to use songs with titles that were just a name, I loosened up on the requirements to let a couple favorites on the team. Here goes:

All in a Name

1. "Annie Waits," Ben Folds — The lead track from Ben Folds' classic Rockin' the Suburbs. Because sometimes, no one really knows what it's like to be male, middle class, and white.

2. "Help Me, Suzanne," Rhett Miller — When he's not fronting the Old 97's, Rhett Miller writes some great pop songs, and this is one of the best. Sweet and simple and great.

3. "Emma J," Brendan Benson — I discovered this song, and Brendan Benson, on the Zero Effect soundtrack. This is a great song that always reminds me of being 17.

4. "Hey Julie," Fountains of Wayne — The kind of genuine, heartfelt pop that Fountains of Wayne does so well.

5. "Anna Begins," Counting Crows — Damn, but this song has been breaking my heart in one way or another for more than a decade now. If I listen to this and "Time and Time Again" back to back, I will probably wind up talking too much about regrets. Thanks for forcing me to be open, Adam Duritz.

6. "Winona," Matthew Sweet — Girlfriend has some amazing songs (though I think 100% Fun is better overall), and this is one of them. Fantastic stuff.

7. "Josephine," Teitur — I discovered Teitur a few years ago, and his Poetry & Aeroplanes is worth picking up if you're looking for some solid acoustic guitar-based pop, or if you started having midlife crises at 22. This is a beautiful song.

8. "Veronica," Elvis Costello — Come on, this one's a given.

9. "Rosalie Come and Go," Ryan Adams — Available on the limited edition bonus disc with Gold, which is well worth seeking out.

10. "Dolly," The Refreshments — The second (and final) record from The Refreshments was a more solidly produced, emotionally complicated album than their debut; basically, if Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy was falling in love, The Bottle & Fresh Horses was about watching that love come undone. This track is a howling blowoff to the girl that's done the man wrong.

11. "Miss Molly," Old 97's — A solid cover of a classic Cindy Walker song from my favorite working band. Plus you have to love old-school lyrics like "Her lips are soft as satin and they taste like gingerbread."

12. "Angelyne," The Jayhawks — About as perfect as a song can be.

13. "Amy," Ryan Adams — You need to own Heartbreaker, okay? You just need to.

14. "Cecilia," Simon & Garfunkel — Classic.

15. "Jolene," Mindy Smith — A great cover of the Dolly Parton hit, with Dolly herself singing backup.

16. "Amie," Damien Rice — This guy definitely knows how to write the sad/sweet ones.

17. "Josephine," The Wallflowers — The second "Josephine" song on the list is from The Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse, which is still a fantastic record and a prime example of mid-1990s pop-rock. Buried behind all the singles is this deep cut that's as mournful and sharp as can be. If you haven't revisited the album in a while, this is the perfect reason, and if you never picked it up in the first place, it's worth it. Trust me.

The launch of MTVMusic.com is good news, since now you can search, share, and embed music videos from the archives. The design and some of the images play on MTV's heyday, with ads featuring images of everything from Michael Jackson to the animated movers from Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing," but that's a good thing. It's like a constant reminder that, though MTV has always been about processing and selling and packaging pop, part of that used to be video-oriented. The site has the potential to be a higher-res YouTube, though it remains to be seen just how much content will be available. Still, I was heartened to find this clip just one short search away.

Here's "Jagged," by Old 97's (or you can click through for a slightly larger version):

And what the hell, here's Ryan Adams' "New York, New York":

Almost Famous was on cable the other day, which is one of those movies I am physically unable to not watch whenever I stumble across it. In addition to realizing once again that Cameron Crowe will never make a better movie (or Kate Hudson, for that matter), it reminded me how much I still enjoy Led Zeppelin. In that spirit, here are two of my favorite songs from the band:

"Going to California":

"Tangerine":

Just to get the obvious out of the way up front: Seeing Kasey Chambers live is a pretty fantastic experience.

I caught her Wednesday night at Hotel Cafe as part of a brief U.S. tour to promote Rattlin' Bones, which has been out for a little while in Chambers' native Australia but is just seeing stateside release this month. It's a fantastic record — my favorite song might be "Once in a While", but really, it's hard to pick — so I was excited to get to see her tour behind it. But more than just plug the new record, she and husband Shane Nicholson, with whom she recorded the new album, put on an amazing show that featured deep album cuts from her older stuff. Her dad, Bill Chambers, was there playing and singing backup like he's been doing for a while, and watching the three of them play together was wonderful. Their harmonies are fierce, and they opened up with an acappella version of "I Still Pray" that almost made me lose control. She did "Still Feelin' Blue" and talked about her love for Gram Parsons and Carter Family stuff; she did "Last Hard Bible," a rootsier version of "Barricades & Brickwalls" that still had Bill on electric guitar; and she did a gorgeous piano arrangement of "The Captain" that, among other things, reminded me of John's observations about an artist doing two drastically different but equally impressive versions of their own work.

I've included a partial set list below (blame the fact that I don't know all of Nicholson's songs), as well as videos where available. She's playing a few other dates soon, including an in-store show at Amoeba and a concert in Austin, so at the risk of writing something that's gonna be dated in just a little while, I strongly encourage my friends in Austin/central Texas to catch her at the Cactus Cafe in Austin on Sept. 13, which is this Saturday, if you can make it. You will enjoy every song and leave a better person.

As for me, I was just happy to see her live. Who knows how often she'll tour the States, let alone play the kind of venue in L.A. that weeds out anyone who doesn't know about this kind of music. Sometimes I think Los Angeles is the best place to live if you like really good country and alt-country; you're in a devoted minority, and you get shows as amazing as this one.

Set List:
I Still Pray (a cappella)
Last Hard Bible
On a Bad Day
Still Feelin’ Blue
Short Fuse, Part 2 (Nicholson solo)
Rattlin’ Bones
Wildflower
Monkey on a Wire
The Captain (on piano)
These Pines
Barricades & Brickwalls
Sleeping Cold
Pony
One More Year
Woe Is Mine

It's weird that LeRoi Moore is dead. I grew up listening to Dave Matthews Band, and though I didn't really enjoy 2005's Stand Up — and I long since lost track of the startling number of live albums the band put out — I still remember just absolutely loving the band in high school and into college. Dave Matthews Band was probably one of the first groups for which I learned every member's name (my dad made sure I knew the members of Cream by the time I was 14), and with that knowledge came a fashioned sense of their personalities. When I listened to their albums, I wasn't just hearing the music, I was hearing Carter Beauford blast on the drums, or Boyd Tinsley on a sweet violin solo, or Stefan Lessard's driving bass, or Dave Matthews' chunky guitar, or Moore's gorgeous horn. Every member of the band contributed to the songs, and something about the musical breadth and the lyrics that mixed generic yearning with sexual angst made the whole thing exactly what I needed when I was 16-17.

I saw the band in concert a couple times, too, though I haven't seen them live since the fall of 2000. I've moved on to other musical passions since then, both for specific bands and genres at large; I tend to hang my hat on alt-country, power pop, and a few other hooks nowadays. But I still own all my DMB albums, and I don't regret ever loving the band. I guess what I'm trying to say is that someone who helped make the music that got me through what I thought at the time were the darkest days I could experience is dead and gone, and in his absence I suddenly remember how much I used to love just driving around San Antonio with my arm dangling out the window, listening, feeling like if I just heard "The Stone" one more time, everything would make sense.

Here are some for old times' sake:

"#41":

"Recently":

"Rapunzel":

Kasey Chambers is flat-out fantastic, and I've been a little in love with her since the first notes of The Captain. Her latest album, Rattlin' Bones, is a cluster of great songs performed with her new husband, Shane Nicholson, and this is one of my favorites.

"Sweetest Waste of Time," Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson:

The audio on this one sucks something fierce, but it's too good a song to pass up.

"Second Option," Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell:

You're going to be tempted to fall in love with Rhett in this video. This is normal. Do not fight it.

"Fireflies," Rhett Miller and Rachael Yamagata:

My roommate, Glen, and I have always joked about forming an alt-country band called The Lonesome Cowboys, which would allow us to quit our jobs, travel the world, and get paid for doing as little as possible. And though all that remains a fantasy, that didn't stop us from starting our own MySpace page and uploading our first couple of hits.

The first song is "Shasta Grape," named after the soda that keeps Glen running. The other song is our cover of "Gold Digger," and once you hear it I think you'll agree we took it to an awesome place Kanye West could never have gone on his own.

Listen here, or just check out the video:

"Is She Really Going Out With Him?", Joe Jackson — I bought it just so I can wind up dating a beautiful woman, have her leave me, and then set this as the ringtone for whenever she wants to call and talk about the problems she's having with her new boyfriend.

"He'll Have to Go," Jim Reeves — This is a song that's been in my head since I was a kid, thanks to my dad. It's a sad drunk calling his girl from the bar and asking her to pretend they're still in love, and to send her new man away for just a minute so they can talk. It's great.

"Confessions, Pt. II," Usher — Hey, this time it's the guy that cheated! This song will always take me back to senior year of college, mainly/especially because a buddy threw it on a mix tape he made me for my journey to SoCal.

"Way Down in the Hole," The Blind Boys of Alabama — I bought the soundtrack to "The Wire" a couple days later at Amoeba, but I wanted this track just so I could set it as The Sis' ringtone, since she's one of the many who encouraged me to watch the show, and she's the one who bought me the first season. (And I'm not done with the show yet, so no spoilers.)

"Suds in the Bucket," Sara Evans — This is totally dumb, really slick pop-country, and I bought it because my roommate and I got hooked on the song when we realized we could watch the music video on demand via Time Warner, which we did for like three straight days. Plus she's cute.

When the Summers Lasted Long, Jon Nolan — I liked the guy when I heard him on my Old 97's Pandora channel, and the album was worth the $8 or whatever it shook out to be.

Because the sun is shining and summer is made for power pop:

"We're the Same," Matthew Sweet:

"Mexican Wine," Fountains of Wayne:

This is taken from Springsteen's concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975. He was 26 years old. Let that sink in for a minute, then enjoy:

Bruce Springsteen, "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)":

The video for the new Old 97's single, "Dance With Me," centers on Tricia Helfer and "Battlestar Galactica." I don't quite know what to make of this; or rather, I can't decide if it's a stunning coincidence or if I should be worried that my tastes and mentality can be so easily deconstructed by the media. I mean, the "BSG" fan picks food out of his beard; that one hits so close it hurts.

Anyway, the video is here. I don't know why Sci Fi hasn't provided an embed code, but the link will take you where you need to go.

UPDATE: Here's the video on YouTube:

Over at his blog, John linked to another blog whose author is collecting people's lists of their top 10 country artists. This is almost an impossible challenge; the fun (for people like me) will really be in making the lists and then talking about them. John's choices are all great, too, and I can't argue with his selections. I also think he made a good point with his ground rules about genre considerations, though I think he and I have a slightly different placement for the dividing line between pop and country. (Plus he didn't want to include Biggie, which is just biased.) Still, the list is supposed to be favorite country artists in the slightly more traditional sense — someone whose name is typically identified with the genre — so that's the direction I leaned. If anyone's interested in discussing this difference, I'm geekily all for it.

Anyway, the selection process was tough, but here are my top 10 country artists. The race was so close that the ranking is almost arbitrary:

1. Old 97's
2. Gram Parsons
3. The Jayhawks
4. Steve Earle
5. Johnny Cash
6. Emmylou Harris
7. Townes Van Zandt
8. Lyle Lovett
9. Willie Nelson
10. Dixie Chicks

To celebrate, here's Steve Earle doing "Fort Worth Blues":

Today's clips are for a pair of songs I remember from childhood.

"Seven Year Ache," Rosanne Cash:

"Many a Long and Lonesome Highway," Rodney Crowell:

My buddy Collins recently burned me an album he downloaded (in a probably less than legal manner) of a Counting Crows concert recorded during their first tour, still a couple months away from the release of August and Everything After. It's a fun performance with surprisingly good sound quality, and the set list is notable for the fact that it doesn't include "Mr. Jones" but does feature a cover of Van Morrison's "Caravan" as well as solid renditions of "Marjorie" and "Open All Night," the latter of which has yet to see official release.

But what strikes me most is how the songs from August and Everything take on a new life when hearing them across the span of 15 years. Frontman Adam Duritz is still riffing on his own melodies so much that you sympathize with the bandmates tasked with singing harmony, but he's also more in control than he would be on later live outings, probably because he wanted to give the audience as good an idea as possible of what the songs would actually sound like when the album came out. As such, he's more lyrically clear than you'd expect to hear on a live recording, and I find myself only now learning a few snatches of lines I thought I learned when I was in high school.

The best example of this is on "Time and Time Again," a plaintive song that immediately follows "Anna Begins" on the studio album, the one-two punch of which is guaranteed to unmake you. It's been years since I looked at the liner notes to read the lyrics, and over that time my brain has filled in gaps caused by Duritz's occasionally hectic phrasing. For this reason, whenever I heard the chorus of "Time and Time Again," I always thought he was singing, "Time and time again / I can't believe myself / and I can't believe nobody else," compressing the "believe" into something like "b'lieve" in his emotional frenzy. And that word works; it gives the song an air of disillusionment and goes nicely with the sense of loss and possible betrayal seen in the rest of the lyrics. (The guy definitely has a theme.) But that's not at all right. He's actually singing, "Time and time again / I can't please myself / And I can't please nobody else." And this makes the song whole worlds sadder. He's no longer singing about losing someone and feeling adrift; he's taking the burden on himself, realizing with a sinking feeling that he's partly or completely to blame for what's happened. He can't make himself happy, or anyone else, but he still howls, "When are you coming home, sweet angel?" I thought I knew the song, and I almost did. But this one's better.

