MUSIC NEWS: NEW GASLIGHT ANTHEM SONG "BILOXI PARISH"

 

Last week, a new The Gaslight Anthem song found it's way to Soundcloud. "Biloxi Parish" was performed a couple of times during the band's recent European dates. No word yet on if it's a contender for the next album.

  the Gaslight Anthem - Biloxi Parish by user761012 

The recording itself is sourced from an Australian radio show called Triple J. A bootleg is floating around featuring a large portion of the show and it's about an hours worth of FM Broadcasty goodness. What a band. Definitely, check this out below and enjoy.

The Gaslight Anthem: Metro Theatre - Sydney, Australia 5/23/11

FULL DOWNLOAD

Also the first single from the Brian Fallon/Ian Perkins project The Horrible Crowes is now available through all the various digi-retailers. If "Behold The Hurricane" is any indication, the full length album Elsie is gonna be fantastic.  

Pre-order it now at SideOneDummy.

PHOTO CREDIT: © Ryan Russell

LISTEN/MUSIC: Brian Fallon's Lost Songs

Beginning in December of 2008, The Gaslight Anthem's Brian Fallon posted a series of home/solo/cover recordings to his freshly minted personal MySpace page. "So I'm working on some acoustic songs with zero plans to make an actual record. I'd ideally like to have some songs up here for people to listen to, and maybe I'll make them downloadable, maybe not. We'll see what happens, I plan on recording while I'm home from tour during the winter. "

A cover version of Bruce Springsteen's "Backstreets"arrived first, but was shortly after pulled from the page when another alternate version of the song was featured in the Springsteen homage series, "Hanging Out On E-Street."

In continued tribute to his influences, Fallon would follow with a superb, spot on rendition of the Tom Waits penned "Cold Cold Ground." Swapping the bohemian sway of accordion prominent throughout Waits' version, Fallon tied his sparse rendition together with a soulful and swirling organ accompaniment.

But it was the third song in the MySpace postings that got people talking. Many Gaslight Anthem fans took "The Blues, Mary" as a preliminary sketch for the bands next album. The mournful tale of a street worn lovesick protagonist, it was however the first of three new original solo compositions Fallon would release. 

"Italian Lightning" would showcase the artist's wordplay talents while covering such topics as political corruption, body image issues of the American female, and the ongoing decay of Asbury Park. With no answers of his own, the narrator laments on society's unwillingness or inability to to deal with such issues and as a result the probable scapegoat solution of "Italian Lighting" -  the old school adage muttered when an inconvenient building would burn down only to find its owner shortly thereafter collecting insurance money.

Fallon would save his most personal solo song for last. Sung to a "red-shoed" sweetheart, "Tin Pan Alley" is as much a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of fame and fleeting celebrity as it is a reminder note to the artist himself and a need to stayed grounded to one's roots. Of all the solo songs it is the most fleshed out - with a simple drum pattern, backing vocals and melodic electric guitar fills.

In August of 2009, Fallon would close his MySpace page citing "Shut down the solo MySpace. There's too many folk singers these days. I'm here for the rock, folks." A year later, Fallon noted "I doubt I'd do an acoustic album or a "solo" album, but I would like to make a record people can listen to in the night time. I think I'd like to do that with a band name and some friends where we can dress like the Bad Seeds, in suits. Seriously."

While some of the solo songs would be performed a handful of times over a short solo tour, only "Tin Pan Alley" would see a physical release. Gospel Hymns, a split 7" record with Chuck Ragan was released on August 25th, 2009 through Side One Dummy Records. As for the rest of Brian Fallon's 2008/2009 "solo" songs, they remain unreleased.

Enjoy the listen.

Brian Fallon - "Cold Cold Ground (Tom Waits Cover)"

Brian Fallon - "The Blues, Mary"

FULL DOWNLOAD: Brian Fallon - Solo Recordings

Note: While "Tin Pan Alley" is included in this download, the Gospel Songs 7" is still available. So do the right thing, support good music, and put down the four bucks for this fine looking vinyl.

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD: Bruce Springsteen's Piece De Resistance

Bruce Springsteen - Lawrence Kirsch ©.

A little while back, Bruce Springsteen's Darkness On The Edge Of Town reissue was officially announced.  With more rare Springsteen than the average person could handle, it would seem that the new box set is the complete document of Darkness. But it's not.

Maybe it's because of the full length concert film but unlike the Born To Run re-issue, it does not contain a standalone audio concert. Maybe two more discs would be overkill. Or maybe it's because of the abundance of high quality bootlegs from the Darkness tour.

