Music Archives - Page 48 of 238

New Jimi Hendrix Album (and Video): “Both Sides of the Sky”

Jimi Hendrix Posthumous

A new Jimi Hendrix album, Both Sides of the Sky, features unreleased studio recordings that Hendrix made from 1968 to 1970. A new music video for “Lover Man” supports the album from Hendrix.

Producer and engineer Eddie Kramer worked on the album’s release. Kramer worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album released during the lifetime of the guitar great who died in 1970 when he was 27.

Songs on Both Sides of the Sky include a number of great musicians, with some songs supported by artists such as Johnny Winters, Stephen Stills, and original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding. Band of Gypsys, Hendrix’s group with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, also appears on several of the songs.

Both Sides of the Sky completes a trilogy of recent releases from Hendrix’s vaults. The series also included Valleys Of Neptune (2010) and People, Hell & Angels (2013).

“Lover Man”

One of the previously unreleased songs on the album is “Lover Man.” John Vondracek directed the video, which features archival footage of Hendrix.

Paste magazine notes that Hendrix apparently included a riff from the Batman television series at around the 1:43 mark in “Lover Man.” Check it out.

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings released Both Sides Of The Sky on March 9, 2018.

What is your favorite posthumous Jimi Hendrix release? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees

Happy Birthday Jimi Hendrix!

The Brilliance of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”

Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young & . . . Tom Jones?

Batman’s Evolution

My Train A Comin’: Watch New Jimi Hendrix Documentary

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Matthew Ryan’s “Starlings Unadorned” Exposes a New Dimension to “Hustle Up Starlings”

Starlings Unadorned

Matthew Ryan has released Starlings Unadorned, a collection of “cinematic acoustic” versions of some of the songs on 2017’s Hustle Up Starlings. The new album also features some unreleased songs and demos. Hustle Up Starlings shows a different side of the full-band versions of the exciting original album.

Ryan explains on Bandcamp that Starlings Unadorned came out of a process: “Often after you finish a new album, you have to sit down and re-learn the songs on your acoustic because of all the flourishes and skin a band brings to them in the studio.” Then, he added some other unreleased songs that seemed to fit well with the new album.

We previously posted the rocking version of the song “(I Just Died) Like an Aviator” from Hustle Up Starlings. That video featured young women portraying Ryan and his band. Starlings Unadorned includes a new version of the song.

Ryan is promoting the “new” version of the song with with a new video. Like the song’s earlier video, the new one also includes Chloe Barczak (“vocals”) and Carina Begley (“guitar”).

Gorman Bechard, who directed the video for the original version of “(I Just Died) Like an Aviator, directed the new video for the acoustic version. Once he heard this acoustic version that Ryan was releasing on Starlings Unadorned, he contacted Ryan and asked to make a new video. Check it out.

Ryan explained on Facebook how the young women in the videos for the song moved him in an unexpected way, connecting the perspective of youth to the troubles of the world today. “[T]here was this heart in [the video], this depth of story that I (as a person now more experienced by time and the beautiful and horrible things our world participates in, or observes, or does, or hopes to salve) was confronted with.”

Below is the original version of “(I Just Died) Like an Aviator.” While I love this original version, the softer acoustic version adds another dimension to the song, revealing additional wonderful layers.

As I listen to the new release, enjoying these new recordings, I find that one of the great things about Starlings Unadorned is that it opens another window on Hustle Up Starlings.

Starlings Unadorned is available through Bandcamp. Sales of the new album will help support Ryan’s summer tour with The Gaslight Anthem. Our original review of2017’s Hustle Up Starlings is here.

What do you think of the acoustic version of “(I Just Died) Like an Aviator”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Matthew Ryan: “(I Just Died) Like an Aviator”

Matthew Ryan’s “Hustle Up Starlings” (Review)

The Pines at Night (Matthew Ryan) Releases Full Album,”A Year of Novembers”

Official Video for Matthew Ryan’s “Boxers”

A “Song for a Hard Year” from The Pines at Night

“Life is Beautiful” With Matthew Ryan

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Favorite Live Albums: An Evening With John Denver

John Denver Concert One of my favorite live albums is An Evening With John Denver. Denver recorded the double album on August 26 through September 1, 1974 at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles during a time when his career was soaring. The album reveals an artist confident in his choices before a crowd hanging on every note. Additionally, the album also has special meaning for me.

In the early 1970s, we saw and heard John Denver everywhere. In 1971, he scored a hit with “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” In 1972, he released “Rocky Mountain High,” followed by four number one hits in 1974-75 (“Sunshine on My Shoulders,” “Annie’s Song,” “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” and “I’m Sorry”).

Denver also was beginning an acting career, including an appearance on McCloud in 1973. In 1975, he won the Entertainer of the Year Country Music Association Award.

The Television Special

An Evening With John Denver appeared as a television special, winning the 1974-75 Emmy for Outstanding Special, Comedy-Variety or Music. Watching the show now on YouTube, I’m reminded that there were of course additional parts of the show that do not appear on the double album, like appearances by Jacques Cousteau and Danny Kaye.

The special begins with Denver flying an airplane by himself. It would be the same way he would die decades later in 1997.

“An Evening With John Denver” Through the Years

Denver continued to record and tour until his death. And I would periodically listen to new music from him, but those amazing successful years in the 1970s must have had a special resonance for him. He gave joy to a lot of people in those years, including me.

Sometimes it is hard for a reviewer to separate a personal connection from the objective perspective. And that is especially true when I think of this album, which remains one of my favorite live albums. Yet, I cannot say whether or not it objectively is one of the best. All I know is what the album means to me.

