Faves and Raves

[Len Bullard <cbullard@HiWAAY.net>]

A top 5, 10 or 20 list is always transient
in my musical menus.  Much of what I
listen to depends on what I am learning
for the band or strip mining for chops.
The best I can do is look at the stack
next to me and say what is being cycled
more often right now:

1.  Common Ground:  Good album overall but
Kate Bush's track is the best of the collection.
It is on top of the stack because it satisfies
the hunger for Kate's voice better than
even her own TRS.  It is spare, unadorned,
and relaxed: the mature Kate Bush. 

This is also the most beautiful
piece of modern recording work I have
ever heard.  It is as good as any classical
work by any classical composer ever put to
digital encoding.  Were she to make an album
of this quality, she would never have to make
another.  I cried the first time I heard it a few
nights ago.  Indescribably sad and yet so
strong and sure.  Kate doing what Kate does best
and leaving me ever more helplessly in love with her.

NOTE:  If she doesn't receive recognition from
the Grammy's for this recording, there is
no justice, no god, and maybe the grammy
organization is the mafia-infested bunch
of ugly malicious thugs implied by its reputation.

2.  Mary Chapin Carpenter:  Come On Come On.
Elegant melodies, emotional delivery, a very
attractive voice, and some clean precise 12
string electric work reminiscent of the jangly sound
of the mid 60s.  Hip and home.  Accessible.

3.  Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits:  no explanation
needed.  This body of work feeds most of the
Southern Rock/Muscle Shoals sound.   Where
I live, you get this with mother's milk and you
play it every night a little bit different.  No one
gets to call himself a blues picker that can't
Pickett.

4 . Pointer Sister's Greatest Hits:  my ladies
give me happy feet.

5.  History of British Rock:  Vols 3 and 7.
It's a generation thing.  Once pop music
provided hope instead of the urge to
take heroin and shoot oneself from boredom.

6.  Ave Maria:  don't ask.  You wouldn't believe
me anyway.

7.  Melissa Etheridge:  I like to cover songs
by female artists.  Most guys in bands don't
have the balls to do it, and the gals get to
sing to songs they know the words to.
Yeah yeah I know:  she's singing about
women.  So am I.  Grow up out there.

Ok.  Artists that always are somewhere in
my CD player bag:

1.  Kate Bush:  no contest.  I need her music
like I need love, sex, and hot coffee.

2.  Gordon Lightfoot and Simon&Garfunkel:  these
are my roots and they paid for my college
education.  Left to my own devices without the
band, I always return to this style.  A Happy Traum
picking style is the best to have for solo work
so toss James Taylor in there too.

3.  The Beatles:  want to write pop? You have
to do time at the feet of Lennon and McCartney.

4.  Johann Sebastian Bach:  if you can play
this, you can play anything but if you don't
do it everyday, it goes away.  Nonetheless,
for any style you play, here are the correct scales.

5.  Elton John:  mostly the early years before
feathers and fox capes.   The work with Paul
Buckmaster is his best.  All he got later
was sophisticated and sober.

6.  Steely Dan:  ever seen these guys live
or performed their songs?  The best American
pop of the late 20th century.

7.  Marty Robbins:  the work with the Glaser
brothers is the classic southwest sound.
Want to play fast and rhythmic?  Try to do
the licks on El Paso.  Lots of luck.

I don't list my own albums with the band.
I don't listen to them.  I listen to our new
songs a lot, so after the album is released,
I'm burned on it for years.

len bullard
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/