The 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour is considered by many fans and critics as one of the greatest concert tours of all time. Tangled up in legal battles with ex-manager Mike Appel, Springsteen was banned from the recording studio for nearly a year, until 1977 when sessions for the Born To Run followup could begin. Springsteen emerged from the studio in 1978, with a new sound, a new writing style and hunger for live performance.

While "Born To Run" was a romantic densely layered masterpiece of hope and dreams, Darkness was a stripped down album about when dreams don't come true and in some cases, hope runs out. From the first night of the tour it was clear things had changed. Already known for his captivating live performances, Springsteen was playing harder and longer than ever. Concerts stretched to three hours plus, a Springsteen standard that until recently would remain for decades. This was a guitar driven album.  The live versions of "Badlands" would feature power chords drenched in reverbed distortion and blistering extended guitar solos for "Prove It All Night". It would seem that Springsteen was out for blood.



With lessons learned from the media frenzy following the Born To Run album, Springsteen granted fewer interviews than ever before. Instead numerous concerts throughout the tour would be broadcast in full over FM radio stations, for free. Springsteen would let the music do the talking and any doubters could draw their own conclusions.

While the Houston show was chosen for inclusion in the box set, there is good reason to believe many other legendary shows from the Darkness tour remain sealed in the vaults. Yet, through the magic of bootlegging many of those incendiary performances survive to this day, in amazing quality and available now.

Roxy Night, Oh Boy, Agora Night, and Winterland, all bootlegs well known and cherished by traders for decades. But one stands above the rest. Considered by many to be the greatest Springsteen live performance ever, Piece De Resistance captures the full performance from New Jersey's Capitol Theater on September 19, 1978. Pulled from WNEW's FM broadcast, not much else really needs to be said. Listen for your self.

DOWNLOAD:
Discs 1 & 2 - Piece De Resistance: Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band at the Capitol Theater - Passaic, NJ 9/19/78
DOWNLOAD:
Disc 3 - Piece De Resistance: Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band at the Capitol Theater - Passaic, NJ 9/19/78

Another version surfaced about 5 years ago that presents the Capitol Theater performance as it was broadcast by WNEW on that warm Septmember night in 1978 complete with introductions, DJ interviews, and station breaks. Sound Quality is a little lower than Piece De Resistance but absolutely worthy of multiple listens.

FULL DOWNLOAD:
The Way It Was - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band at the Capitol Theater - Passaic, NJ 9/19/78 Un-Edited WNEW Broadcast.

PHOTO CREDIT: The header image is from photographer Lawrence Kirsch's excellent book The Light In Darkness which chronicles Bruce Springsteen's 1978 Darkness On The Edge of Town tour. It is a must for any Springsteen fan. Please check it out: http://thelightindarkness.com/home/

LISTEN/MUSIC: Social Distortion's Lost Album

When Social Distortion's fifth studio album White Light, White Heat, White Trash was released in September of 1996, critics and fans alike hailed it as a return to the SoCal band's punk rock roots.

The band's previous two albums, 1992's Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell and 1990's self titled release, explored the band's interests in country, roots, and 50's rock & roll. White Light was a record influenced more by The Dead Boys than Johnny Cash. 

Two years prior in 1994, Mike Ness entered a New York City recording studio and laid demos for what would eventually become White Light. These demos however were far different from the final release version of the album. Some songs would end up on White Light, some would see release on Mike Ness' 1999 solo record Cheating At Solitaire, while many of the songs recorded during those NYC sessions would remain officially unreleased. When eleven of the tracks were leaked nearly ten years after their original recording, fans caught a rare glimpse into Mike Ness life circa 1994 and his writing process for Social Distortion.

"Love Me Tonight" features Ness as a closed off world worn outsider pleading for love but warning to any who may answer of the darkness he carries inside. With themes similar to White Light's lyrically stronger "Through These Eyes," it was left off the final album.

"Crown Of Thorns" would find it's way onto the final release in a slightly more fleshed out version but the lyrically weak "Like You Never Done Before" would not. "Lost and Found" a fantastic acoustic charged dark country slow burner could be interpreted as the seedling for "Winners and Losers" from 2004's Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll. Next, apparently taking a page from Dee Dee Ramone's book, "Got Nothin Comin" features Ness punk-rapping over a hip hop beat and female soul backup vocals. It's most likely intent nothing more than a studio experiment. "Do It Again" could have easily served as a b-side, it's not great but it's certainly not a bad song.

A highlight of Ness' first solo record, "Dope Fiend Blues" addressed Ness' years of drug addiction more directly than ever before. This starkly haunting acoustic demo, stripped of the final version's tough guy machismo, showcases the gutwrenchingly honest lyrics - it's all pain and shame here.

Social Distortion - Dope Fiend Blues.