Although the album was recorded during the summer months, it remains a winter album for me. Denver released the album in February of 1975. And my mom bought me the album at a local five-and-dime store during that especially snowy Ohio winter. I listened to An Evening With John Denver repeatedly through several school snow days.

Since then, I have periodically returned to An Evening With John Denver throughout my life. Changing technology has altered the ways I’ve listened to it. The album is among the few I have saved in LP form, but I subsequently owned cassette, CD, and MP3 forms of the album too. Later versions added some additional bonus recordings, but for the most part, the recording is still the same for me.

Now, listening to An Evening With John Denver as it streams from my uploaded collection on Google Play, I cannot help thinking back to the first times I played the record in a warm house as the winter winds blew. In it, there remains something comforting for me, like a cup of hot chocolate after shoveling snow.

All of the people who lived in that house where I first played the album are gone except for me. But I am listening to Denver sing now in my own house this winter, looking out the window at the snow while my wonderful wife is downstairs. And I cannot help but think of the thread between that winter in 1975 and now.

One of the powers of music is the connections it brings us — and the way it can bring us home.

What is your favorite live album? Leave your two cents in the comments.

With Glowing Hearts: “O Holy Night” By John Denver

Duet of the Day: Cass Elliot and John Denver “Leaving on a Jet Plane”

Charlie Rich Sets Fire to CMA Entertainer of the Year Announcement

The First Farm Aid

John Denver’s First Number One Song

The Music Is You, John Denver

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Buy from Amazon

The Song That Played Over Carl’s Last Days Montage on “The Walking Dead”

Bright Eyes Although we knew what was coming on this week’s episode of The Walking Dead for the mid-season premiere for Season Eight, it was still sad to see Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) die. While watching it, though, you might have wondered about that song that played when they showed the flashback to Carl’s days after the bite from the walker.

In the montage, we see Carl playing with Judith. We see him writing letters to his loved ones as he prepared for his death. And we hear an upbeat sounding song.

We must talk on every telephone,
Get eaten off the web;
We must rip out all the epilogues
From the books that we have read;
And to the face of every criminal
Strapped firmly to a chair,
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare.

The song was “At the Bottom of Everything” by Bright Eyes. The band features Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott (often helped by other musicians).

“At the Bottom of Everything” appeared on the 2005 album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. In the recording before the tune begins, Oberst introduces the song with a story about a man and a woman on a plane right before the plane begins to go down.

The music video directed by Cat Solen includes the story. It stars Evan Rachel Wood and Terence Stamp.

What is the song about? There are various interpretations, but at its heart is an attempt really to get at “the bottom of everything.” In other words, it is about trying to discern some meaning from life when so much of what we do is pointless.

And into the caverns of tomorrow,
With just our flashlights and our love,
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge;
And then we’ll get down there,
Way down to the very bottom of everything;
And then we’ll see it, we’ll see it, we’ll see it.

What does the song have to do with Carl in the episode entitled Honor? Maybe the producers chose the song because it gives a happy tune to Carl’s final days.

But maybe the lyrics also connected to what Carl was trying to say to his father Rick about searching for a more important end game than just surviving. Like the man and the woman on the plane, in the face of death, Carl wanted something more besides blending into the choir and memorizing nine numbers while denying we have a soul.

What did you think of the Honor episode? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Buy from Amazon

That Walking Dead Torture Song: “Easy Street”

“Westworld” is Coming to HBO

Conor Oberst on Letterman: “Hundreds of Ways”

Trailer for Season 5 of “The Walking Dead”

Pop Culture Roundup for December 2012

Mary Surratt Arrest: The Conspirator (Review)

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Who Was Blaze Foley?

Blaze Foley If I Could

Blaze Foley, who was born as Michael David Fuller on December 18, 1949, died less than 40 years later from a gunshot wound on February 1, 1989. The singer-songwriter never achieved the fame that some of his friends did, but Blaze Foley, as he became known, left us some beauty from his troubled life.

I ran across Foley’s name recently while reading John Prine: In Spite of Himself by Eddie Huffman. In the book about singer-songwriter John Prine, it mentioned that one of Prine’s recordings I really like was a song written by Blaze Foley. Prine is quoted about falling in love with the song before realizing that he had known the songwriter many years earlier. The story made me look up more about the man who wrote “Clay Pigeons.”

Foley also wrote “If I Could Only Fly,” a song Merle Haggard performed for decades before making it the title song on his 2000 album. Foley hung around in that Texas group of songwriters that also included Townes Van Zandt.

Foley lived an interesting, although short, life. Townes even wrote a song about Foley (“Blaze’s Blues”) as did Lucinda Williams (“Drunken Angel”).

Foley was shot dead in 1989 reportedly because he was protecting an old man from being abused by his son. Foley was only 39.

Below, Foley performs “If I Could Only Fly” at a friend’s wedding.

Movies and a Book About Foley

There are a number of resources to learn more about Foley, such as the book Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley (North Texas Lives of Musician Series), written by Foley’s lover Sybil Rosen about her experiences living with the singer. He wrote “If I Could Only Fly” about her.

There is a documentary about Foley’s life entitled Duct Tape Messiah (2011 and 2013), with the title referencing Foley’s practice of using duct tape to decorate his clothes. The movie was directed and produced by Kevin Triplett.

You may find out more about the documentary on the film’s website. There, you may also watch a short version of the film, Duct Tape Messiah.

Finally, Foley likely will be more well known soon. At the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, a movie about Foley recently garnered significant attention. The movie, Blaze (2018), is directed by and written by Ethan Hawke. Benjamin Dickey stars as Foley. Additionally, Kris Kristofferson plays his father, Alia Shawkat plays Rosen, and singer-songwriter Charlie Sexton plays Townes Van Zandt.

Although Foley never achieved the fame he deserved during his lifetime, somewhere there is a drunken angel laughing.