• Blame It on Gravity, the latest Old 97's album, is more than just another fantastic record: It's an energetic, emotionally mature fusion of everything they've ever done, from country to rock to pop, a gorgeous tapestry held together by the thread of frontman Rhett Miller's yearning lyrics.

• The 97's have always been a country band at heart, and that's what they remain, but they've also never been content to be "just" a country band, which is why they've so successfully spread their reach into rock and pop. Their debut, 1994's Hitchhike to Rhome, was a raw, deeply country affair, evidenced by everything from the heartbroken shuffle of "Dancing With Tears" to the cover of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" and the rendition of Cindy Walker's "Miss Molly." But 1997's Too Far to Care was a crunchy country-rock record, bookended by "Timebomb" and "Four Leaf Clover." The band moved on to poppier sounds with Fight Songs (1999) and Satellite Rides (2001), letting the honky-tonk of "Crash on the Barrelhead" butt against the sunnier "Nineteen," or the bar blast of "Am I Too Late" ride comfortably next to the pop brilliance of "Rollerskate Skinny."

• All of which is to say that the 97's have always had that Texas country-rock sound as the core on which they build their pop and rock; it's the hub in the center of their wheel.

• But 2004's Drag It Up was a change in the band's sound, or more accurately, a change in the way they balanced their country and pop loyalties. Lead guitarist Ken Bethea — who contributed lead vocals for the first time on that album's "Coahuila" — said on the band's site that Too Far to Care was "made for big cars and air guitars," while Drag It Up was "better served by thinking and driving on Sunday afternoons in the middle of nowhere." And listening to the album, you get the feel that's something the band did a lot of when they were cooking it up. It wasn't that they decided to move away from Texas country or snappy pop; they simply said, "Why not do both?" The result was a blending of their previous sounds, something at once rawer and more advanced, opening with the more (for them) traditional beat of "Won't Be Home" but sliding through the minor howl of "Smokers" and the lonesome two-step of "Blinding Sheets of Rain" on its way to the ballad "Adelaide" and the poignant "No Mother." It was as if the band was saying: We will continue to do what we've always done, but we're going to do it differently.

• That's what makes Blame It on Gravity so wonderful. It's an energetic blend of the band's dual sounds, and the twin hearts of country and pop beat through every song. The ballad "Color of a Lonely Heart is Blue" has the kind of teardrops-in-the-sawdust vibe the band has been putting out since its early days, while "Here's to the Halcyon" is a rollicking take on the up-tempo boom-chicka-boom that Old 97's do like no one else. But there's also "This Beautiful Thing" and "Ride," poppier rock numbers that would be at home on Satellite Rides or one of frontman Rhett Miller's solo efforts. There's even "She Loves the Sunset," a tropical tune so startlingly different for the band but so perfectly done — the grace note Miller pops into the line "The sky is falling / but I fell long ago" gets me every time — that it's not a wayward experiment but an example of the genre-pushing fun the band likes to have.

• Even more, Blame It on Gravity is the most geographically expansive record the band's ever made. Miller's lyrics have always expressed a kind of heartbroken wanderlust, whether it's being stranded in New York while your girl is back home ("Niteclub," "Broadway") or journeying into the unknown West ("Streets of Where I'm From," "W. Tx. Teardrops"). But the new album name-checks everything from the Tappan Zee to a host of Los Angeles landmarks. In fact, it's L.A. that receives the most detailed treatment. On "Ride," Miller sings, "There is a white hot sun and a big blue sky / from the 101 to the 405." It's as if the lyrics are finally catching up to the sonic displacement that happens when the band straddles the line between Texas country and pop that seems to come right out of the SoCal sunshine.

• The final track, "The One," is a kind of summation of everything the band has worked through. It's a peppy number in which Miller says he and the other guys are going to knock off a bank and drive off into the sunset, and the lyrics call out the rest of the band by name. When they finally take the money and run, Miller sings, "What's the rush, let's take the 1." Given the other references to Los Angeles highways, as well as the article in front of the highway number, it's likely that Miller's referring to the PCH, and the song's grinning demeanor and attitude of "Let's just amble up the highway" — not to mention Miller's ease about traffic congestion — would certainly fit the road. But when I hear the song, I can't help but think that Miller's also talking about Mopac. Instead of (literally) choosing one route or the other, the band has it both ways, marrying their influences and setting out on a path at once familiar and uncharted.

I don't know why I still number these things, since I post them so infrequently. Anyway, today's clip features a very young Bonnie Raitt covering John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery." Enjoy:

It's been a while since I posted a track list for a mix CD here. I haven't put together a new one in a while, and have been listening to either new (to me) music or revisiting old compilations I made in college. It's in the spirit of excavating the past that I present a mix album made by my friend when he was in either 8th or 9th grade. He made a mix known as his Awesome Tape, back when compilations required recording from CD to tape in real time or doing the same with the radio, sitting next to it with your finger on the Record or Stop button, waiting for the song to come along. He unearthed the tape when we lived together our senior year of college, and I took it upon myself to assemble the track list and burn it to a CD so we could continue to enjoy the mix without suffering the eventual lag and breakdown unavoidable with cassettes. The only change to the CD version of the mix is the omission of an Eagles song from their live reunion album, which though reflective of my friend's (and my) tastes at the time nevertheless felt a little out of place with the rest of the lineup. But the remainder is authentic, and I think it stands as a solid mix of mid-1990s alternative rock. Without further ado, here it is: Clay's Awesome TapeCD. Don't fight the nostalgia.

Clay's Awesome CD
1. "Sister," The Nixons — A good starter track. I used to think it was just a nice little love song, but it's actually about singer Zac Maloy's sister, which is kinda creepy. An old roommate of mine (not the guy who made this CD) would shush me whenever we heard this track or STP's "Interstate Love Song."

2. "Skin and Bones," The Hazies — Really good alternative rock.

3. "Til I Hear It From You," Gin Blossoms — One of the band's better-known tunes, and one that didn't appear on one of their albums but rather the soundtrack to Empire Records, itself a flawed but awesome snapshot of the era. I'm a total sucker for good 1990s pop, and this song — this band — are right up there.

4. "Hey Jealousy," Gin Blossoms — A classic. I still listen to this album regularly.

5. "Found Out About You," Gin Blossoms — Another amazing song, and plenty dark.

6. "Mr. Jones," Counting Crows — The quality of August and Everything After is beyond dispute.

7. "Round Here," Counting Crows — See No. 6.

8. "Under the Bridge," Red Hot Chili Peppers — This was the last song (to me) that the Chili Peppers put out before slipping into a weird abyss of unpopularity for a few years in the middle of the decade.

9. "Far Behind," Candlebox

10. "Red Headed Stepchild," Golden Smog — Another great example of the cross-breeding between country, rock, and pop. Band members from this edition included guys from Soul Asylum, The Jayhawks, and Wilco.

11. "Runaway Train," Soul Asylum

12. "With or Without You," U2

13. "One," U2

14. "Shame," Matchbox 20 — Liking Matchbox 20 now falls somewhere below kicking kittens on the social acceptability scale, but that's just because they only put out one good album. Plus it came out when I was like 14, and really, at that age you're not listening with your head. Whatever: This is still a good song.

15. "Hang," Matchbox 20

16. "Molly (Sixteen Candles)," Sponge

17. "Name," Goo Goo Dolls

18. "Competition Smile," Gin Blossoms

And because there was no iTunes link for the Hazies tune:

Total albums purchased/acquired in 2007: 54
Of those, albums released since 2000: 37
Albums from before 2000: 17

I've never before bothered to keep track of the albums I bought over the course of a year, but I feel certain that I've never acquired 54 in a year. Additionally, my album collection went through a bit of a purging process when I was in college, thanks to an otherwise terrible books/music outlet that offered an economically unsound (for them) plan that let you swap in four used CDs and get a brand new one, of any price, in exchange. Granted, the trade-ins had to pass some kind of weird physical examination that consisted mainly of a surface check for scratches mixed with whatever mood the cashier was in that day — and given that these cashiers lived in and worked in Abilene and were probably upset at their station in life, their moods were invariably negative — but still, it allowed me to slough off some of my catalogue's filler in exchange for some albums I love and will never sell.

I guess what I'm saying is that I went into 2007 with a pretty trim collection, relatively speaking, and I valued all of my albums. With the 54 albums I picked up last year, my collection stands at around 275 albums, meaning that in 2007 I acquired 19.6% of my total library. That's kind of ridiculous, when you think about it. I didn't set out to buy more albums last year simply because I was keeping track of the purchases, but I do think the experiment made me more willing than before to buy music. And I've never really been too reluctant to do that, so you can see why it all added up to me buying fully one-fifth of my total collection just last year.

I also think it's interesting that 37 of the albums I bought last year, or nearly 69%, were from 2000 or later. I don't buy that much of-the-moment music, and usually only buy a new release if it's from an artist I follow, like Ryan Adams or Wilco. However, it turns out that even if my purchases aren't all or even mostly from this year, a majority of them are fairly modern, falling in the last seven years or so. Am I somehow more drawn to modern releases despite loving certain bands or performers from the 1950s, '60s, '70s, etc? Or were my current-skewing purchases nothing more than an externalization of the kind of vague window in which we all live, dragging the past decade or so behind us like a gunnysack to hold the pop culture detritus we keep collecting?

I don't know. But I do know that the sheer amount of music released last (and every) year, combined with the atemporal and personal-discovery nature of music, means that my list of the top albums of the year almost never looks like the ones compiled by the aging critics at Rolling Stone or the hip douchebags over at Pitchfork. My best albums of the year were quite literally my best albums of the year, the ones I bought and listened to and couldn't take out of my car stereo without just one more listen. Music is personal like that, and this was what last year was for me. I can't even really make a top 10 list or anything; all I could hope to do would be to trim 10 disappointments and leave the 40 good albums I came up with. But since I can't do that, here's a selection of tracks from my year in music.

"Firecracker," Ryan Adams (I already owned most of the tracks, but not the entire album.):

"Arms of a Woman," Amos Lee:

"Wagon Wheel," Old Crow Medicine Show:

The Lemonheads, "Into Your Arms":

"Bad Reputation," Freedy Johnston:

"God's Gonna Cut You Down," Johnny Cash:

"What a Crying Shame," The Mavericks:

Finally, a song I love from one of absolute favorite albums of the year, performed by one of my favorite bands of all time, whom I actually saw in concert again over Christmas:

"504," by Old 97's:

October 2007

Original Soundtrack, Into the Wild (2007)
I heard the soundtrack before I saw the movie, which was unusual but pleasant. Eddie Vedder has some great songs on this album, as well as couple decent protest anthems, but my favorite is probably "Rise Up." It's just Vedder and a mandolin, and it's amazing.

Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions (2006)
Bruce Springsteen no longer has the vocal range to pull off some of these songs, but the fun of the album is that he doesn't seem to care. Every song feels like a group of musicians sitting around and banging out covers of old-time songs, which is exactly what's happening. Springsteen can't hit the high notes on the opening "Old Dan Tucker" without sounding like he's screeching more than a little, but that's the whole point. Everything on the album is fast and loose, and it's one of the most enjoyable records Springsteen has ever made.

Allison Moorer, The Hardest Part (2000)
Good alt-country that flirts with mainstream. Plus she's married to Steve Earle, so I kind of had to check her out on general principle.

Christopher Denny, Age Old Hunger (2007)
This is easily one of my favorite albums of this year, and one of the best discoveries I've made in a while. I already wrote about it for John's blog, but if you're too lazy to click over, I'll say it again: Go buy it.

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Follow the Lights (2007)
Never let it be said that Ryan Adams is content to rest on his laurels; this EP dropped just a couple months after the release of Easy Tiger.

Elvis Costello, The Delivery Man (2004)
I picked this up on a whim, and I've enjoyed it, but I always have to spend time with Elvis Costello albums. This one's good, but I can't quite commit to it yet.

November 2007
Nothing. Broke.

December 2007

Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend (1991)
Where has this album been all my life? Oh right, it came out when I was 9. This is the kind of great guitar pop I can't seem to get enough of, even if Sweet has the habit of occasionally getting kinda squirrely with the lead guitar and ignoring the melody. Still, "I've Been Waiting," "Girlfriend," "Winona," "Your Sweet Voice," "Nothing Lasts"; these are amazing songs.

Amos Lee, Amos Lee (2005)
I picked this up because Lee blew me away with his voice when I saw him at the Aimee Mann Christmas show, so I was surprised when most of the tracks here were subdued. But it's a great acoustic soul album, especially "Arms of a Woman."

Old Crow Medicine Show, O.C.M.S. (2004)
I could listen to "Wagon Wheel" over and over and over again. And I have.

Josh Ritter, The Animal Years (2006)
I loved Hello Starling when I found it, and it's interesting to see how The Animal Years takes Ritter's singer-songwriter aesthetic, mixes in some brash Americana leanings, and ups the ante on the impressionistic lyrics. Not that the songs on Hello Starling are completely literal; it's that they spoke in a more easily accessible metaphor, with bits like "Here I am standing at your window again / Waiting for you to say 'Go away' or 'Come in' / I'm your locked door's worst knocker, I'm your curtain's best friend / I'm trying hard to love you but you don't make it easy babe," or the line from "Kathleen" that says, "Every heart is a pack tangled up in knots someone else tied." But on The Animal Years, Ritter sings things like, "Out on the desert now and feeling lost / The bonnet wears a wire albatross / Monster ballads and the stations of the cross / Sighing just a little bit." The songs here take a little more work, and the musicianship and production aren't what you'd expect, but that's part of what makes it a great album.

