Music Time

Well surprise, surprise, surprise

Yeah surprise, surprise, surprise

Well surprise, surprise, come on open your eyes

And let your love shine down

                                    Bruce Springsteen 2009

A few years ago I decided to transfer all my CDs to an iPod.  That was innocent enough.  CDs had been dying a slow death, eclipsed by MP3 players, which give you the ability to have every song you ever liked fit in your pocket.  But then things got a little crazy.  I decided to enhance my collection a little bit and then realized through Amazon you can get almost every album on a CD for dirt cheap, and then download it to your ipod.  Seriously, some were a penny.  It turned into about a year long project, with the result that I got just about every album and song from my past that I wanted, along with a bunch of new stuff.  The great thing about it was it took very little time; 95% of the listening was in my car and getting albums off Amazon is super quick.

So tonight I'm going to talk about the surprises.  I'll try and stay away from the obvious ones (the Beatles have a lot of good songs? Really?)  The biggest surprise for me was Lucinda Williams. This was because I had barely heard of her and she has a strong country influence in her music.  (Remember in the 80’s when everyone used to walk around saying “country sucks”?  Man, the 80’s were great).  But her songs are fantastic and stay with you. They are a unique blend of rock, blues, and country.  The predominant theme is  broken relationships, and she's about the only singer that I can think of who makes me feel her pain (He slept and ran again? Don't worry, the next one will be your soulmate).  She puts out albums less frequently than just about any artist, but at the end of the day, my iPod says I like 37 of her songs.  Not bad.

 Another big surprise was John Hiatt.  He was another guy I never listened to in school, but he's been consistently solid, and sometimes great, for over three decades.  I was shocked when I saw 69 songs.  Listen to the songs “Perfectly Good Guitar” and “Have a Little Faith in Me” and you’ll be a fan.  John Mellencamp was also a surprise.  I wasn't really into him in college, which was strange considering we both lived in the small town of Bloomington, Indiana at the time, I saw him occasionally, and I dated his kid’s babysitter.  But over the years he has grown on me, and has had a long, impressive career.  I didn't expect 48 songs; consider him a poor man's Bruce Springsteen.

Probably the most underrated band I dug up was Drivin N’ Cryin, a group based out of Georgia who had their heyday in the 90s.  For some reason I largely ignored them, even though I was living in Atlanta at the time.  That was a mistake.  35 songs, and I've got a few albums to go.  Others that I didn’t know had so many good songs were Cracker (37) and the Bodeans (40).

For a lot of the surprise bands, I noticed a similar pattern.  They would have a popular stage for about 4-8 years, and then most of the casuals fans left.  But they were good enough to keep the hard-core fans, and financially and artistically justified in continuing to make albums.  Anyway, there were a few more surprises, but my hour is up.  Maybe I’ll do a blog of the surprise disappointments next.

Have a good night everyone.

                        JR