Bobby Charles - Small Town Talk

Joe writes: I have no idea how I came across this gem - I guess it must have been synced somewhere. It was written with Rick Danko from The Band.

How To Save American Music

Joe writes: I was at a wedding recently where Drops Of Jupiter by Train was performed. This reminded me that years ago Eddie Ruffett and I came up with a concept for a compilation album tentatively titled How To Save American Music, featuring all those tracks by mainstream North American rock bands that became hits in the UK in the 90s and beyond. Often, the bands were never heard of again over here, but their one hit still sounds great.

We couldn't persuade anyone to make this compilation album but maybe it was always destined to be Spotify playlist:

Laura Marling - Once

Joe writes: I seem to fall for Laura Marling's music more and more with each album, which I suppose is the way it should be as a young artist grows and develops. Even her style of singing, which felt slightly affected in the past, now makes sense because she seems so at ease with it. Once is the beautiful highlight of the new album Once I Was An Eagle. 

Flamin Groovies - Shake Some Action

Joe writes: The Flamin Groovies are playing London soon, for the first time in 30 years. Should I go? If I do it will just be to hear this song, which I first heard on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 1 show Out On Blue Six many years ago. It has been a big part of my life ever since. It was produced by Dave Edmunds in 1976 and featured on the Clueless soundtrack in the '90s.

Throw Your Hatred Down

Joe writes: Another thing I found while sorting through some old possessions was a set of tracklistings for cassettes I'd made for friends when I was in my teens. Many of the songs on there are still close to my heart but I'd completely forgotten this one by Neil Young from the Mirror Ball album made with members of Pearl Jam. Now I've listened afresh the lyric speaks to me and it's a beautiful melody only partially buried under a non-production.

Wayne Kramer - Wild America

Joe writes: Wayne was the guitarist in the MC5. Wild America is from the nineties, when he was signed to Epitaph Records. I'm not sure why I was reminded of it but it is a great tune with real bite. It's not on YouTube or iTunes but it is on MySpace which is something to be said for MySpace I suppose.

I Drove All Night - Roy Orbison

Phil writes: I've heard this a lot recently. Although he didn't write it, and recorded it late in his career, it's up there with his classics as far as I'm concerned.

 

R.I.P. George Jones

Phil writes: A great country singer has died.  I first heard this track covered by Elvis Costello  -  very well, I thought. But this sounds majestic and the two voices go well together.  He did write a lot of the songs he recorded but this was written by Jerry Chesnut.

my new favourite Dylan cover - Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues by Nina Simone

Joe writes: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blue isn't one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, or wasn't until I heard Nina's restrained version of it. It's my new favourite Dylan cover and one of my two favourite Nina Simone tracks.



Here's my other Nina favourite, Little Girl Blue, which borrows from Good King Wenceslas:



and while I'm on the subject of classic tracks that borrow from Christmas carols, here's Joni Mitchell's River with its debt to Jingle Bells:

Phosphorescent - Song for Zula on Jimmy Fallon

Joe writes: Nice performance of my favourite track of the moment

Hi, my name is Stereo Mike

Joe writes: While looking through old possessions in my mum's house, I came across these Bran Van 3000 beer mats which reminded me about their awesome but odd debut single Drinking In LA. Odd because there's a DJ talking over the intro about giving away Bran Van 3000 tickets. Awesome because it's such a tune, with that fabulously loose groove, a singalong chorus to rival Tubthumping, and a lyric which captures the mindset of wasting time getting drunk when you could be getting famous. Bran Van 3000 are Canadian and they're still touring apparently but the rest of their career was always likely to be overshadowed by this extraordinary debut single.

Grandaddy - AM180

Joe writes: For years I've been racking my brains trying to remember which American indie record from the '90s inspired MGMT so much. Of course it was this.

DJ Jurgen presents Alice Deejay - Better Off Alone as sampled by David Guetta on Play Hard

Joe writes: This is one of my favourite Euro dance tracks. I love the build up to the vocal (which doesn't come in until 1.17). I love how simple the lyric is; they were right to resist the temptation to write any more. Basically it's perfect.