Matthew Sweet, 100% Fun (1995)
Also good. There's not much I can add. I'm a sucker for great pop, and Sweet makes just that.

The Lemonheads, Come On Feel the Lemonheads (1993)
What can I say, I'm on a 1990s kick. If you made a pop record between 1992 and 1997, I'll listen to it.

Ryan Adams, The Suicide Handbook (c. 2001)
The aborted tracks and rough cuts of what would eventually be trimmed down to make Gold — a pretty phenomenal album — this is a great look at early versions of songs I already know and love. The acoustic version of "Firecracker" is amazing.

Gram Parsons with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (2007)
It's always a pleasure when more Gram Parsons music gets released, and this is a great double-album of Burrito Brothers concerts that show's just how archetypal and influential Parsons was on rock and country music of his era. Every track is worth hearing, but the rough demos of "$1,000 Wedding" and "When Will I Be Loved," with the harmonies on the Everly Brothers cover still shaky and half-improvised, are downright beautiful.

I'm looking for really good guitar pop from the 1990s, and I'm welcoming all suggestions. Perhaps it's because some of it was the soundtrack to my early years of high school — a period notable only for the terrors puberty wreaked on me and the pop music that accompanied those changes. Or it could be a longing for a time when a different kind of music could make the charts. Or maybe it's because I'm at that quarterlife crisis stage where I'm digging through the past we all thought we put down. Whatever it is, I'm looking for as many good guitar-based pop-rock artists or bands that I can find.

Here's a rough idea:
Gin Blossoms
Matthew Sweet
Freedy Johnston
Eytan Mirsky
Counting Crows
Fastball
Fountains of Wayne
The Format
Rhett Miller's solo work
"Nineteen," "Oppenheimer," and anything from Satellite Rides by Old 97's
The Refreshments
Weezer's first album
The pop(ish) stuff from Wilco's Being There, e.g., "Monday"

Does that make sense? I'm looking for any good alternative/pop-rock/pop/rock band you want to throw my way. The bands and artists I've mentioned aren't exhaustive, but more of a general idea of where I want to go. Basically, if you can conceivably imagine Liv Tyler and Rory Cochrane dancing to it on a rooftop, I want to hear it. Nothing is too dumb or cheesy to mention; believe me, you can't embarrass the guy who used to drive around town at 16 while earnestly singing along to every word of Cracked Rear View. Also, I'd like to keep the list somewhat restricted to groups or performers who started their careers or were most prominent during the 1990s. For nostalgia's sake. Okay: Go.

July 2007

Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger (2007)
I had what could be called tempered hopes for this album, given the fact that Ryan Adams has in recent years put out some great records (Jacksonville City Nights), some really good ones (Cold Roses), and some terrible ones (29). But I was happy to hear Adams fusing the best of his current sounds on Easy Tiger, which ranges from the acid-country-rock of Cold Roses to rootsier country and pop-rock that almost sounds like lost tracks from Gold. There are some great songs here, and the album is more listenable than some of his other work; "Goodnight Rose" sets the perfect mood for country-tinged rock, and "Halloweenhead" is the kind of crunchier rock Adams hasn't really succeeded at until now.

Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (2007)
Man, did I miss Wilco. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for Jeff Tweedy's need to get really experimental to the point where only really self-involved college students could dig their music. (Several minutes of feedback and silence does not a smart song make, and you're more than welcome to disagree, but really, I don't give a shit.) But apparently even Tweedy didn't like the direction the band was taking, saying, "I got really nervous about the technology on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. If you need a certain amp or pedal to make a song what it is, it isn't a song." And this album is clearly the manifestation of that stripped-down, direct approach that had gotten away from the band. Sky Blue Sky is like a breath of fresh air, a mix of pop and blues and soul and country that's somehow soothing and exciting and hopeful all at once. From the gentle opening of "Either Way" to the funk of "Hate It Here" to the peace of "On and On and On," this is the album Wilco needed to make if they wanted to stay alive.

Patton Oswalt, Werewolves & Lollipops (2007)
I watch a lot of stand-up comedy — I'm probably the only guy you know who still gets pissed when you mention how Dat Phan won "Last Comic Standing," or who quotes Slovin & Allen to confused coworkers — but I don't buy many comedy albums. But Patton Oswalt is one of my favorite comedians. I loved Feelin' Kinda Patton, and his latest is just as fantastic. It's fast-paced, dirty, and filled with weird little free-associative riffs born of a lifetime of being the hyperliterate nerd with strong opinions about George Lucas. (Okay, so I relate to the guy.) Oswalt's comedy is more confessional than observational; rather than making tired jokes about airports or cabs or whatever, he tells stories about his own life and beliefs but makes them widely relatable. Werewolves & Lollipops is hilarious and weird and wonderful, and I laugh every time I hear it.

August 2007

Two Dollar Pistols, Hands Up! (2004)
The cover art snagged my eye (don't judge me), and I hoped that the vintage photo would mean an old-school sound. Thankfully, it did. Two Dollar Pistols are churning out some vintage country, ranging from Western swing to drinking songs to classic-sounding ballads like "Where Would We Be Without Goodbye." I love finding albums like this in the clearance bin and taking a chance on them; when you find a winner, like I did here, it feels like you're the only person in the world who's ever heard the album. It becomes yours in a way that other albums never can.

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Souls' Chapel (2005)
Marty Stuart is great at fusing bluegrass, country, and soul, and even if you don't subscribe to any particular religious creed, this album still sounds great.

Yonder Mountain String Band, Yonder Mountain String Band (2006)
Decent newgrass.

September 2007

The Beatles, With the Beatles (1963)
It's stunning to think that The Beatles only put out 12 studios albums as a group. Their second album has some amazing classic pop, including "It Won't Be Long" and "All My Loving," as well as some great covers of R&B tunes like "Please Mister Postman" and "You Really Got a Hold On Me." It's so easy after all this time and hype to just write them off, but listening to this album reminds you of how good they really were.

The Infamous Stringdusters, Fork in the Road (2007)
A solid bluegrass album. What can I say, I like the genre.

June Carter Cash, Wildwood Flower (2003)
This is the wonderful flip side to Johnny Cash's American Recordings. June Carter Cash's final album is wonderful, a simple and genuine recording that looks back on her life and career with some great songs and enjoyable performances. It's a little shocking to her hear voice, which was never powerful to begin with, sounding almost paper-thin on some of the tracks, but it works well with Johnny's watery baritone. Daughter Carlene Carter provides some backing vocals, and even Marty Stuart plays on a couple of the tracks. The American Recordings received more press, but this album is just as important.

A continuing look at the albums I bought this year.

May 2007

Fountains of Wayne, Traffic and Weather (2007)
I've been listening to Fountains of Wayne since I was 14 or 15; I have fond memories of singing along with "Leave the Biker" while staying up late at a friend's house and playing Quake III until unholy hours of the morning. Traffic and Weather isn't the overall success of the band's previous release, Welcome Interstate Managers; that album was a more cohesive work, whereas this one is a collection of great songs mixed with what can only be called filler. That said, it's still a solid pop-rock album with some smart songwriting, wonderful characters, and damn catchy tunes. There's even the requisite country excursion ("Fire in the Canyon") amid the songs about lonely people living lonely lives in search of someone to love (as in the pretty obviously titled "Someone to Love").

Freedy Johnston, This Perfect World (1994)
It's weird how the music of your youth — and I mean real youth, not the arrested emotional development that's a hallmark of your 20s — somehow passes you by. For instance, everybody my age discovered bands from the 1980s (or '70s, or '60s) at a certain point, but the stuff that was charting when we were kids is easier to miss, perhaps because it existed as a periphery to our childhoods and we just never thought it worth the attention. This is part of the reason I really love early- to mid-'90s pop, and am always looking for more. (Eytan Mirsky, we barely knew ye.) This album came out the year I turned 12, but I didn't even hear of Freedy Johnston until I graduated from college and a friend made me a mix tape for my cross-country trek that included Johnston's "Bad Reputation" from This Perfect World. I fell in love with the song. The album is equally fine, a collection of rootsy pop so pure you can close your eyes and see the flannel and bad haircuts. It's a great album for anyone who lived through the era but still managed to miss it.

Mindy Smith, One Moment More (2004)
Smith's debut album features some really good alt-country, leading off with the howling "Come to Jesus" and culminating in a pretty fantastic cover of "Jolene" that features Dolly Parton on backup vocals. It's a deliberately paced album, but a good one.

June 2007

Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man (2000)
You really can't go wrong with any of Cash's American Recordings series. "I'm Leaving Now" is a personal favorite.

Johnny Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways (2006)
Again, another great album. "God's Gonna Cut You Down" is probably the catchiest song about damnation you'll hear outside of a revival meeting.

The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America (2006)
Literate bar rock. Who knew? Another solid find. I really don't know what else to add, which I know makes me look lazy or ignorant or you name it, but I don't care. The Hold Steady produce honest, yearning rock from the heart.

Elvis Costello, Spike (1989)
I'll be honest, I bought this because (a) it was $2.99 and (b) it has "Veronica." Pretty much all I needed.

Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, All the Gold in California: The Best of the Gatlins (1996)
This is probably the greatest impulse buy I've ever made. I was with my sister at Amoeba when I spotted this greatest hits collection of the band whose tapes my mother used to play when my sister and I were very little; I've had "She Used to Be Somebody's Baby" in my head since at least age 7. The Gatlin Brothers put out some awesomely cheesy country in the 1980s, and this album has a bunch of their hits, the kind of songs I can't objectively classify as "good" but that still hold a weird little place in my heart. I'm nostalgic. The disc was only a few bucks, and paid for itself with the joy my sister and I felt while belting out "Broken Lady" on the way home from the store.

Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose (2004)
Jack White, taking a break from creeping everyone out with his own band(s), stepped up to produce Van Lear Rose and write one of its tracks. It's an interesting blend of a more experimental alt-country on the White-penned "Portland, Oregon" and Lynn's more straightforward style on the more classic-sounding numbers like the title track and "Miss Being Mrs." (which is a fantastic title). Definitely worth it.

Bruce Springsteen, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973)
What can I say, I like Bruce Springsteen. And I don't like him with some kind of pseudo-hip ironic detachment, nor as some kind of relic from a bygone era of performers. I really like him. And if I didn't take to this album as quickly as I did Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., it's still a great record from one of the biggest artists of the last 50 years. The packed lyrics and sense of an epic life being frustrated by circumstance wouldn't really explode out of the gate until Born to Run, but it's still amazing to think that Springsteen was only 24 years old when E Street Shuffle came out. Let that sink in.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, Stones in the Road (1994)
I remember Mary Chapin Carpenter charting early in the 1990s with the album before this one, Come On Come On, which produced something like half a dozen singles, including her cover of Lucinda Williams' "Passionate Kisses." Stones in the Road didn't have as many hits, but it's still got some good songwriting for its time, including the album opener, "Why Walk When You Can Fly."

Lyle Lovett, Joshua Judges Ruth (1992)
The title pretty clearly hints at both the biblical and emotional underpinnings of the album, and Lovett again performs some amazing songs, including "Church" and "I've Been to Memphis." If you're not listening to Lyle Lovett, you could pick worse places to start.

I didn't even know about Aimee Mann's 2nd Annual Christmas Show until a couple weeks ago. I like Mann plenty, having first been exposed to her (as might be the case for some) on the Magnolia soundtrack. I didn't know quite what to expect from her Christmas show at the El Rey, but I wasn't prepared for such a fun show. That's what the concert was more than anything: A chance for Mann and her fellow musicians and performers to have fun doing a few seasonal numbers. The concert played largely like a variety show, with several special guests (more than are mentioned here) popping in for a number or two before disappearing offstage again. Mann and Paul F. Tompkins, a comedian who's way too smart for his talking-head role on "Best Week Ever," served as co-emcees for the evening, and Tompkins even performed a brief set at one point. They even traded banter and performed duets. The whole thing was so damn charming, you know? The evening opened with the lights slowly revealing the Christmas trees, nutcrackers, and simple lights adorning the stage, while Mann performed "Jacob Marley's Chain":

Not long after, Mann stepped to the mic and introduced Jackson Browne, at which point the crowd erupted in that kind of incredulous applause where they can't quite believe what's happening. And sure enough, Browne sauntered onstage looking as timeless as ever, his lanky hair swaying back and forth like it has been since "The Pretender." Browne then made his way to the keyboard and performed "The Rebel Jesus" and a cover of Steve Earle's "Jerusalem." The video is godwaful for the first half, but bear with it, or just close your eyes:

But Mann and Tompkins kept the energy up and the mood light with some of their interactions, especially "Baby, It's Cold Outside":

Probably the most vocally impressive guest was Amos Lee, who came out to sturdy applause, quietly took his place at the mic, and proceeded to blow the doors off with a cover of John Prine's "Christmas in Prison":

Grant-Lee Phillips was also there working his 12-string, and in addition to a great version of The Pretenders' "2000 Miles," he also teamed with Mann for a fantastic version of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," which made me smile like a kid the whole time:

Mann also dipped into her non-seasonal catalog with "Save Me." This video can't come close to how great it was to stand there and hear her sing this in a venue as intimate as the El Rey. When it was done, in that moment of silence when the cheers die down and the artist is getting ready for their next number, a guy behind me shouted, "You should've won the Oscar!" The applause erupted again, and Mann smiled before making a joke about how Phil Collins was probably very deserving. (The fact that Collins won an Oscar for a song from Disney's Tarzan while Mann's work in P.T. Anderson's pretty damn amazing Magnolia went unrecognized is just another indictment of the Academy.) Anyway, this is "Save Me":

The show ended with everyone onstage for an encore of one song, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," first recorded by Darlene Love on 1963's A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector and recorded by a hundred others since. The horn section came back out, all the evening's musicians returned to the stage, and everyone blasted away at a Christmas classic with gleeful unselfconsciousness. The show was rousing; there's no other way to put it. It was fun and funny and uplifting in the way the best concerts always are. A month ago, I didn't even know Mann did a Christmas show, and now I'm already looking forward to next year:

In which I chronicle the albums that came into my life this year.

