The Sage Posts

September 2008 Music Club

Scarlett Johansson- Anywhere I Lay My Head

No. (0.5 for her other ample assets)

Del Amitri- Del Amitri

Pristine, clean guitar chops. No question they can play. They can harmonize and construct interesting arrangements. My problem is that there it is too clean. I don’t feel any true emotion. And their lyrics, which tend to be overly wordy trying to cram as much verbiage into a three minute song whether it fits or flows or not, I found myself muttering shut up. Del Amitri is not a bad band, they are not my taste and will not warrant further listeing. (2)

Alejandro Escovedo- Real Animal

Oddly this is my first listen of Escovedo and I found myself wondering why. While he noted as an alt-country artist I hear a lot of Springsteen in his writing style and I could easily hear bands like Cracker, early-Wilco and the Mavericks playing his songs (I have no idea if they ever have). A few I really liked were “Always a Friend”, “Nuns Song” and “Real as an Animal”. It was very satisfying. (3.5)

Velvet Crush- Teenage Symphony

Some artists shouldn’t produce and Matthew Sweet is one of them. This disc sounded too much like a Matthew Sweet disc which generally wouldn’t be necessarily bad, but here it sounded like leftover Matthew Sweet songs. Couldn’t get past it. (2.5)

Tom Morello- Best Of

The most innovative guitarist of the last 20 years. The sounds that this man gets from electric strings is utterly amazing. Love or hate Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave there is no questioning this man’s talent. Unless he goes acoustic and plays folk music, which utterly sucks.

Standards/classic albums

Though these were my topics I had a very tough time fulfilling them.

Standards since 1980

How I determined my list- Songs that transcended generations, became part of everyday lingo or were regularly covered (either by real bands or wedding bands).

• Start Me Up- Stones
• Purple Rain- Prince
• Walk of Life- Dire Straits
• Just Like Heaven- Cure
• You Shook Me- Ac/Dc
• Baby Got Back- Sir Mix-a-Lot
• Love Shack- B52s
• Ebony Ivory- McCartney/Wonder