BOTW - The Cowboy Junkies

So a friend posted an interesting article on Facebook from The Alternate Root listing their opinion of the top roots albums of the past 25 years. Of course I was intrigued, but the most exciting part was rekindling an old flame.

Now I know you all have issues with the moniker "Alt-Country"...so you probably couldn't get past the eye rolling enough to read the above mentioned article which I recently posted on this blog. (Honestly enough with the eye rolling. You could injure yourselves - pop an aneurism or a kidney stone or something.) If you did read the article, then #9 is the flame of which I speak. Yes, The Cowboy Junkies. And despite the name, they really aren't cowboy at all.

Senior year in high school I fell in love with #9, their album The Trinity Sessions. It is a thing of beauty. Remember at this time I was mostly listening to bands you would find on MTV's 120 Minutes, or playing in your local mosh pit. So this was quite a departure for me. Unbeknownst to teenage me the Los Angeles Times named the album one of the top ten albums of 1988, and they were nominated for Group of the Year at the Juno Awards in 1990 and 1991.

The band formed in 1985 and is comprised of three siblings and an outsider all from Toronto, Canada. Their sound using the ambisonic microphone and a mix of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz has earned them both critical attention and a cult following. They continue to make albums, but none have attained the fame of The Trinity Sessions. In 2007 they released Trinity Revisited, a re-recording of the album with guests Ryan Adams (oh I love him!), Natalie Merchant and Jeff Bird among others.

If you get nothing else from this post, you must listen to their cover of The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane. Ethereal. Sublime. Even Lou Reed likes it.

I love this one too. I was never into bad boys...but singing this song could let any girl's imagination run a little wild. Misguided Angel also off of "The Trinity Sessions."

This is a sublime cover of Townes Van Zandt's To Live's to Fly off of a subsequent album "Black Eyed Man."

Blue Moon Revisited (A Song for Elvis) - what is not to love about a harmonica? Who is that girl in the video?  Who knows?

The History of Awesome

I threatened to put this link on here. And I think I will just to show there are other people out there with awesome music taste like mine. Plus it leads nicely into my hijacked Band of the Week. So there. Read if you dare...I feel a little like Vincent Price right now.


The Top 35 Roots Albums of the Last 25 Years

(o)K

I was going to start this off with a rousing version of "Kum Ba Yah", but I thought DP might never forgive me. So here goes the K's.

1. "Kamera" - Wilco. Makes me want to go make some photographs. Or dress up like a hobo. Not sure which.

2. "Kick Drum Heart" - The Avett Brothers. They are just so adorable...the number 1 reason you should like a band.

3. "King of Birds" - REM. "Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold." They are poets, I tell you!

4. "Kiss Off" - The Violent Femmes. Best top ten list in a song. I especially like # 8.

5. "Know How" - Kings of Convenience. Gotta love me some Scandinavian mellow sounds. Plus Leslie Feist's voice is like buttah in this.

6. "Kicked It In the Sun" - Built to Spill. I always think Doug Martsch sounds like a smashed cat when he sings. This one totally exemplifies that thought.

7. I was going to pick your other Shins song, but I will leave it for DP. I did an eeny mo miney between several "Kiss" songs, and this one won. "Kissy Kissy" - The Kills.

Kobra KAI!!!!!!

GET HIM A BODY BAG...YEAH!!!!!

Man, if I could select that clip 1-7, I would do it.  Don't you just want to punch that guy in the face?  I hope Smith reads this because that BYU basketball player is getting it after this guy.

Here's the quick and dirty, not so flirty, run through the K's:

1) Kelly Watch the Stars - Air - Fantastic space rock song.  I don't like most of their stuff, but they have 3 or 4 KILLER songs.  EDIT:  OK, this is not the best version of the song (Moog Cookbook remix is better), but this video is hilarious.

 

2) Kids - MGMT  - "Makin' Momma so Proud"

3) Killing an Arab - The Cure - This was the final song in the set they played at Shoreline Amphitheatre when I saw them.  The place ERUPTED!  Such a fantastic song.

4) The Killing Moon - Echo & the Bunnymen - Simply one of the best songs ever written

5) Kimberly Austin - Porno for Pyros - So Perry Ferrell is kind of a scuzzy looking guy, but what a nice song

6) Kissing the Lipless - The Shins - Clapping never sounded so good.  You could get a nice strobe effect in your apartment if you had clappers set up on your light fixtures.  EDIT:  I'll be honest, if you don't like this song, you are likely a nihilist.

7) Kool Thing - Sonic Youth - This song and video have so much going for it.  This was the song that turned me onto Sonic Youth (already loved Public Enemy, so Chuck D joining up was instant cred), and the song (and Kim Gordon) are just badass.  Love this excerpt from Wikipedia:

"Kool Thing" was the first major label single from American noise rock band Sonic Youth's 1990 album Goo. It was released in June 1990 on Geffen Records. The song was inspired by an interview bassist/singer Kim Gordon conducted with LL Cool J for Spin in which the two artists clashed.^[1] Although he is never mentioned by name, the song's lyrics contain several references to LL Cool J. Gordon's lyrics make reference to several of the rapper's works, including the single "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and the album Walking With a Panther. She also repeats the line "I don't think so", which appears in LL Cool J's "Going Back to Cali". Chuck D also contributes some vocals in the song.