March 2007

The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin/Burrito Deluxe (1969/1970)
It's oddly appropriate that the only (affordable) versions of these albums I came across at Amoeba were combined onto one disc, since Gram Parsons' G.P. and Grievous Angel are also collated onto one CD in the States. The Gilded Palace of Sin/Burrito Deluxe is a great blend of country and rock, though it leans more toward the 1960s sound than the broader "Cosmic American" sound Parsons would unleash on his solo efforts. "Christine's Tune" and "Sin City" are classics, as is the cover of the Stones' "Wild Horses."

Lucinda Williams, West (2007)
I'm stuck on this one because I like Lucinda Williams but also know that it's hard for me to get involved with her music, though I usually don't regret it. Still, this is a good album, and one of her more listenable (for me) in a while. You really can't go wrong with Lost Highway.

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Live at the Ryman (2005)
Marty Stuart churned out his fair share of bad mainstream country hits a few years ago, but as a bluegrass artist, he's amazing. Live at the Ryman is an easygoing, fast-paced bluegrass album that features stunning instrumentation and old-time chats with the audience between numbers. The harmonies on "Homesick" will make you ache.

The Greencards, Weather and Water (2005)
I picked up this album after reading about it somewhere, probably in Paste. Solid, low-key newgrass for those who can't quite handle the rowdiness of Nickel Creek. It's a good background album.

The Mavericks, What a Crying Shame (1994)
This is just fantastic. Everything about the album is so howlingly 1994, from the ripped knees of the bandmembers' jeans in the photo to the strutting sound of mainstream country radio from the early part of the 1990s. But Raul Malo's phenomenal vocal range and the band's Latin influences keep the music fresh, and the album includes everything from a great deep-catalog Bruce Springsteen cover ("All That Heaven Will Allow") to the title track and some truly heartbroken ballads. I couldn't stop listening to this one for two weeks after I got it.

April 2007

Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, No More Beautiful World (2007)
This is a genuinely terrible album, and I haven't even made it all the way through. I tried three times to listen to it and only made it to track 3, which maybe means I could have made it to track 9 if I'd really buckled down. Roger Clyne made some really good rock-pop with The Refreshments, and as the frontman of his new band, he's made some great alt-country and rock-tinged music. But this atrocious record is Clyne's full-throated and idiotic announcement of his intention to turn himself into some kind of latter-day Jimmy Buffett, with songs about nothing more than sombreros and margaritas and every other stupid beach-based cliche you could want. I bought this album out of loyalty to Clyne, and though something in me — the anal-retentive collector, I guess — can't quite be made to part with it, I know I'll probably never listen to the album again. I'd planned on catching Clyne when he came through L.A. earlier this year, but after buying this album, I skipped the concert.

The Fratellis, Costello Music (2006)
Really good, vaguely punkish pop-rock that's wormed its way into dozens of movie trailers and more than a few film appearances. It's impossible not to sing along with it; "Whistle for the Choir" will get stuck in your head in a great way.

Peter Bjorn and John, Writer's Block (2006)
I was told I would be evicted from L.A. if I didn't buy this album. (Kidding [kind of].) I heard the lead single, "Young Folks," on KROQ a couple times and checked out the album, and really dug it. Just great, simple, earnest indie pop.

The Duhks, Migrations (2006)
Decent background bluegrassish stuff. Not too bad, but nothing to write home about.

Lyle Lovett, Pontiac (1988)
This is a full-on classic, featuring Lovett's distinctive mix of country, blues, and jazz; it's two parts Texas to one part Lousiana, and it works every time. The album opener, "If I Had a Boat," sets the tone with its simple melody and lyrics that balance hope and heartache, and "L.A. County" is downright haunting.

The International Submarine Band, Safe at Home (1968)
The only full-length album the band would ever release is worth picking up for anyone interested in the early days of country-rock, and especially for anyone looking to fill out their Gram Parsons collection. The album features a couple of Parsons' originals, including "Luxury Liner," as well as some interesting Cash covers with "I Still Miss Someone" and a medley that uses "Folsom Prison Blues." Incidentally, it was ISB producer Lee Hazlewood who prevented Parsons' vocals from appearing on The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo the same year; Parsons vocal tracks on the Byrds classic have only recently seen release. When Hazlewood died earlier this year, I kept trying to insert this injustice into his obit, but it didn't happen.

Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No.…
Dick: Not alphabetical....
Rob: Nope....
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.
—High Fidelity

The pleasing thing about lists is they allow you to see just how you measure up, to look at where you've been, and to show you where you want to go. I started putting together a list of every movie I've ever seen when I was a senior in college, and after a few weeks of combing the IMDb databases and adding titles whenever they occurred to me, it began to take shape and become as complete as I could make it. I update it a couple times a week, and while I concede there may be a title or two I've simply forgotten that I've seen, it's mostly accurate. The movie list is organized by title, not by when I happened to first see the movie, but I can usually make a good stab at when I saw a particular movie; for many films, I can remember who I was with when I saw them, and where we were.

But music is different. An album has an effect on your growth in a different way than a movie or a TV show, mostly because it's something you listen to several times in order to let it begin to sink in. The best albums become somehow stuck in your car's CD player or become a default choice on your iPod, and you listen to them over and over again. Music is much more of a continued experience, which is why I decided this year to keep track of the albums I acquired in hopes of being able to step back and observe my musical habits and maybe come to some kind of half-assed conclusions about the whole thing in a musical-journey-of-life-minus-the-b.s. sense. (I say "acquired" because I bought almost every album on here, but a couple were gifts from friends or coworkers. They're definitely not illegally burned copies. I swear.)

I figure this will take a few installments, so the first one will deal with albums I bought in the first two months of the year; I didn't have the idea until February or so, meaning I had to work from memory for the first few discs on the list. But later months are accurate.

Here we go.

January-February 2007

Old 97's, Hitchhike to Rhome (1994)
This was a fantastic buy. I couldn't stop listening to it when I got it; removing it from my car's CD player seemed impossible, an idea that made no sense. Living in L.A., I spend a fair amount of time on the road, and most of that timeis spent trying not to die, and albums like this one always make those trips more enjoyable. Hitchhike to Rhome is raw, and young, and so damn earnest and swaggering that I fell under every note's spell. The cover of "Mama Tried" is fantastic, as are "If My Heart Was a Car," "Stoned," and the fantastic version of "Doreen," which would resurface on the band's Wreck Your Life. I'd loved the Old 97s before this, but Hitchhike to Rhome cemented them as an all-time favorite.

Old 97's, Early Tracks (2000)
I bought this because I'm a bit of a completist when it comes to certain bands, and I wanted to own it. It's a decent album: It's got a different version of "W-I-F-E," as well a nice cover of Merle Haggard's "Harold's Super Service." But on the whole, it's only really listening to if you already know the Old 97s. There's nothing here to get excited about, just stuff to enjoy a few times.

Steve Earle, I Feel Alright (1996)
Holy hell, did this click with me from the very first song. I already owned a couple of Earle's albums before I got this one — Guitar Town, The Mountain, El Corazon — but this one came on hard and fast and blew me away. The dirt and pain are so real here, and Earle churns out some amazing songs. The eerie obsession of "More Than I Can Do," the breezily lamenting "Now She's Gone," the beautiful "Valentine's Day," and the solid duet with Lucinda Williams, "You're Still Standin' There," are all amazing. The album exists at the nexus of blues and country and rock and the singer-songwriter ethos, and it's always great to hear.

Emmylou Harris, Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town (1978)
Emmylou Harris was on an unholy creative tear in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and her string of albums from that period remain the best she's ever put out, from Elite Hotel to Roses in the Snow. Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town is a typical entry from this era for her — a solid collection of covers with some duets and assists from established artists — but it's still worth getting just to hear Harris' voice at the peak of its power. Trivia: The album cover was painted by Susanna Clark, husband of Guy Clark, who also painted the cover of Guy's Old No. 1. Impress your friends.

Kim Richey, The Collection (2004)
I won't lie: My first exposure to Kim Richey came via "Angel." But I'm glad I found her. This is a decent best-of with some good songs that's worth an occasional listen. If you find it at a used record store for a couple of bucks, pick it up just for "A Place Called Home." Trust me.

Jessi Colter, An Outlaw, a Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter (2005)
I'm pretty sure my CD is autographed by Jessi Colter, unless someone in L.A. is in the habit of falsely autographing albums and selling them back to Amoeba. Regardless, this is a good album that I really haven't spent any time with, largely because I can enjoy the songs at arm's length and appreciate them for what they are, but I have trouble listening to the overly produced sounds of 1980s-era country for too long. The day I bought this, I was waffling between it and Colter's 2006 album Out of the Ashes. I probably should've gone with the latter.

Ryan Adams, Gold (Special Edition) (2001)
I know, I know. I owned most of the songs on Gold already — and when I say "owned," I mean I gleefully ripped them from the shared folders when I was a freshman in college — but I'd been keeping an eye out for a long time for a good used copy of the two-disc edition for less than $20. I finally found a good deal and snagged the album. There's not much to say in the way of discovery. I already knew how great the album was, having had "La Cienega Just Smiled" and "Firecracker" bouncing around my head for years, but it felt really nice to be able to hold the actual discs in my hands. That's what I don't like about downloading songs: You don't get to touch anything, to flip through the battered liner notes, to root through bins week after week waiting for that one album to show up. There's no tactile connection. Anyway, Gold is amazing, and something Adams will probably never top, which is why he's making (slightly) different music now instead of trying to bottle lightning twice. If you don't have the album, you should.

Lyle Lovett, My Baby Don't Tolerate (2003)
The album cover and the fact that it's on the Lost Highway label pretty much sold me on this one, and I wasn't disappointed at all. My Baby Don't Tolerate is a rootsy album that runs the gamut from Western swing to modern alt-country to some fantastic gospel numbers. The album is also amazing in its repeatability; instead of feeling like a sonically linear journey from A to B, the songs seem to call out to each other in pairs, creating a wonderful sense of internal continuity. And this isn't just in obvious pairs like the choir-backed album closers, "I'm Going to Wait" and "I'm Going to the Place." It's in the way "In My Own Mind" and "Nothing But a Good Ride" seem to mirror each other, and how track 3 ("The Truck Song") and track 10 ("San Antonio Girl") seem to have the same basic chord progression, as if they're just flip sides of the same battered old 45. Plus, I smiled like an idiot the first time I heard "San Antonio Girl," happily crushed by the weight of memories brought on by Lovett's mentions of everything from HemisFair to the Riverwalk to Mi Tierra's huevos rancheros. Damn, but it made me miss home a bit.

It's always tough to find new artists, by which I mean new to me. Everyone has those artists whose back-catalogs they're slowly building — when I go to Amoeba, I swing through the Jayhawks and Johnny Cash (to name but two) sections out of long-standing habit — but it's often harder to come across someone new whose music really connects with you. I read Paste and No Depression and do my best to try and find good music, but one of the best ways to bring new music into your life is still to have a friend point you toward something. John, fellow blogger and Pajiba staffer, recently steered me in the direction of Christopher Denny, and I'm thankful he did.¹ Denny's voice is tremulous and incredible, and his country-based roots-rock mixes singer-songwriter credibility with a sound that could have been B-sides from Gold. He's honest, and sad, and hopeful, and really just a great musician. His debut album, Age Old Hunger, features some stunning tracks — "The Stars Above and My Heart In Your Hands" and the instrumental "Going Home" come to mind — but this is one of the best. Enjoy:

"Westbound Train," by Christopher Denny

^{1. John, if you're reading this, feel free to recommend anything you want in the future.}

• Seeing Emmylou Harris in concert is one of the highlights of my life in Los Angeles. No question about it.

• I don't have any photos of the concert because it was being taped for the BBC, who would understandably be annoyed if the crane camera panned the crowd to find a large man in a red plaid pearl-snap taking pictures of the talent.

• The show was for a series the BBC cooked up called "The Ten Commandments of Country," in which one assumes they'll have a string of artists come up with what they consider to be the 10 guiding rules of the genre. Emmylou didn't hold that rigidly to the concept, opting instead to offer a few suggestions/observations and focusing on playing the kind of music that she does best: The stripped-down, honest, pure kind of music that will never stop being classic. It reminded me of home, and of being at rest.

• At one point, Emmylou said, "If love didn't hurt, there'd be no country music." This is the gospel.

• I can't help but refer to her as Emmylou. Working in journalism has bred into me the deep-seated habit of referring to people or artists by their surname on second reference, and that carries over into my critical writing, as well. But Emmylou is one of the rare exceptions to the rule — others include Willie and Elvis — where a performer's first name is infinitely more evocative and definitive of their music and personality. I could never get by with referring to her as Harris. It's just too impersonal somehow. I think of her simply as Emmylou.

