In which the Essex Boy puts on his alter ego as the Eclectic Warrior...because this is how I like it...great music is just that whether it was recorded at the start of the last week or the dawn of the 20th century; from a 2 minute pop blast or a 20 minute orchestral excursion; a funky soul stomper proves the groove as does a raw blues pot boiler; wild excitement can be found from bop-head jazzers to primal garage rockers; brilliant songwriting can be found in old-age and new world folk and yessirr...most of all...when I'm listening to a track I don't necessarily want to hear exactly the same type of tune next up, I like a surprise but reserve the right to just occasionally yearn for the most utterly predictable tune to follow...the immediate thrill can sit side by side with lengthier, challenging pieces because I have an ear and an attention span and finally...I love to hear things I haven't heard before but this does not mean that I can't enjoy a few totally familiar big hit songs thrown into the mix as well...that's how I enjoy my music, maybe some of you can live with it that way too...
In the January 2012 Elclectic Warrior playlist we have:
Flying Saucer - LITTLE WALTER, Tell Mama - ETTA JAMES (arguably the late great Etta's best 45 on Chess), Please Love Me - B.B. KING, All I Got, SAUNDRA MALLETT, Au Font Du Lac - FEUFOLLET, Baby Don't You Know - KITTY DAISY & LEWIS, Throwin My Money Away - ROSCO GORDON (listen carefully to the offbeat left hand playing on Roscos piano, did this man invent Reggae?), Kool On - THE ROOTS, Closing Time - PIETA BROWN, Fare Thee Well Miss Carousel - TOWNES VAN ZANDT, Chickasaw County Child - BOBBIE GENTRY, Virgo Clowns - VAN MORRISON (for a man with a curmudgeonly reputation, no one does joyfulness quite like Van, hear him here singing of laughter filling the room without a trace of irony, wonderful stuff from a strangely overlooked album), Que Pasa (Trio Version) - HORACE SILVER, Spy (The Simonsound Remix) - LAURA J MARTIN, London Town - THE PRETTY THINGS, You Was Me - JONNY (a brilliant Scot-Welsh union from Gorkys Zygotic Mynci and Teenage Fanclub main men that maybe should have made an appearance in my top 20 albums of 2011), Little Girl Little Boy - ODYSSEY, Excerpt From A Teenage Opera - KEITH WEST, Dirty Harry - GORILLAZ (a brace of hit tunes with sing-a-long chorus parts that really work), Committed - ROY HARPER, The House Carpenter - CLARENCE ASHLEY (as found on the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music), Rosary - MARISSA NADLER, The Snows - PENTANGLE (the legacy of Bert Jansch continues to linger and the thing about listening to lots of Pentangle is, their own varied tastes will push you back to artists like our next track...), Better Git It In Your Soul - CHARLES MINGUS, Old Stack O Lee Blues - SIDNEY BECHET (you'll be surprised to find how many of those early Jazz standards were nailed the best, with simple effortless clarity, by the wonderful Sidney Bechet), I'm Still Here - TOM WAITS (I've a feeling that 2012 might be a big Tom Waits year for me, I was drawn back to the beauty of this track after hearing David Gilmour talking about it on Desert Island Discs), Schubert: String Quartet No.12 in C minor D.703 'Quartettsatz' Allegro assai - HAGEN QUARTETT
http://open.spotify.com/user/definitelysound/playlist/1By8XiBZGoY4I5EoGnRHG6
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
2011 MUSIC TV PLAYLIST
I'm a little late off the blocks with this one I know but it's a fine hour and a half of music TV (well at least it is if you have any time for the Essex Boy Review albums of the year feature!) It includes my favourite live TV music moment of the year; the McCoy Tyner over-run on a live edition of Later with Jools Holland. It's not just the fact that McCoy obliviously grooved on past his allotted time, prompting some unmissable on screen flapping by the ever awkward host Jools. It also struck a blow for music lovers because the same edition of the show featured the gormless spray-can attitude of Liam Gallagher's Beady Eye; but there's nothing more rock'n'roll in my book than a performer getting so far into his music that he seems to completely forget he's on TV. If, on the other hand, McCoy did it on purpose to save the viewers from more Elbow, well that's pretty cool as well. Was this the moment Jazz wrestled back the reigns of credible cool from Rock for the first time since the late 60s?
Sunday, 1 January 2012
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011 No.1 - RAPHAEL SAADIQ, Stone Rollin'
Because there is no finer thing than Psychedelic Soul and this album is that very thing par excellence. Raphael Saadiq's album is a hip-shakin' treat, provin' the groove to take you higher and keep you there but there's more. This is a record dressed in a coat of many colours. There are shades of R&B both old and new, harmonica arriving direct from the Delta Blues and pastoral melotron flutes floating down from the dippy-hippy Laurel Canyon. There's echoes of Motown and the flowing funky moves of James Brown. And the song 'Day Dreams' is from a different place entirely, somewhere between jaunty '50s vocal pop and vaudeville. Above all though this is a great Soul album from a prolifically talented songwriter, performer and multiple-instrumentalist; possibly the best we've seen since Prince. He's made the best album of 2011 so don't wait around any longer, get listening.
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