Back in October when Tell Tale Signs came out, Tulip Frenzy likened it to Peter Matthiessen’s great novel Shadow Country, released earlier this year, and tying together, while wholly recreating, three of Matthiessen’s novels written in the 1990s. We wondered then if the house rules allowed for Tell Tale Signs to be considered for Tulip Frenzy’s Album Of The Year, an august designation, but one usually accorded to, well, new music. But then Shadow Country won the National Book Award, which would tend to indicate that a reworked masterpiece is still a masterpiece, no matter when portions were recorded. Besides, it was new to us. Unreleased songs from Dylan’s late innings hitting streak, some wholly new, some reworked, this was a revelation. And objectively, it was the …best… album…of…the…year. We’re grateful he put it out, for not to have had this released would have been like getting only the version of Ulysses that was sent to the printers, without the 1/3rd of the novel that the blind and aging Joyce added in the galley margins. Dylan has famously rebelled against static reworking of his material: “Why play a song the same you played it on whatever day you recorded it?” Turned this way and that, these songs reveal an important truth: that not only has Dylan’s work since 1989 been every bit as strong as anything he did in the 1960s, it’s been stronger than anything anyone else has done since then, too.
Archive for Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List
Tulip Frenzy’s Best Album of The Year: Bob Dylan’s “Tell Tale Signs”
Posted in Music with tags Bob Dylan, John Buckley, Tell Tale Signs, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley1002nd Best Album of 2008, Kelley Stoltz’s “Circular Sounds”
Posted in Music with tags John Buckley, Kelley Stoltz, Ray Davies, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Classicists — and apparently creative directors at the nation’s advertising agencies — rejoiced when Kelley Stoltz released Circular Sounds in January. It is not enough that half of the best songs used in ads in the last year came from his previous album, Below The Branches; many of the best songs from this one are — whether you realize it or not — blaring from ads for banks and hotels on car radios. And if the only way he can get on the airwaves is through having his little gems cut into zircon jingles, we’ll still take it. What the world needs now is not, as David Lowery once had it, a new Frank Sinatra: it’s a new Ray Davies. Stoltz has put out the best Kinks album since Preservation. This would have been Tulip Frenzy’s #1 choice had not a certain Mr. Zimmerman staked his claim. “When You Forget” was probably played on the TF office iPod more than any other song this year. Dollars to donuts the same thing can be said this time next year.
3rd Best Album of 2008, Alejandro Escovedo’s “Real Animal”
Posted in Music with tags Alejandro Escovedo, John Buckley, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100After Por Vida, in which a small army of A-list artists paid their respects, the world was waiting for Alejandro Escovedo to put out a record that showcased why all the accolades were understatements. The Boxing Mirror wasn’t it. And of course it probably couldn’t have been, as the record Al made as he recovered from Hep C and getting on The Program found him just a bit too brittle and unsteady on his feet. But Tony Visconti proved to be a perfect midwife for Alejandro to get down on digits the collection of songs he and Chuck Prophet wrote to tell the story of his life. With references to The Nuns and the Chelsea Hotel and his musical hero Iggy Pop, Real Animal finally did it, and now radio listeners and fans of The Boss can learn for themselves what that distant Austin ruckus was all about.
4th Best Album of 2008, Calexico’s “Carried To Dust”
Posted in Music with tags Calexico, John Buckley, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Only a band that could make The Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” sound like it was a Louis L’Amour story about a shootout in Brixton, Arizona could put out a record like this. Is Carried To Dust Joey Burns’ and John Convertino’s masterpiece? Probably. It might even be their breakthrough. Dreamy, ambitious, shooting for the moon with a Winchester rifle, this one goes down like patent medicine with a 40 proof kick. “Slowness,” should be on the juke box of every truckstop on Route 66, and “Two Silver Trees” glints with pure light and mystery. We ride at dawn.
5th Best Album of 2008, Elvis Costello “Momofuku”
Posted in Music with tags Elvis Costello, John Buckley, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Elvis says he wasn’t planning on making Momofuku, and maybe it was, in his parlance, a brilliant mistake. Whatever it was, it was a delightful return to form. Sounding like outtakes from Get Happy and Blood and Chocolate, this was the best thing he’s done since the Reagan Administration. We recently read an interview he gave when he burst upon the scene in ’78 — rude, self-confident, full of bluster. And then we read his interview when he launched his Sundance Channel talk show a few weeks ago. This album meets those two characters exactly in the middle. Thank Heaven Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve are still around to introduce the young Mr. McManus to the man he turned into.
6th Best Album of 2008, The Fleshtones’ “Take A Good Look”
Posted in Music with tags John Buckley, The Fleshtones, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Still doing the gentleman’s twist more than 30 years on, The Fleshtone’s Take A Good Look is ready for its close-up. Stardom’s eluded the ‘Tones so long, there are books written about it. Maybe Keith Streng’s “Shiney Hiney” gives a clue as to how they can keep rocking year in and year out – as far as the Fleshtones are concerned, the world can kiss it. One might take the album title as a warning that we’re not going to have the Fleshtones to kick around forever, but based on the evidence, they’re still having a ball, Peter Zaremba’s never sounded better, and the road to Hitsville, USA continues.
7th Best Album of 2008, Black Mountain’s “In The Future”
Posted in Music with tags Black Mountain, Blood Meridian, John Buckley, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Surely the title was ironic, because “In The Future” sounds like the album made secretly by the engineer when the musicians from Cactus left the studio in, oh, January 1970. Lacking the Sly and The Family Stone call-and-response dynamic between Stephen McBean and Amber Weber that was so delightful on “Drugonaut,” this is as heavy as a 3:00 a.m. nodfest in a Gastown loft. Now if only Black Mountain would give Matthew Camirand and Joshua Wells enough time off to record the ultimate Blood Meridian album, fans of Vancouver bands would have the musical equivalent of Whistler-Blackcomb.
8th Best Album of 2008, The Duke Spirit’s “Neptune”
Posted in Music with tags John Buckley, The Duke Spirit, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100The world has far too few coiled, strutting British bands with female singers and a chassis formed from the Jaguar Noel Gallagher bought when (What’s The Story) Morning Glory went triple platinum. Neptune is not as three dimensional as Cuts Across The Land, but it is a fine album indeed, filled with radio rockers like “Send A Little Love Token” and Anglo delicacies — no, we’re not talking about kippered herring — like “Wooden Heart.” Liela Moss may as well be Kate Moss on “The Step And The Walk,” the sexiest song of 2008, and the most infectious.
10th Best Album of 2008: Ry Cooder’ s “I, Flathead”
Posted in Music with tags John Buckley, Ry Cooder, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on December 8, 2008 by johnbuckley100Late in the year, Ry Cooder released the dandy I, Flathead, in which, by God, he plays certified rock’n’roll music, or something close to it. He’s come full circle, if you think about it, in that his mature singing voice sounds like Don Van Vliet’s, and damned if Cooder wasn’t one of the guitarists on Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk more than 40 years ago. If American roots music has shifted with the population from the Mississippi River watershed to the Colorado’s — Calexico is the 21st century American soul band — then Cooder’s California desert rock reveals new truths about the nation, sounds great, and is a welcome reminder of how delightful a virtuoso he is, whether jamming with Indian sitarists, Cuban bar bands, or what sounds like John Hiatt and Los Lobos.
Tulip Frenzy 