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Saturday, January 31, 2009
CD Review: Buddy Holly - “Down the Line: The Rarities”
Buddy Holly
“Down the Line:The Rarities” (Geffen)
4 stars
This two-CD set spans Holly’s entire career and Geffen does mean entire.
Here’s Buddy at 13 singing Hank Snow’s “My Two-Timin’ Woman!”
Here’s Buddy’s early pro sides with pal Bob Montgomery, playing straight honky-tonk and proto-rockabilly! (This is the sort of stuff Buddy called “Western and Bop.” on his business cards.)
Hear Buddy and the Crickets knocking out some tunes from a 1955 rehearsal!
Hear alternate takes of classic hits (“Peggy Sue!” Oh Boy!) sans backing vocals and overdubbed piano!
And here are the apartment tapes.
Yes, the legendary apartment tapes are on “Down the Line,” 15 demos, fragments and retakes recorded in Buddy and his wife’s New York City apartment in the winter of ‘58/’59. It’s just Buddy and a guitar on these it’s just as intimate and intriguing as you might imagine. Buddy had essentially a professional tape machine at home, so these demos were good enough to be subject to endless overdubbing over the years, but here these tunes and tunelets are stark, lovely and quite moving (they were recorded mere weeks before he died). “Learning the Game” is here, as it “Crying Waiting Hoping” and the circle-closing “Peggy Sue Got Married.”
The apartment tapes are the reason most Holly-heads will pick this up, but the other sections have their moments. The Buddy and Bob stuff is fun and the outtakes sparkle (Norman Petty captured the band’s sound absolutely brilliantly, in both senses of the word) The garage tapes find the Crickets futzing around with covers, some good (Chuck Berry’s “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” Little Richard’s “Rip It Up”), some important to the Crickets’ development (“Bo Diddley”), some ill-advised (Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s “Ain’t Got No Home”), all interesting.
So, Geffen, how about every other note the man ever played?
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Review: Shearwater at Mohawk
On their latest album, “Rook,” Austin’s Shearwater employs a variety of instruments in service of a sound that is at once comforting and unsettling. The various members of the band expressed this sonic diversity Friday night at the Mohawk, at times with a presence perhaps more appropriate for a concert hall than a chilly Red River patio. Frontman Jonathan Meiburg, bravely sporting short sleeves, rotated between guitar, keyboard and banjo, although his greatest asset was his voice, which, with its old-fashioned, folk-singer bravado, was as powerful an instrument as any on stage.
Complemented by a mostly seamless effort by other members of the band, including veteran drummer Thor Harris and Kimberley Burke on cello, bass and glockenspiel, Meiburg’s vocals ranged from quiet foreboding to driving force. On “Rooks,” from the new album, Meiburg sang of an end time foretold by the death of birds; his voice, with an accompanying trumpet, turned an otherwise disturbing song into a beautiful dirge. “Century Eyes,” also from “Rook,” was equal parts sea shanty and Springsteen’s “State Trooper,” with Meiburg offering up an animal yelp at the end of the song.
Harris’ drumming was notable for his attention to detail. Subtleties such as a miniature cymbal attached to a drumstick and tied to the back of his bass drum added another layer to already complex music. Similarly, Burke used the bow from her cello on the glockenspiel to create an underlying ambiance that many bands would probably acheive using a laptop.
Last year, Meiburg talked with Statesman music writer Joe Gross about the end of the world as it related to his writing; Shearwater is certainly dark music for dark times, but it’s a very appealing darkness.
author=Peter Mongillo
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Review: The Gourds CD release at Antone’s
Certain core values hold the power to withstand a recession.
Friday night’s celebration of the Gourds’ latest release, “Haymaker,” bore the proof: as long as you have a group of steady musicians and a solid supply of libations - on a porch, a living room, or a stage in downtown Austin - nothing can really be all that bad.
The Flatcar Rattlers, a local group who formed about a year ago, opened the celebration on a high-energy note with a set of songster punk, uncorking a moonshine-laced attack that sounded as if it was conceived in a room somewhere in the North Carolina Appalachians, between a washtub bass and a stack of records by Hank Williams and the Clash.
The Archibalds followed with a set of solid alternative rock, hard-driven though uninspiring at times.
The Gourds have thrived over the better part of a decade by defying easy categorization, and the songs on “Haymaker” further expand the group’s stylistic reach.
The band opened with a couple tracks off the new disc: tight, accordion-driven “Country Love” and on-the-road dirge “All The Way to Jericho” leading into “Out on the Vine” from the band’s previous release, “Noble Creatures.”
The group controlled the mood expertly between its main poles, Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith, running from soaring multipart harmonies and Cajun-laced gospel to Allman Brothers-inspired roots rock. The thick, funky blues of “Shreveport” fused into the rock-out-loud singalong “Lower 48.”
Russell’s vaudeville delivery on instant-hit “Tex-Mex Mile” balanced Smith’s brooding deadpan on ironic blues-rocker “Luddite,” and accordionist Claude Bernard led a rousing rendition of the Irish traditional “Whiskey in a Jar.”
The audience sang along and some danced, as ounce by ounce the Tecates and Miller Lites lined up atop the group’s amplifiers disappeared into the night.
It was Antones on a Friday night in Austin, Texas. It was the Gourds celebrating a new release. For one evening, at least, troubles faded and everything seemed all right.
author=Joel Weickgenant
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