I once experienced a big moment when Judge Jules played this at El Divino in Ibiza. Judge Jules is now an entertainment lawyer. I wonder what DJ Jurgen and the rest of Alice Deejay are doing now? Wikipedia suggests Jurgen might still be a radio DJ in The Netherlands, probably playing the David Guetta tune that samples Better Off Alone I imagine. Wikipedia also confirms something people might have forgotten - Alice Deejay had a top ten album in the UK.

Sometimes It Snows In April - Prince

Joe writes: NME declared Prince's Parade as the album of 1986, back before they were obsessed with white indie rock. Years later I borrowed it from my local library, copied it on to cassette and remember being moved to tears by Sometimes It Snows In April as I walked home from school along Cemetery Road. It might have been April, it might have been snowing, probably not though.

Prince has an army of lawyers keeping his music off YouTube so here it is on Spotify:

Phosphorescent - Song For Zula as featured on Grey's Anatomy

Joe writes: I didn't go to SXSW this year but I did download a couple of compilations of bands playing the event and felt I wasn't missing much until I heard Song For Zula. Then I saw it on Xfm's playlist, then in Spotify's "most viral" chart, then I discovered it was on Grey's Anatomy, all in the past 24 hours. What a beautiful piece of music, with echoes of Bette Midler's The Rose, Streets Of Philadelphia, and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

Fryars - On My Own

Joe writes: Love this new single from Fryars - better than anything Tame Impala have done.

Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man

Joe writes: When I hear Bruno Mars on the radio I'm impressed and annoyed in equal measure. Impressed because time after time he writes a hit song with a good old-fashioned melody and lyrical concept. Annoyed because I think why aren't more people doing this? I'm not sure Bruno would have been a world-beating artist any time before 1990, but in the current era, he's streets ahead of the rest.

The 100 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs according to Rolling Stone

Joe writes: I just spent a long flight listening to Bob Dylan and reading Rolling Stone's Special Collectors Edition of 40 years of Dylan interviews. They also asked a panel of Dylan experts to create a list of his 100 greatest songs. The top ten is here. Like A Rolling Stone is no. 1 - fair enough. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall is a rather surprising no. 2.

Blood On The Tracks is one of my favourite albums of all-time, and it's surely the best Dylan album from beginning to end. This is reflected in the chart which features nine of the ten tracks from the album. The Blood On The Tracks outtake Up To Me also features at no. 49. Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts is the one Blood... track that doesn't feature and it's the closest thing to a weak spot on the album; musically it's a little generic in a way that wouldn't be out of place on one of his recent albums.

Dylan has written so many great songs that you can make a list of his 100 greatest and still leave some out.

The glaring omission is To Make You Feel My Love, which I wrote about here, and which set Adele up to have one of the biggest albums of recent times after her version benefited from various reality TV performances, boosting her profile shortly before the release of her 21 album.

They also left out Sign On The Window, a gem from New Morning that hasn't received the Coen Brothers treatment (yet):

And their list of the best Dylan covers missed Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity's version of This Wheel's On Fire, presumably because Absolutely Fabulous was bigger in the UK than the US:

Emmylou Harris - Here, there and everywhere

Phil writes:  With all the Beatles stuff there's been in the past year, I was wondering why they hardly feature on WGM.  The reason must be that their music, which is clearly amongst the world's greatest, is so well known that we assume readers of the blog will already know almost anything we might post.

However, a great many of their songs have been covered and there are some excellent versions which may not be that well-known.  This is one:

Richard Manuel of The Band - I'm Just A Country Boy

Joe writes: My dad bought The Band's 1993 album Jericho at the time of release. This was its highlight and the first time I'd heard this gloriously simple song, recorded by Harry Belafonte but made famous by Don Williams. Country Boy was a posthumous inclusion on The Band's album - Richard Manuel who performs it had committed suicide in 1986.

I learnt from Wikipedia that the song was co-written by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers who was credited under the alias Fred Brooks because he'd been blacklisted in the McCarthy era.