• I won the tickets through LAist after stumbling rather fortuitously upon this entry during a rare free moment at work. The site was auctioning off a pair of tickets to the person who could "most convincingly (identify) his or her favorite Emmylou song performed with another artist." This was no small task to set before me; questions like this will make me shut down completely and think about an artist and all the songs of theirs that I love until I find myself gazing slackly at the wall. Plus, though some of the other commenters/entrants seemed only briefly versed in the basics of the written language, they weren't above pulling out the big guns in hopes of winning. One person named-checked 9/11, which come on, that's like cheating.

• But this is what I wrote:

"This is a tough one. Emmylou has performed so many amazing songs with other artists over the years that it's hard to pick just one. But I have to go with 'That's All It Took,' with Gram Parsons, from Parsons' GP. Instead of the backing harmony vocals she provided on the other Parsons tracks, she comes blasting out of the gate on the second half of the first verse, her voice all fire and power as she howls:

I tried so hard to let you go, but look
how I still tremble at your name.
That's all it took.

It's a sad, powerful song, and the kind of Cosmic American music that would influence the rest of her career, from country to folk to bluegrass to gospel. I love it for all those reasons, but also because of the honesty and pain in her voice as she sings."

• Less than 12 hours later — I'd entered the contest not long before the deadline for submissions — the folks at LAist let me know I'd won. It's a weird feeling to win something based on a display of emotional outpouring, and even weirder when that gift is concert tickets to one of the greatest artists in her field and someone you wouldn't mind having semi-adopt you as a kind of grandmother figure, who would sing you a song and maybe give you some lemonade.

• I guess I'm saying it was quite a show, and the fact that I'd earned entrance simply by being a fan, by writing about some small part of what I love about music and life and heartache — I don't know. That was good.

I created this mix just a couple weeks ago, meaning it came less than two months after the last one, by far the shortest span between mixes so far. Even though I live in L.A., which has a better selection of radio stations than most markets, I find myself listening to CDs almost constantly when I'm in the car. It's not that I don't like modern rock; I enjoy KROQ as much as the next guy, especially the fact that they still feel weirdly obligated to play Sublime every hour. It's just that I get tired of thumbing back and forth between stations, catching snatches of songs I tolerate and trying to avoid commercials. It's easier to listen to albums I love, of which there are many, and to pop in these mixes whenever I make them. As usual, the mix reflects songs I've been listening to for years ("Horses," "The Fox") with songs that are newer to me ("Without Goodbye") or that I'm pleasantly rediscovering after one of those weird dormant periods where you forget you own certain CDs or songs ("Winner's Casino," "In Lieu of Flowers"). Happily, almost all the tracks are available via iTunes, though as always, I recommend picking up the full albums at your local used CD store. Happiness is worth $7 a pop.

Alt 6.0
1. "Horses" (live), Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers — A faster, amped-up version of a track that originally appeared on The Refreshments' The Bottle & Fresh Horses, before Clyne formed his new band. Clyne has since slidden into a bit of artistic disrepair, but this song is a reminder of his country-rock glory days.

2. "W-I-F-E," Old 97's — A solid, swinging song that's made for drinking, or singing in the shower. I choose both. The lesson of the song: When choosing between your wife, your girlfriend, or your rampant alcoholism, always go with the booze.

3. "Pinball Song," Slobberbone — I admit, this song was already on a previous mix. I duped it by accident. But this is my fifth mix, meaning I've cobbled together about 100 songs on these playlists, and sometimes in my eagerness to include a song I really love I forget to check if I've used it before. Sue me.

4. "Winner's Casino," Richmond Fontaine — A great song from a concept album from Richmond Fontaine, meaning it trails off into static and weird ambient noise that doesn't really add to the song and almost detracts from its overall impact (I call this the "mid-period Wilco effect").

5. "Without Goodbye," Two Dollar Pistols — A great, classic-sounding song. Lead singer John Howie, Jr. says "where" like "whar," which kinda reminds me of how my father says "warsh" for "wash." So there you go.

6. "Stickshifts and Safety Belts," Cake — This has been in my head since I was a freshman in college.

7. "Start With Amazing Grace," Zane Williams — Zane Williams has slept on my couch.

8. "Box Full of Letters," Wilco — A.M. is still my favorite Wilco album. I own many of them, and love so many moments on Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Sky Blue Sky. But I'll always love this one the most. Simple, powerful country-rock.

9. "More Than I Can Do," Steve Earle — There's always an undercurrent of creepiness in songs about pursuing a woman until she's yours, and this one's no exception. I mean, it's a great song, and I Feel Alright is a desert island album, but something about telling a woman you won't leave her yard even if she calls the cops is a little sketchy. (Also, I think this song would be great if you laid it under the scene in the movie where the killer catches up to the victim and murders them. I know that's weird, but admit it, that's a good idea. Somebody at "Dexter" needs to make that happen.)

10. "Back to Me," Kathleen Edwards — Amazing song, and sensual. The way she howls "come" and drags out that vowel ... come on. We all know where you're going with that, Kathleen. And it's awesome.

11. "Jolene," Mindy Smith w/ Dolly Parton — A great cover that gets a boost of credibility (not that Mindy Smith needed it) by having Parton sit in on the harmony.

12. "Bramble Rose," Tift Merritt — It's gonna be okay, Tift.

13. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," Johnny Cash — One of the all-time classic songs, from the last album Cash released before he died.

14. "The Fox," Nickel Creek — This has been in my head since high school.

15. "Casino Queen," Wilco — Everything I said above.

16. "Long Time Gone," Dixie Chicks — I remember the summer this song came out, and how I couldn't get enough of it. I worked for the campus maintenance crew at my college, and it was a generally terrible summer, but while driving the van from the shop to campus, I would listen to the radio and wonder how far I could get if I just stole the van and headed for home.

17. "You Don't Have Far to Go," Merle Haggard — Old, old school, from Hag's first album.

18. "That's All It Took," Gram Parsons — You can never go wrong with Gram Parsons.

19. "In Lieu of Flowers," Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion — The first track on Exploration is the best one. The way Guthrie and Irion blend their harmonies is fantastic.

20. "Fire in the Canyon," Fountains of Wayne — Fountains of Wayne slip into country every now and then, and it always sounds good.

21. "Save It For a Rainy Day," The Jayhawks — An old roommate of mine heard me playing this CD one day and was convinced this song was used in a movie or TV show he'd recently seen, though it wasn't. That's how bright and elemental and good this song is: You will think you've heard it before, but that's because it already exists in your soul, and Gary Louris is just pulling it out. He's good at that.

22. "Cheatin'," Gin Blossoms — New Miserable Experience is a great album, and it's marked halfway through and at the very end by interesting genre exercises that diverge from the rest of the record's early-'90s pop-rock. The first is "Cajun Song" — so, so good — and the second is "Cheatin'," an upbeat, countryish lament that's better than most people give it credit for being. Granted, the chorus is a bit confusing; when the singer explains away his infidelity by saying of his mistress, "She made me feel just like a woman should / You can't call it cheatin' because she reminds me of you," I always wonder, "So, she made you feel like a woman should? So, you feel like a woman?" I think "She made me feel just like a woman could" or "She made me feel just like a man should" would be clearer, but then again, I'm not a suicidal songwriting genius, so what do I know. Regardless, it's a great song.

• I didn't expect to be one of the youngest members of the crowd Saturday night at the Lucinda Williams show, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Lucinda was born in 1953 and started releasing albums in the late 1970s, which not only means she now holds the crown for Oldest Woman I Would Sleep With, but also that she appeals to a slightly older crowd. My concert companion and I are in our mid-20s, which definitely placed us on the younger end of the spectrum. There was an old man in a beret who looked like he could get wild. But he didn't.

• There was a young couple there, not too much older than me, and they were making out like horny juniors at the prom. The guy was your basic indeterminate L.A. douchebag: muscle T, a little too much effort in his casually tousled hair, etc., etc. But the girl was decked out like she'd mistaken an alt-country/rock concert for whatever whore-filled Halloween party she usually attended for a few minutes before slinking off to the guest bedroom to film amateur porn. She was wearing killer heels and a skirt that stopped just below the bottom of her ass, and her man's hand was all over said area while they were making out in the middle of the club and we all waited for the show to start and tried not to stare at the exhibitionist skank with low self-esteem and the skeezy slab of dumbass that was probably getting chlamydia just by breathing this girl's air. They could've stayed home and made out for free, or at least gotten it over with in the car, you know?

• There were also plenty of people who look like me, which is one of the weird psychic pleasures of going to a concert. It's not like a movie, where you're thrown into a room with people whose tastes are likely wildly divergent from yours. Music is a very personal thing, and spending money on a ticket and going to the concert venue guarantees that you'll be around other people who care about your music as much as you do. Everyone is happy to be there and genuinely excited about the artist performing for them. It's a pleasant, warm vibe.

• All that to say I saw a lot of other bearded men in pearl-snaps.

• All week long I'd been wondering what would happen if I got to the concert and Steve Earle happened to be there to play with Lucinda. The concert was part of a five-night series in which she was playing one of her albums in its entirety, and Saturday night was Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Earle played guitar on a few tracks on Car Wheels, as well as doing harmony vocal on "Concrete and Barbed Wire," so I began to entertain a weird daydream/fantasy in which Earle came out and played as a surprise guest, after which I was invited on stage to sing harmony, and then the redhead who'd been standing next to me all night turned out to be an avid reader who hated Cylons.

• Most of that didn't happen.

• But Steve Earle did come out to sit in with Lucinda for pretty much the entire show, which ran for close to three hours. The band did Car Wheels and then took a short break, after which they returned for another set of seven or so songs, followed by an encore of another few tunes. Earle and Lucinda did "You're Still Standing There" from Earle's I Feel Alright, which made me yell for joy like a man on fire. Mike Campbell, guitarist for Tom Petty was also around for a few numbers, including a blistering solo on "Joy." And Jim Lauderdale played guitar and sang backup. And Allison Moorer, who happens to be married to Earle, sang harmony on "Greenville" and several other songs.

• The show also had the coolest souvenir ever: A live recording of the concert made on the spot. After the Car Wheels set, the band took a short break while the CDs were pressed up like mad backstage, and during the second (and third) sets you could saunter over and pick one up for $20. Way better than a shirt, and infinitely longer lasting. The disc is the entire live version of Car Wheels, and it shakes out to about 30 tracks with all the intros and brief stories Lucinda tells before the numbers, as well as the false starts, cheers, and everything else that usually gets polished out of a live album. So now I don't just have a story about the smoking 10-minute version of "Joy," or how Steve Earle leaned back so he could wail the high harmony when he came in on "Concrete and Barbed Wire"; I have the album itself, with those moments intact.

• Damn, but it was an awesome show.

I've been terribly negligent in posting music videos, which is a shame, especially when you consider it's an easy and reliable source of content. But the return of the feature, however regular it manages to be, is dedicated to The Sis, who's currently trapped in a horrible, muddy, cricket-ridden town in West Texas. They've had torrential downpours, a scare about the germs in their water supply that meant residents actually had to boil water if they wanted to use it, and other general unpleasantries. Sis, keep your head up, and enjoy the song:

"Texas Flood," by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Stapp Me If You've Heard This One

Stapp Infection


^{[Inspired by a conversation I had at lunch today. My friend said how much he hated Nickelback, to which I fervently nodded agreement. I added, "I would rather read a book written by Scott Stapp than listen to Nickelback. And I hate Creed. That's how much I hate Nickelback."]}

It seems I just can't help myself when it comes to making these mixes. Part of it is because I constantly listen to CDs in the car, and am always looking for ways to shuffle up my music collection. And, as I've said before, I enjoy sharing music with people and having them point me toward new bands or artists I haven't discovered yet. But I suppose the biggest part of it is just that I love this music. My buddy Collins and I use this music as a litmus test of human emotion and relational compatibility: He recently said of a girl, "She likes our kind of music," an excited stamp of approval the Rob Gordons of the world will surely understand. I even made an alt-country primer CD for my dad a couple Christmases ago because it's one of the surest ways I know to communicate with someone when words just won't do. If you want to understand me, then watch Rushmore, read some Chabon, and give these songs a listen.

This mix is brand spanking new, as well, which I think adds to the nicely spread out nature of the alt-country mixes I've been making. The first one took shape when I was in college, the second in early 2005, the third in summer 2006, and now this one for the dog days of 2007. It also comes in at 23 tracks, the longest mix yet; I just can't help myself, I guess. As always, I've provided iTunes links where available, but you might have to keep an eye on the clearance rack of your local used CD store if you want to snag some of the tracks. Without further ado:

Alt 5.0
1. "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," The Jayhawks — If I ever made a playlist called Shimmery Guitar Pop That Restores My Faith In Humanity And Belief In Love When All The Evidence Would Persuade Me Otherwise, this song would be at the top. Further proof that Gary Louis needed Mark Olson like Jeff Tweedy needed Jay Farrar, which is to say quite a bit at the beginning but then later, not so much. Also, the terrible thing about iTunes is that The Jawhawks' Smile isn't available, so this song is only offered on their "Dawson's Creek" soundtrack. Please don't let that ruin the song for you.

2. "Medicine," Bob Schneider — This guy needs to be getting more attention.

3. "Pecan Pie," Golden Smog — Speaking of Tweedy and Louris, you pretty much can't go wrong with an alt-country supergroup like this one. Incidentally, my Golden Smog name is Weldon Briarcroft, which sounds either gay or British or both.

