(113) Jimmy Webb –
Ten Easy Pieces
On this album Webb sings his best known songs, originally
recorded by others with elaborate arrangements and productions, with just his
piano for company. The monster hits are all present; Highwayman, Wichita
Lineman, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and McArthur Park. But
the highlight is the opener, a slowed down version of Galveston which is more
effective than the Glen Campbell original.
Webb usually has an interesting voice.
On Galveston he sounds uncannily like Warren Zevon, which led me to my
next selection:
(114) Warren Zevon –
Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School
Zevon has rightly been celebrated for a string of great West
Coast singer/songwriter albums delivered with a caustic wit. This is not one of his more admired albums
but it remains close to my favourite. It has a tremendous opening trio of
tracks; the title track, A Certain Girl and Jungle Work and the classic Jeannie
Needs A Shooter. Even the short
instrumentals dotted throughout the album provide effective support. Most of all, it contains just about my
favourite Zevon song, Play It All Night Long.
This has just about the best opening of any song – "Grandpa pissed his
pants again/He don’t give a damn" – as the song’s narrator describes a seemingly
dysfunctional family. It makes him seek
out a bar to drown his sorrows whilst imploring that “dead man’s song”, Lynyrd
Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, be played all night long. As I result, I next played:
(115) Lynyrd Skynyrd –
One More From The Road
This was the first Skynyrd live album and, I think, the only
one featuring Ronnie Van Zandt on lead vocals.
(Certainly it was the only one released during his life time.) It is one of the great live albums which presented
the band in its natural element playing its greatest hits. It also possesses the
sort of big finish to a live album that you rarely get to hear these days with
Call Me The Breeze, The Needle And The Spoon, the obligatory cover (in this
case, Crossroads) and the epic closer, Skynyrd signature piece and air guitarists’ wet dream,
Freebird. Of course, it features the other track people associate with this band,
Sweet Home Alabama. As probably
everybody knows by now, Van Zandt wrote this song in response to anti US
southern sentiments he discerned in Neil Young’s Southern Man.
By this time I had become conscious of where my choices were
leading me and so the next album I selected was:
(116) Neil Young –
Decade
This was the first Neil Young compilation spanning the first
decade of his solo career. A triple vinyl
album on its original release, it serves as the definitive primer for anyone
wanting a comprehensive overview of the period.
The epics are here: Cowgirl In The Sand, Down By The River, Cortez The
Killer and Like A Hurricane. So are his
hits including Helpless, Old Man, Harvest, Heart Of Gold and The Needle And The
Damage Done. Then there’s Ohio, Mr Soul,
Long May You Run and the brilliant hitherto unreleased Campaigner with its “Even
Richard Nixon has got soul” hook. And
yes, it also has Southern Man. After
that, I had no alternative than to next play:
(117) Drive-By
Truckers – Southern Rock Opera
Unquestionably the Truckers’ finest album, this is one of
the finest rock opera’s ever recorded. No
wonder given that it tells the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their place in Southern
USA mythology. Beginning with a Neil-esque squall of feedback, it doesn’t take
long before Southern Man is invoked. The
second track, Ronnie And Neil, is all about the Southern Man/Sweet Home Alabama
“controversy” with Patterson Hood claiming that Van Zandt and Young were
actually good friends. But this is not
the only reason to listen to this as it continues to tell the remainder of the
story, ultimately incorporating the bands recruitment of Steve Gaines (Cassie’s Brother) and the plane crash that
claimed him and Van Zandt (Shut Up And Get On The Plane and Greenville To Baton
Rouge). But the highlight to me is Let
There Be Rock, where the narrator bemoans the fact that while he never got to see the
original band, at least got to see AC/DC with Bon Scott……
……and I promise not to start tomorrow’s listening with Highway
To Hell.
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