"I'm In Love With My Car" would also find release on the first solo album with different lyrics, a slightly altered arrangement and increased production, while "Don't Drag Me Down" would become both an album and live performance favorite.

Which leaves two songs from the session, both of which remain unreleased.  "Can't Hide" contains some of the most personally revealing lyrics about Ness' childhood years and family situation fans have ever seen from the writer:

... Jesus, god, are you there?
I get the feeling, you don`t care.
There`s a pain deep inside, I can run, but you know I can`t hide

... You need a license to drive, but nothing to raise a child
And your alcoholism and fear run deep in my blood
And the welfare lines are always longer at the first of the month

The "album's" closer returns to a lyrical theme found throughout many of the 1994 demos, a plea for love. "Don't Keep Me Hangin On" is a direct indicator of the songwriting style Ness would adopt for the next Social Distortion album, released nearly 8 years later. 2004's Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll would reveal a much happier Ness in the newly found comforts of a loving and stable family. In 1994, all that was far on the horizon for Mike Ness. But in "Don't Keep Me Hanging On," he was already dreaming of it.

Social Distortion - Don't Keep Me Hangin On

 

FULL DOWNLOAD: Social Distortion - Lost Tracks: The 1994 NYC Demos

NOTE: If you hold the copyright to any of the materials posted on this site, please contact me and I will immediately and with out contest remove the material in question.

LISTEN: The Replacements Live

As part of an apparent continued attempt to reveal the vast depths of my music nerdery, presented here for your listening pleasure are two shows from The Replacements.

The Replacements live shows were notoriously known to be hit or miss. Some shows could be life changing while others sent even the hardest of hardcore fans headed for the exit. I would imagine that these two shows would fall somewhere closer to the former.

The first captures a blistering live set from '86 recorded at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ. A few months later Bob Stinson would be kicked out of the band and the Replacements would slip into yet another of their many sonic incarnations. This set focuses on material up to and including their major label release "Tim."

The second set features Slim Dunlop and compiles recordings from The Replacements ill fated tour with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers in 1989. Slotted as the opening act, in true Replacements style the band used every opportunity they could to heckle both Petty and his fans. But it was one night's antics in particular that broke the camels back so to speak. The Replacements dressed up in drag with clothes stolen from Petty's wife and played about five songs including a nine minute version of "Walk On The Wide Side." They ended the set with Westerberg yelling something along the lines of "Last night, Tom Petty said that if we fucked up again, he would fucking fire us. Well, Fuck You, Tom Petty! And Fuck You, Nashville!"

Both sets capture the Replacements in all their ramshackle glory and seem to be sourced from either the soundboard or FM Broadcast.

DOWNLOAD: The Replacement. Maxwells - Hoboken, NJ. 2/4/86 Full Show Download.

Sample: Can't Hardly Wait
 

Sample: Left Of The Dial
 

DOWNLOAD: The Replacements. "Shit, Shower, Shave." Tom Petty Tour '89 Full Download.

Sample: Talent Show
 

Sample: Alex Chilton
 

NOTE: If you hold the copyright to any of the materials posted on this site, please contact me and I will immediately and with out contest remove the material in question.

LISTEN: Joe Strummer's London Calling

When I was about eleven or twelve I went on a record buying CRUSADE. I'd already had a good solid base with my dad's record collection. But I needed more. We had a good player and they were much cheaper to buy than CDs so naturally I bought everything in sight.

Back then there were three places I got my records. Sound Exchange had awesome stuff - bootlegs, rarities, imports, everything. But it was so overpriced I rarely was able to buy anything. For a while Flipside II Records was my go to spot. Run by a guy named Don Diego, who more than once tried to get me to join his self started religion of which the revered deity was none other than Don Diego himself, had all kinds of good stuff and was cheap. But I stopped going there when Don Diego refused to sell me a signed promo poster for Social Distortion's "Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell" that I had found buried in the bowels of the store. He didn't even know he had it, it was buried in there since the damn album came out. The last place was this local record show that was held on Sundays in the local fire department rec room (they held some semi legendary Jersey basement shows there too) and I would bug the hell out of my mom to let me check it out after church. They had everything, it was cheap, and most importantly it was close enough to walk back to if my mom refused to stop. Later on I'd graduate onto the big leagues and make the trip to Curmudgeon or Vintage Vinyl but most of my early record purchases came from that show.

Maybe that's where London Calling first came into my possession. I'd like to say I was walking down the aisle of some record store and a beam of light from heaven came down and showed me the path to salvation but really London Calling just kinda came into my possession. It wasn't immediate love at first listen. It's alot of music to ingest and while the cool kids may have been enamored from first listen, it had to grow on me. But pretty soon after it was all Clash all the time. Singles, imports, demos if it had The Clash written on the cover I bought it.