4. "16 Days," Whiskeytown — I'm pretty sure Strangers Almanac was the first real alt-country album I ever owned, and you could do a damn sight worse as an introduction to the field. This was the first Whiskeytown song I full-on loved.

5. "The Stranger's Lament," King Straggler — A great band fronted by John Hawkes, of "Deadwood" and Me and You and Everyone We Know fame. I saw them perform at Crane's on El Centro one night, or anyway I wanted to, but it was midnight and they still hadn't gone on and I had work the next day, so I just went home, happy to be rid of the cramped porch full of smoking hipsters who were probably wondering how it was physically possible for me to sweat that much without being hospitalized. This is a good album, though.

6. "Return of the Grievous Angel," Gram Parsons — The creator of cosmic American music and the forefather to pretty much every alt-country band working today, even if they don't know it. I wish my life were as epic as this song.

7. "A Break in the Clouds," The Jayhawks — Another pop masterpiece. "Every time that I see your face, it's like cool, cool water running down my back." Who doesn't love a line like that? That's one of my favorite lyrics ever, along with the one from "Oppenheimer," by Old 97's, that goes, "Tar on the roof, there were stars in her hair, beneath the quarter moon, beneath the quarter moon." Anyway, back to the point: Good song.

8. "Heaven or the Highway Out of Town," The Refreshments — I haven't given a lot of love to Roger Clyne's old band (or his new one, later on this mix) on any of these CDs, which is in part because his music isn't quite up to snuff in some ways, and his latest album is so atrocious it's as if he's given up on being even a remotely competent songwriter. Still, he put out some good music with The Refreshments, and this track, from their second album, The Bottle & Fresh Horses, is great country-rock.

9. "Now She's Gone," Steve Earle — I Feel Alright is one of those albums I loved from the moment I heard the first notes, and this song is one of the strongest on there. Earle is hardcore; this guy went to prison, kicked his heroin habit while he was behind bars, and released a pair of comeback albums upon his release, one of which was I Feel Alright. I will never screw with Steve Earle.

10. "Truth No. 2," Dixie Chicks — A woman who can play the banjo is pretty much tops in my book.

11. "Christine's Tune," The Flying Burrito Brothers — Parsons and Hillman doing their thing, and it's amazing, as always.

12. "A Little Bit Lonesome," Kasey Chambers — A wonderful, old-school sound. Her Australian accent makes her Southern country numbers unique.

13. "San Antonio Girl," Lyle Lovett — I'm admittedly predisposed to love any song that name-checks Mi Tierra and Highway 16 and generally makes me ache a little for home, but this is also an awesome country-swing number from My Baby Don't Tolerate, which you should all go purchase immediately.

14. "Coahuila," Old 97's — The only song with lead guitarist Ken Bethea handling the lead vocals, and it does what the genre does best: It mixes great music with lyrics of surprising pain and honesty. Great song for driving, or drinking.

15. "A Little Hung Over You," Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers — The closest Clyne will ever come to the genuine honky-tonk rock he was only moderately skilled at appropriating. But it's a good one.

16. "I'm Leavin' Now," Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard — Why aren't more of Cash's American recordings available on iTunes? Anyway. A friend of mine put this on a mix tape for me when I graduated college, and I mean like an actual tape, not CD. I wore that thing down from listening to it so much, and I doubt it would be good for too many more runs through a tape player, if I even had access to one. But this is a fantastic song, and the screw-you-I'm-doing-my-own-thing mentality is a helpful one to adopt if moving across the country. Best line of the song: "Wouldn't trade a nickel for another buck, livin' on muscle, guts, and luck." Amen.

17. "Foot of the Bed," Tres Chicas — Beautiful, sad, and sweet. I loves me some Caitlin Cary.

18. "In My Hour of Darkness," Gram Parsons — I think G.P./Grievous Angel should be issued to everyone as a requirement for being a decent person.

19. "City Girls," Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers — Another great Clyne song.

20. "If My Heart Was a Car," Old 97's — Straight-ahead Texas-based country-rock, with Rhett Miller's perfect howl holding it all together.

21. "Live Free," Son Volt — Yet another great lyric: "I wanna see your smile through a pay phone." Either these songwriters have lived some really terrible lives, or they're great at faking it.

22. "Three Days," Thermadore — I first heard this song on the Zero Effect soundtrack, which my buddy Collins and I each owned, having seen the movie together and loved it. (I will always remain disappointed that Bill Pullman's song never made it on the album, which is still a pretty great soundtrack.) We also each at one point picked up Thermadore's only album, Monkey on Rico, on the strength of this song, but after a couple runs through the CD it became clear why they weren't a success. Avoid their album, but pick up this song.

23. "3 Chords," Shurman — A fantastic album closer from Shurman's EP, which is only sporadically in print. If you have a choice between the EP and their debut album, Jubilee, just get the EP.

Enjoy.

Because I like sharing music that I love, and being introduced to new music by my friends; because I crave your validation; and because it's a lot easier than coming up with more original content, it's time once again for an alt-country playlist from yours truly. This compilation, to the best of my recollection, came together in the summer of 2006; I remember playing the track list for a friend on my iPod while driving through the mountains of northern Arizona on the way home from the Grand Canyon last year. That means the list came together about a year after the creation of the previous one, which I guess is a good enough time to spread out a little, incorporate some new bands, and also shine some light on old favorites (the attentive among you will notice a near constant presence of Old 97's on these lists; that's the way it's gonna be). It's a slightly longer list than the others, coming in at 22 songs but still short enough to fit on a standard 80-minute CD. I think a big part of this is that this is the first mix I made after purchasing my iPod, so the ease of bouncing around from track to track within a digital playlist instead of listening to a CD from beginning to end seems to have influenced the assembly of the songs; in other words, it feels more like a jukebox of tunes instead of a somewhat more cohesive attempt to make a good alt-country mix. As a result, it's probably the weakest mix as far as overall flow, but it's a solid collection of hits, and I couldn't bring myself to trim any. Sue me. As always, I've provided iTunes links where possible; as always, feel free to share any music you think I might like or just post a comment to shower me with sincere praise. In retrospect, I realize these mixes have been getting (to me) slightly less accomplished with each iteration, but I have some other stuff in the works that I think you all might enjoy. Like I said, I need the validation. Anyway, here it is:

Alt 4.0
1. "Won't Be Home," Old 97's — A great, fuzzy opening from the group's Drag It Up. Solid driving song.

2. "Another Travelin' Song," Bright Eyes — I like Bright Eyes. Tough.

3. "That's Not the Issue," Wilco — Man, sometimes I forget Wilco used to rip out these amazing little country tracks. It's enough to make me really miss old-school Golden Smog (which is coming later down the list).

4. "My Winding Wheel," Ryan Adams — Wonderful, easy song.

5. "The Charging Sky," Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins — I couldn't take this album out of my stereo for a couple weeks after I got it. I keep hoping I'll run into Jenny Lewis out here, though the odds that she shops at my Ralphs are pretty slim.

6. "Still Feeling Blue," Kasey Chambers — This is one of my favorite Gram Parsons songs, and I love Chambers' cover. It's a good reminder of how country is often built on songs that get passed around and recorded by multiple artists, like the blues.

7. "Streets of Where I'm From," Old 97's — Solid, yearning bar rock.

8. "A Kiss Before I Go," Ryan Adams & the Cardinals — In and out in just a couple minutes, and fantastic along the way.

9. "Sin City," Uncle Tupelo — Speaking of great covers, here's another Parsons track from his days with the Flying Burrito Brothers. Love it.

10. "You Are What You Love," Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins — A kind of shimmery pop-country that's downright heartbreaking.

11. "Live Free," Son Volt — Trace is still the best album you haven't bought yet. So go buy it.

12. "If I Had a Boat," Lyle Lovett — Why did I not get into Lyle Lovett until the past couple years? I'm a moron.

13. "Making Love With You," Old 97's — A fantastic track from Down to the Promised Land, a comp from Bloodshot Records' fifth anniversary. The double-disc set isn't too bad, but it's worth buying just for this song.

14. "What a Crying Shame," The Mavericks — I love this album. It's straight-ahead country from 1994, featuring mainstream two-steps and some Latin influences. Wonderful song.

15. "Roses Are Blooming," The Hollisters — I sing this in the shower a lot. I don't know why.

16. "Hung Up on You," Fountains of Wayne — I've liked Fountains of Wayne since their debut in 1996; I have many good memories of playing Quake III late at night at a friend's house while listening to "Leave the Biker" (yeah). They play brilliant power-pop, and every now and then they fiddle around with some country tunes, and the result is usually pretty great. Case in point: This track, which features pedal steel from Robert Randolph.

17. "Let It Ride," Ryan Adams & the Cardinals — Arguably the best single from Cold Roses.

18. "Crazy Arms," BR5-49 — Writing all this has made me realize just how many covers are on this mix, including this song, which has been recorded by just about everybody. This is a great treatment by BR5-49; if I were going to start a retro-country band, it would be a little like BR5-49. We would play in Oplin, and we would blow you away.

19. "Today's Teardrops," Fountains of Wayne — The last cover of the bunch: A Ricky Nelson song covered by Fountains of Wayne in concert and released on their B-sides collection Out-of-State Plates. Also a good shower song.

20. "Passionate Kisses," Lucinda Williams — It would later be covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter, who had a pretty big hit with it, but Lucinda's original remains amazing. However, iTunes only seems to have this live version. Deal.

21. "Please Tell My Brother," Golden Smog — Someone please play this at my funeral.

22. "Maria's Bed," Bruce Springsteen — For Devils & Dust, the Boss just went acoustic and changed all the references to Jenny/Elizabeth to Maria, but it totally worked. This was a great collection of Southwestern alt-country, and his best conceptish album since The Ghost of Tom Joad.

I'm not sure why Too Far to Care isn't on iTunes. I think you should all write letters to Steve Jobs asking that he put it on there, and also that he send me an iPhone. Thanks.

And, what the hell, here's a music video for track 10:

Well, this seemed to go over well last time, so here goes nothing. Today's mix is the second real alt-country mix I made, and I assembled it sometime after moving to L.A., though the specific date remains fuzzy; I didn't learn about Shurman until I saw them open for Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers in November 2004, so it's safe to assume this list came together sometime in the spring or early summer of 2005. That places its birthday a solid 18 months or so after the creation of Alt 2.0, and it's always interesting to see the bands that showed up again versus the ones that are "new" to one of these mixes. (Being pretty anal about things like this, I already envisioned making myself an ongoing series of alt-country mixes. I'm okay with this.) Aesthetically, I don't think is quite as strong as my previous mix; I usually try to cool things off a bit by track 4, whereas this one doesn't calm down till track 6, making the first third of the album a little top-heavy. But it's still pretty listenable. Again, I've provided iTunes links where I could, but some of these are going to be tougher to come by. Go by your local Amoeba/Waterloo/whatever and root around. That's when you'll find the best stuff, anyway.

Alt 3.0
1. "Petty Song," Shurman — The track I have is actually from their EP, which went our of print but was put briefly back into production a few weeks after I emailed their site and inquired whether they'd be selling any more. Was I singlehandedly responsible for inspring them to press up more copies? Yes, yes I was.

2. "W. Tx Teardrops," Old 97's — When I saw Old 97's at the El Rey a couple years ago, bassist Murry Hammond, who does lead voclas on this and a few other songs, said before launching into this tune that "This is for anybody who's seen those tornado warnings in West Texas." I was the only one to launch a "Woo-hoo!" when he said that, which was mildly embarrassing, but not so much it kept me from singing along with every word.

3. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Lucinda Williams — I really like Lucinda Williams, and have spent some decent time with a few of her albums, but I feel (and my buddy Collins agrees) that she's a fantastic artist whom we're probably supposed to love when we actually just like her. Don't get me wrong; Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a classic, and West is pretty amazing. But sometimes it's like I like the idea of Lucinda better than Lucinda herself. But this is still a good song.

4. "Miss Williams' Guitar," The Jayhawks — Whenever I hear the glittery electric guitar, I always am secretly pleased that I placed this song directly after the one by Lucinda Williams. Because I am like that.

5. "Jackie," The Pistoleros — This is a fantastic band out of Tempe, Arizona, fronted by brothers Lawrence and Mark Zubia, and their debut album featured some songwriting assistance from Radney Foster and The Jayhawks' Gary Louris. The Zubias also used to be in a band with Doug Hopkins, who went on to play with Gin Blossoms. I just find that interesting, is all. Their first album, Hang Onto Nothing, is definitely worth seeking out.

6. "Dancing With the Women at the Bar," Whiskeytown — When I sing along with this song, I wonder what it would be like if my father had actually seen the moon and "heard the sound of the strip" calling out his name, instead of just being a completely likable salesman in central Texas. That would've been weird.

7. "Tear-Stained Eye," Son Volt — Beyond fantastic. A pure, sweet, easy kind of country.

8. "This Flower," Kasey Chambers — Ditto.

9. "Doubting Thomas," Nickel Creek — I remember liking Nickel Creek in high school, mainly because they played great music and were about my age, meaning they were either really talented or I hadn't really applied myself (probably both). I still think they're a great group, and I like how their sound and subject matter has matured, as in this song, about the conflict between faith and doubt.

10. "Full Moon Over Dallas," Maggie Brown — I nabbed a free copy of this album from work on impulse, mainly because it looked halfway decent, which it is. But I'm a sucker for songs about Texas, I guess.

11. "Rain King," Counting Crows — Bam, right in the middle of the album, I drop some stout mid-'90s alt-rock on you. And it totally works. I love hearing songs like this in new contexts like this one, where its mild country inflections are enhanced by the rest of the list. Fountains of Wayne have recorded some great country songs, too. I also will always wish I had the range of Adam Duritz.

12. "No Depression," Uncle Tupelo — You pretty much can't beat Uncle Tupelo covering the Carter Family.

13. "Are You Still in Love With Me?," Tift Merritt — Sad, sad song. When this comes on, I feel like I should pull over and find a quiet bar and drink myself stupid.

14. "Blinding Sheets of Rain," Old 97's — A great, low-key two-step.

15. "Gold Watch and Chain," Nitty Gritty Dirt Band feat. Kris Kristofferson — The iTunes link goes to the tribute album The Unbroken Circle, but I actually got my copy from a compilation called This Is Americana, a fantastic record being sold for the ridiculously stupid price of $2, which means you should all go buy it right now. Right. Now.

16. "My Heart Is Broken," Ryan Adams & the Cardinals — I loved Jacksonville City Nights with a passion; it was easily the best of the three albums Ryan Adams put out in 2005 (second place was Cold Roses, while the off-putting29 ran a distant third). This is a quick, efficient song that gets in and out in just over two minutes, and I love it.

17. "Virginia, No One Can Warn You," Tift Merritt — If anyone can put me in touch with Tift Merritt, I'd appreciate it.

18. "Last Hard Bible," Kasey Chambers — Kasey Chambers has this thin little voice that fires like a cannon, and the tight harmonies on this song are excellent.

19. "At the Bottom of Everything," Bright Eyes — Sometimes I launch into the monologue at the beginning of this song at the office. It weirds people out, but not as much as when I say it while sitting in an airplane. Anyway, great song, great album, etc.

So, there you go.

I had this all planned out, and it was gonna be pretty cool. After many months of toiling to repair my iTunes and realizing that my hard drive isn't quite as spacious as I'd like it to be (long story), I was going to create and publish iMixes and then link to them here. We did a similar thing over at Pajiba a while back, only I wouldn't be requesting songs from you (at least not so soon after last time), but instead sharing some of the alt-country and other mixes I've made over the past few years, both as a way to share some good tunes and conspicuously declare my tastes while also subtly seeking your validation, since you know you're the only reason I do this. Yes, you.

Anyway, it turns out that some of the tracks in my mixes aren't available on iTunes, thus making the creation and publication of iMixes at the very least problematic. So I've decided to just post the track lists, with iTunes links where available, and let you buy the songs yourself. Or buy the CDs. (These are good artists, and I don't really believe in piracy anyway, and if you live in the L.A. area you can just come over and borrow the albums. Or if you'll be in Texas the next time I am, give me a heads-up and I will bring the CDs. I swear.)

So, with that in mind, here's a mix I made between 3 and 4 years ago. It's fascinating to keep all these different mixes in occasional rotation in my car (I listen almost exclusively to CDs instead of the radio), because each one is a reminder of particular songs I was deeply obsessed with at a certain point in my life. I still love all these songs, of course, but you know what it's like to need to hear a song daily, to inject it in your bloodstream and let it guide you. I've listened to these compilations so often that when I listen to the full albums from which the individual tracks were drawn, I always suffer the schism of alternate realities when the songs end, since half of me patiently waits for the album's next track but the other half anticipates hearing the track I placed after that song on a separate mix. I love that. The first version of this mix was good, but shorter, and this version incorporated some songs I got from a friend who made me a mix called The Gospel According to [his name], which is itself a damn fine compilation. So this album owes a debt to him, and to the great city of Buna. Here it is:

Alt 2.0
1. "Timebomb," Old 97's — This remains probably the greatest album-opening track of all time.

2. "Firecracker," Ryan Adams — Beautiful. I still think Ryan Adams is a great artist, but I wonder if he'll ever recapture some of the magic of his old stuff.

3. "Wildflowers," Tom Petty — I listened to this album a lot in high school. That should tell you plenty.

4. "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight," Whiskeytown — Great lyrics, great steel guitar, and guest vocals from Alejandro Escovedo. Stranger's Almanac was their best album, hands down.

5. "Forget the Flowers," Wilco — Country-rock and power-pop Wilco will always be better than electronically self-indulgent Wilco. Like, always.

6. "Tampa to Tulsa," The Jayhawks — Can't think of anything particularly worth adding here. Just a good song about a bus trip, and how many of those can there be?

7. "Birds Sing," The Refreshments — I have many, many opinions about The Refreshments, including the utter laughable waste Roger Clyne has become, but their second studio album is still fantastic, and this is a great country-rock track. But one thing always bugs me: The chorus in part says, "It's a melody I stole from a bathroom wall / And it's the words I hear the birds sing." That's backwards, Roger. It would make infinitely more sense if you stole the words from a bathroom wall, where people carve words, and the melody from a bird, because birds cannot speak. Anyway, it's a great song, grammatical screw-ups notwithstanding.

8. "Murder (Or a Heart Attack)," Old 97's — A great track for those just getting into the 97's and wanting to start poppier.

9. "Angelyne," The Jayhawks — One of the best songs in the history of recorded time.

10. "Windfall," Son Volt — This is the first Son Volt song I ever heard, and it felt as if I'd heard it before. A cynic would chalk it up to the fact that Jay Farrar may have just been recycling Uncle Tupelo sounds and country heritage, but that person would be a soulless douche. No, it felt like I'd heard it before because it connected with me instantly in a way only a great song can. It was so pure, so honest, so downright transcendent, that it seemed it had always existed, and all Jay Farrar did was scratch the surface of something to find it and write it down.

11. "Oh My Sweet Carolina," Ryan Adams — Because college is about feeling like you know the depth of the world's sorrow.

12. "Don't Wanna Know," The Refreshments — A more mainstream electric ballad, but it fits the CD. I listened to this album a lot in high school, too. A lot.

13. "Someone Else's Song," Wilco — Good grief. I was totally that guy in college, you know?

14. "I'm Good Now," Bob Schneider — A great song from a really solid album. Some of my fondest memories of senior year are listening to this album in my roommate's bedroom while watching him play an endless series of RPGs and talking about women.

15. "Bad Time," The Jayhawks — This is my Patsy Cline song.

16. "Houses on the Hill," Whiskeytown — Arguably among the three greatest songs Whiskeytown ever recorded.

17. "Far, Far Away," Wilco — Untouchably wonderful.

Why the hell Rainy Day Music and Tomorrow the Green Grass aren't on iTunes is beyond me, but it's a travesty. Anyway, have fun.

If you knew me better, you would know that I probably spend too much time compiling imaginary, themed mix CDs in my head. I'm trying to come up with songs that reference every year of your 20s, either in their lyrics, title, or both. I've listed songs below that I think could make the cut, though some are there just because they fit the qualifications for the list, not because they're personal favorites (I'm pretty indifferent on Incubus, for instance). I'm more than willing to double up on songs, since a 10-track CD would be pretty light, so really, any suggestions would be welcome. (Well, not all. Let's try and keep the cornball stuff to an absolute minimum. Anyone who offers up Five For Fighting's "100 Years" gets a time-out and a punch in the chode.) Soon enough I can compile them and then rebuild the fourth wall I just kicked over. Anyway, here's what I have so far, just off the top of my head:

20
(needed)

21
(needed)

22
"When Yer Twenty-Two," Flaming Lips

23
"Dancing Nancies," Dave Matthews Band
"What's My Age Again," Blink 182
"Pardon Me," Incubus

24
"Twenty-Four," Switchfoot

25
"Streets of Where I'm From," Old 97's

26
(needed)

27
"Let It Ride," Ryan Adams

28
(needed)

29
"29," Gin Blossoms

Sure, I could bury myself in Google and try to put the rest of the list together. But really, it'd be a lot easier if you all did it for me. And besides, it's always better to get songs that have a personal meaning to someone, even if it's not me, than to just throw them on there because some search algorithm said they'd fit.

So, have at it.

[And, yes, I'm admittedly surprised that the day I published this post, which I originally cobbled together 3-4 days ago, is also the day that Peter Lynn is also writing about themed mixes. I have no idea how these things happen, but I like to think my subconscious sent out some kind of beacon that alerted him to the idea.]

Because some weeks all you wanna do is turn up some 1994. With that in mind, break out that Mossimo T-shirt you don't fit into anymore and listen to these up loud.

First up: I still own this album, and give it the occasional spin, and always enjoy it. I love every track (and am oddly partial to "Cajun Song," but I digress).

"Until I Fall Away," by Gin Blossoms.

I don't know why this next artist has disabled embedding on his YouTube video, which is pretty dick and defeats the entire purpose of the site. His official music video is right here, but for the purposes of convenience, here's another version:

"Bad Reputation," by Freedy Johnston.

Finally, this is a great single from an Austin pop group. Mention them at parties; impress your friends that read Pitchfork:

"April's Fool," by Cotton Mather.

And, what the hell, in honor of the early '90s: the original short film Bottle Rocket. Because sometimes it's good to remember what's on the list of things Dignan's not supposed to touch.

From lyrics like "She was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian" (which is awesome), to the Sprinsteenian grandeur and Sal Paradise references, The Hold Steady are doing their own bit to save rock and roll. For better or worse, this is the bar band all grown up, and it's damn catchy:

"Stuck Between Stations," by The Hold Steady.

Speaking of Springsteen-level pop-rock: Another great modern band looking to craft Gen Y's version of "Born to Run," and they come pretty close. I don't know if the Boss every played around with a hurdy gurdy, but this song manages to capture the whole screen-doors-in-the-infinite-summer-dusk thing anyway. Great song:

"Keep the Car Running," by Arcade Fire.

Because I'm a sucker, OK? Because sometimes I'm driving home from work at night, bouncing between KROQ and Indie, and the song comes on and gets in my head. OK? That's all:

"Hey There Delilah," by Plain White T's.

Sure, everybody and their brother went to the desert last weekend for Coachella, with the heat and the gridlock and the weed and the booze and the girls you will never hook up with. And yeah, it was probably fun to see Rage Against the Machine reunite, if only for the 10th-grade flashbacks it inspired, and the opportunity it gave you to shout "Testify!" all weekend. But for my money, this is the weekend to be in Indio: May 5-6 is the Stagecoach Festival, billed as "California's country music festival," and there are some fantastic acts scheduled to play. Forget the mainstream crap like Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, and Sara Evans. Let the fools have them. Some of the acts coming to Stagecoach include such alt-country, bluegrass, and Americana performers as:

Old 97's
Emmylou Harris
Ricky Skaggs
Marty Stuart
Raul Malo
Alejandro Escovedo
Earl Scruggs
Neko Case
Nickel Creek
Yonder Mountain String Band
Robert Earl Keen
The Del McCoury Band
Willie Nelson
Lucinda Williams

Good grief, what a beautiful collection of artists. Anyone who wants to take me is more than welcome. In the meantime, enjoy some tunes by a few of the above bands and singers:

"Behind the House," by Neko Case:

"Are You Alright?" by Lucinda Williams:

"When You Come Back Down," by Nickel Creek:

"Roll in my Sweet Baby's Arms," with Earl Scruggs and Ricky Skaggs:

"Bjork is music for people who think they're supposed to like hip, trendy stuff but don't know the first thing about quality music."

I love me some Old 97's, and that includes frontman Rhett Miller's solo projects. This is a tune originally available on the bonus disc to the Old 97's album Satellite Rides, but Miller's solo version is just as good (if anything, it's a little tighter, since it cuts the "You've got the teeth of the hydra upon you" from the chorus and lets it breathe a little). Anyone looking to get into the Old 97's could do a lot worse than to pick up Satellite Rides and Too Far to Care. Anyway, here it is:

"Singular Girl," by Rhett Miller.

On an album full of crunchy garage-fueled rock-pop, this track is the one that's a little different, a willowy, foot-tapping pop number with fantastic harmonies and great instrumentation. All of Costello Music is wonderful, a kind of fist-pumping, pub-crawling, ideal summer soundtrack; this is the song for the end of the night, when the bar's closed and you're driving around, not quite ready or willing to go home.

"Whistle for the Choir," by the Fratellis.

"Well I'm pulling into Cleveland
In a seven-seater tour van.
There's eight of us, so I'm sleeping on the floor.
The guy that plays the banjo
Keeps on handing me the Old Crow,
Which multiplies my sorrow, I can't take it anymore."
— "Doreen," Old 97's

What else to say? Old Crow Medicine Show is a great band, and if you don't know much about them, you should really check them out. Dig the Gillian Welch cameo, too:

"Wagon Wheel," by Old Crow Medicine Show.

Man. Things are getting heavy, huh? This week's videos go out to all my fellow cubicle dwellers who might be staring down the barrel of a bad week, or month, or even season (it happens). It's like the old Texas saying: Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear just rapes the s**t out of you and leaves you to die in the woods. So when it all starts to come down on you, sit back, relax, and escape for a few minutes with some bright jangle-pop. Enjoy:

"Catch My Disease," by Ben Lee.

"Maureen," by Fountains of Wayne.

This song was written by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Hillman was a founding member of the Byrds, and Parsons joined the band for the classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Not long after, Parsons and Hillman were playing together in the Flying Burrito Brothers, and this track appeared on that group's first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Parsons is one of my favorite artists; I could listen to G.P./Grievous Angel all day. The song's been covered several times, most notably by Uncle Tupelo, but this is a pretty amazing version:

"Sin City," by Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings.

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Continuing, I guess, with the broad but definite theme of female country singers that make me all wibbly, here's another great song from a great album:

"Virginia, No One Can Warn You," by Tift Merritt.