Like everyone else, I was totally captivated by Joe Strummer not only by his words and music onstage but in his interviews offstage. Strummer had a way speaking that made you want to get up, get out and do something. The rhythm and the cadence of his speech held pure unfiltered passion. He completely understood the power of radio and television as a mean of communication, a purpose it is used for less and less today. If Joe Strummer was being interviewed on the radio you could be damn sure he had something to say.

Instead of going to college I worked in a independent record store for six years, not some Coconuts. Even with our knowledgeable clientele, I was surprised to find how many people didn't know The Clash. We'd put it on both customers and some employees would ask "What's this?" It was almost guaranteed that if The Clash was playing on the overheads, someone was gonna by one of their records. When Joe Strummer passed in 2002, my friend Joe Porter and I played Streetcore everyday for two weeks.

In his years post-Clash, Strummer wandered the world soaking up it's peoples and cultures. Always with ears wide open, Strummer kept his finger on the pulse of music. His solo work and collaboration with the Mescaleros brought an eclectic mix of world music, punk, and rock&roll. But it was it BBC World Service radio program London Calling that showed us just how amazing a soul Joe Strummer really was. His combination of hand selected tracks, nimble wordplay and vaudevillian antics made for an endlessly entertaining half hour. It was the most logical step in Joe Strummer's quest to bring the sound of the streets and it's people to the masses.

If you go on Itunes you can download for free, the Americanized versions of Joe Strummer's London Calling BBC radio show. While it is eight parts long, it's a condensed and edited version of Srummer's original broadcasts. We all know Joe Strummer was great but we don't need the announcer telling us that every five seconds. So gathered here are all known recordings of the unedited original broadcast versions of Strummer's London Calling on the BBC World Service. At times the audio quality leaves something to be desired but the content is undeniable:

DOWNLOAD: BBC World Service: London Calling with Joe Strummer

I'll close this little tribute with a quote from Joe Strummer that closes the end of Julien Temple's beautiful documentary, The Future Is Unwritten. It all right there in a couple of sentences, the soul of the man and it brings me to tears every time I hear it:

"I'd like to say people can change anything they want to; and that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks. I am one of them. But we've all gotta stop... just stop following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything; this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other; it's because they've been dehumanized. It's time to take that humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed... it ain't going anywhere! They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square. Think on that. Without people you're nothing."

NOTE: If you hold the copyright to any of the materials posted on this site, please contact me and I will immediately and with out contest remove the material in question.

LISTEN: The Mystery of Paul Westerberg's 49:00.

Nowadays if an artist hasn't posted their newest release to Itunes, people assume that they've given up on music and decided to pursue a career in accounting. Despite not having a computer and giving up on Itunes altogether, Paul Westerberg seems to have keen understanding of the power and creative possibilities of the internet.

In 2008, Paul released 49:00 on Amazon as a digital download for the total cost of 49 cents. A concept album of sorts, it's one track, clocks in at 43:55 (more on that later), and can be described more or less as Paul Westerberg Radio. Each song crossfades into the next, a completely different song will pop up in the middle of another, and sometimes two songs will play at once in different channels. Kinda like driving down the road, flipping through radios stations as their frequencies fade in and out.

Some might say a clever gimmick to sell your record. An they'd be right, if it sucked. But fortunately for us it doesn't suck, it's kinda great. This is not background music, it's a good listen even if the whole one track thing does require a bit of dedication. With a running time perfectly suited for the morning drive or ride to work you wonder if maybe that was what Paul had in mind from the beginning.

Less than a month after it's release, 49:00 mysteriously was removed from Amazon. Some speculate it was due to copyright issues concerning a covers medley towards the end of the album. A few weeks later a new song 5:05 (the missing amount of time from 49:00) became available on Amazon with two price options for purchasing, 99 cents or $5.05 - either one gets you the same song. A few weeks later, 5:05 was removed from Amazon possibly due to the inclusion of a snippet of The Beatles "Oh, Darling."

So the question is, was it all a setup - Paul's roundabout comment on copyright and $1+ per song downloads or the evil empire of the RIAA stamping out a rebellious artist?

Who knows. Either way 49:00 and 5:05 are yet another document of Westerberg's career long refusal to be put in a box. And we are lucky to be a part of it.

These are hard to come by, check it out:

DOWNLOAD: Paul Westerberg - 49:00 & 5:05

Since 49:00, Paul Westerberg has continued to release new music on the cheap, some to better result than others. They are all still available on Amazon and for what amounts to pocket change these days you can grab some good tunes.

NOTE: If you hold the copyright to any of the materials posted on this site, please contact me and I will immediately and with out contest remove the material in question.