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I'm not even sure how often I'll do this, but it seems like as good a time as any to start slowly sharing the gospel accoring to alt-country with the rest of the world. I don't even know where to begin, so I picked this one at random. Great song, great performer:

"Back to Me," by Kathleen Edwards.

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I had the pleasure of seeing Shut Up & Sing recently, a documentary about the Dixie Chicks' latest album and the controversy that erupted when, at a London concert in March 2003, just days before the Iraq war began, lead singer Natalie Maines made an off-the-cuff joke about how she was embarrassed that President Bush was from Texas. I remember the incident well, because I was living in Los Angeles at the time, but was soon to return to Texas, where more than a few people I knew were furious at what Maines had said. I've been trying to make sense of the furor surrounding the group ever since, and I've come to only a few conclusions.

• They weren't attacked for political speech, but for liberal political speech. Many of the criticisms the band received focused on the fact that, as a band, they're being paid to sing, not offer political commentary. But Toby Keith released the single "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)" in 2002; among its lyrics was the warning that "We'll put a boot in your ass / It's the American way." Rather than tell Keith to tone down his rhetoric, country music fans supported the song. Maines wasn't even performing political songs, and it's clear from the footage of the London show that her joke is spontaneous. Yet country music fans still turned on the group for expressing a political belief. To embrace Keith for his politics but tell Maines to not express her beliefs is hypocritical.

• The vitriol with which the Dixie Chicks were attacked extended to their gender, which is just frightening. They were labeled the "Dixie Sluts" by some extremist critics, something that never would have happened to a male singer who voiced an unpopular opinion. Cash, Haggard, Kristofferson and Willie himself were labeled outlaws and given respect, but for women to speak out is apparently too much for country fans to handle.

• Yes, people who stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks after the Bush jab were completely within their rights. Freedom of expression extends to what albums you do or don't buy, and the former fans who professed their newfound hatred for the Chicks had every right to do so. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a boneheaded, myopic thing to do.

I had several friends who liked the Chicks but stopped supporting them after spring 2003, and it wasn't because their tastes changed. No, it was pretty much because of Maines' joke. Why should that stop you from listening to their music if you already liked it? Does her political belief mean she can't sing as well, or play the guitar with the same skill? Does the group's tight harmony become sour when you realize that Maines doesn't support the president? If Rhett Miller came out in fervent support of President Bush, I'd strongly disagree with him, but I wouldn't get rid of my Old 97's albums. I love those albums. I love the songs, the lyrics, the blend of music and emotion and Texas references and heartbreak and pop swagger and just about everything on them. It wouldn't make sense to stop listening to a fantastic musician because I don't like his voting record.

• My personal experience with the controversy was a weird one, mired as it was in a dangerous mix of conservative politics, fundamentalist Christianity, and West Texas heat waves. I thought my friends who abandoned the Chicks because of Maines' outburst were pitiable and sad, but mainly because I could never figure out where they drew the line. Refusing to listen to a band because its members aren't practicing Christians would be foolish, but at least it would have been in line with these people's refusal to listen to the Dixie Chicks. So what was it about politics that got these people so motivated that God didn't have? Why were these people willing to hate a band out of their love for Bush but not their belief in God?

• I've liked the Dixie Chicks for a while now; they're talented musicians, and Maines has a voice like a cannon. I still think Home is a fantastic album. And what do you know, when I listen to it, I don't think about politics, or fanatics, or the way our culture devours itself out of boredom. I think about the music, and how this band won't just shut up and sing, and how great that is. And on that note:

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My 26 Desert Island Albums:

1. Old 97's — Too Far to Care

2. The Refreshments — Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy

3. The Jayhawks — Rainy Day Music

4. Wilco — A.M.

5. Whiskeytown — Strangers Almanac

6. Son Volt — Trace

7. Dave Matthews Band — Before These Crowded Streets

8. Denison Witmer — Safe Away

9. Fountains of Wayne — Welcome Interstate Managers

10. Ryan Adams — Heartbreaker

11. Ryan Adams — Jacksonville City Nights

12. Counting Crows — August and Everything After

13. Sufjan Stevens — Illinois

14. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers — Honky Tonk Union

15. Bob Dylan — Blood on the Tracks

16. Wilco — Being There

17. Bright Eyes — I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

18. Tom Waits — Closing Time

19. Johnny Cash — Live at San Quentin

20. Mike Doughty — Haughty Melodic

21. Bob Schneider — I'm Good Now

22. Dixie Chicks — Home

23. Tift Merritt — Bramble Rose

24. Kasey Chambers — The Captain

25. Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band — The Mountain

26. Gram Parsons — GP/Grievous Angel

My Top 10 Female Acts:

1. Lucinda Williams

2. Dixie Chicks

3. Emmylou Harris

4. Tift Merritt

5. Kathleen Edwards

6. Kasey Chambers

7. Jenny Lewis

8. Alison Krauss

9. Tres Chicas

10. Caitlin Cary

My Top 3 Songs for the Shower:

1. "Long Black Veil," Johnny Cash

2. "Still Feeling Blue," Gram Parsons

3. "Green and Dumb," Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers

Five Great TV-Music Moments That Get Me Every Time

1. "Blue," Angie Hart — "Conversations With Dead People" ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer")

2. "Sloop John B," Beach Boys — "The Sword of Orion" ("Sports Night")

3. "A Place Called Home," Kim Richey — "Shells" ("Angel")

4. "I Don't Like Mondays," Tori Amos — "20 Hours in America, Pt. 2" ("The West Wing")

5. "I Hear the Bells," Mike Doughty —"Look Who's Stalking" ("Veronica Mars")

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I came of age listening to the Refreshments, which was pretty challenging, since they only put out two albums before breaking up and no one else had heard of them. Lead singer-songwriter Roger Clyne has since moved on to a new band, but those first two albums stand out for so many reasons. Taken individually, they're solid pop-rock albums, but combined they form a larger emotional whole that Clyne has never quite been able to recapture: They're about a relationship, specifically the first rush of happiness and then, later, the sad dissolution of something that was supposed to last.

The Refreshments' first album, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy, is a potent mix of post-grunge pop-rock that mixes humor and heartache in equal measure while charting new territory in a genre that could be called Southwestern Rock. The single "Banditos" found some purchase on college radio, but anyone judging the band solely on the merits of that upbeat tale of robbery south of the border is missing out on the bigger issues tackled by lead singer-songwriter Roger Clyne. Album opener "Blue Collar Suicide" was a tongue-in-cheek look at the trappings of a dull relationship, but the second song hinted at the yearning that would become a hallmark of Clyne's writing: "European Swallow" roils around with a sensual spoken-word pair of verses before bursting into the chorus with "I'd do anything for you / Anything that you want me to do / It's just gonna take a little more money." By the time the album eases into "Down Together," Clyne has calmed down enough to sing about the defiant attitude of young love. "Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun / Never thought much about individuals / But he's dead anyway." This sentiment is the quiet thread pulsing at the heart of the album. As Clyne moves through the obstinate loneliness of "Mekong" and the desert desolation of "Don't Wanna Know," it becomes clear that the songs spring from a place of youthful arrogance, an almost palpable belief in the endless possibilities life can offer. Even if he's gonna be sitting in the same bar a year from now, he doesn't want to hear about it; things are bound to change.

The punk-tinged rockabilly of "Girly" is a distant cousin of country-rock, with Clyne's swaggering heartbreak belying the optimism that swims underneath: "Beat me till I'm black and blue," he tells her, then says they can do it all over again. The album is the beginning of a relationship, full of hope and positively carefree when it comes to dealing with what will be guaranteed heartbreak.

The band would only record one more album before disbanding and leaving Mercury Records, and their sophomore effort, The Bottle & Fresh Horses, was a marked step forward for Clyne's style and writing. Everything about the album feels louder, older, as if Clyne's done too much living since the first album and come out the worse for wear. This is where that guaranteed heartbreak comes into play. Right off the bat, Clyne sets a darker tone with "Tributary Otis," singing "Well I've traveled / And I've seen the things I build working / Workin' to bring me down." The punky swagger of "Preacher's Daughter" gives way to the outlaw longing of "Wanted," but on "Sin Nombre," Clyne offers up his saddest, loneliest protagonist yet:

Cracked throat, my canteen's dry

Rain won't fall from an empty sky, so I whisper Hail Marys ‘til the sun comes up ...

Well I did before what I'll do again

So forgive me father if I have sinned, but the old wood cracks before it bends

Now don't tell me that part of the story when the cowboy falls in love

When he traded in his pistol and his saddle and the stars above

When the candle’s burning down, when midnight comes around

Know the best that we could hope for is to be laughing when we finally hit the ground

Everything's different here for Clyne, and the battered maturity aids his songs. "Dolly" juxtaposes an upbeat veneer with a bitter warning for his ex to stay away. But with the back-to-back "Good Year" and "Fonder and Blonder," Clyne fully opens up and pours on the genuine heartbreak with deceptive simplicity. They're both about bitter endings, but by repeating lyrics from the earlier album's "Down Together" in the jaded "Fonder and Blonder," Clyne both concretizes the world of his songs and drives home his point that all good things come to an assured end:

Well who said absence makes the heart grow fonder

In all the pictures that you send me now

Your hair seems to get just a little bit blonder

Cars break down and people break down and other things break down, too

I felt somethin' slip when you left on your trip

And now I think I'm breaking down on you

The hell of it is that Clyne isn't singing about being done wrong or even cheating. Things just ended. Versions of the same character dot the rest of the album, from the drunken cuckold of "Horses" to the just-friends loner of "Broken Record" and, finally, the troubadour stuck in a bar who can't seem to drink her off his mind.

By the end of the album, Clyne has completely moved away not just from the overeager sound of his earlier work but also from its naïve worldview. The world is still full of life, and even love, but it's a dark, deadly place to live.

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So I crashed the car

And I turn up loud my old guitar and sing

Some Ramones or Hendrix thing...

Welcome to Music Week here at Slowly Going Bald.

The staff has been working round the clock to create a week's worth of themed content, which is sure to please, educate, uplift, entertain, and in general make you a better person. They haven't even eaten in days. That's the kind of commitment being shown here. Hey, what can I say, sometimes I take it up a notch.

I don't know exactly why I felt like doing a theme week. But I guess it's because (a) music's another important part of my life, (b) the variety seemed fun, and (c) the inherent nerdiness of planning a theme week appealed to me.

With all that in mind, what better way to kick off Music Week with a little public humiliation?

And now, in no real particular order (after the first five or so, anyway), I present:

The Top 15 Albums of My High School Years:

1. Dave Matthews Band, Before These Crowded Streets

2. Counting Crows, August and Everything After

3. The Refreshments, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy

4. Matchbox 20, Yourself or Someone Like You

5. The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse

6. Eve 6, Eve 6

7. Fastball, All the Pain Money Can Buy

8. Dave Matthews Band, Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95

9. The Black Crowes, By Your Side

10. The Goo Goo Dolls, Dizzy Up the Girl

11. Hootie & the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View

12. Eric Clapton, Unplugged

13. Chalk Farm, Notwithstanding

14. Nickel Creek, Nickel Creek

15. Green Day, Dookie

As I was putting the list together, several things jumped out at me.

• First is the list's stunning ordinariness; it's a remarkably mainstream collection of albums from the era, and there aren't any surprises in the bunch. Most of the artists are standard late-'90s pop-rock aimed at teens, and I ate it right up. Seriously, what white middle-class teen could resist the angsty allure of Billie Joe Armstrong warbling "Seventeen and coming clean for the first time ... / I found out what it takes to be a man / Mom and Dad will never understand what's happening to me"? Guy was preaching. I guess it makes some kind of cosmic sense that I shoplifted that album.

• Also, what's up with the total lack of female voices? Man. I guess that's pretty standard for a teenage guy, though, so it's not that surprising. But I'm glad I grew out of it.

• However, I make no apologies for any of the albums — well, maybe the Hootie (which you should know it took a supreme act of will just to list that one). But hell, I was 15. You do a lot of stupid things at that age. But I still own all of these albums, even though Fizzy Fuzzy and August and Everything After are the only ones still in rotation. Putting these albums on takes me back to a completely different time, whether it's the opening strings of "Pantala Naga Pampa" or the thundering drum kickoff to "Go Faster" or the mournful violins of "It's Up to You." Like it or not, these albums were around during the formative years, and they're in me for the long haul.

• But the biggest difference between now and then is that the albums on the list are relatively upbeat, or anyway they're not as dark as the stuff I'd get into later. Sure, some of the albums listed have their darker moments — the unrequited "Layla," some Chalk Farm cuts — but most of them are somewhat positive. Dave Matthews has written some beautiful songs about longing, but that's not the same as sadness; it wasn't until "Grace Is Gone" on the Lillywhite sessions and subsequent Busted Stuff (and later "Stay or Leave") that he wrote a great sad song. Counting Crows have the darkest entries on the list, and to this day, the one-two punch of "Anna Begins"/"Time and Time Again" still knocks me out. But the albums listed are generally reflective of worldview that was necessarily neutral to postive because of youth. Since then, my tastes have grown up, and out, and sideways, and have come to encompass a wider variety of singers and songwriters associated with the alt- and classic-country set. Matthews is a good writer, but he's never written anything that touches the bottomless pain of "I'm stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on / But that train keeps a-rollin' on down to San Antone." Clapton's white blues are no match for "Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)." And what can match the gorgeous melancholy of "Casimir Pulaski Day"? Like the man said, pain is where I hang my hat.

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