Listening to our CDs, in inverse order of artist name. Today's letter, kids, is the letter T.....
T Bone Burnett
Talking Animals
T Bone Burnett never really captured my interest, except maybe as a producer. Maybe I haven't discovered the right album yet. This album is ok, sort of 'just passes time' though.
Rachid Taha
Made in Medina
Just bought this, but like it a lot. Sounds like Arabic (Algerian, French) indie rock, or how I would expect Algerian/French indie rock to sound. A couple of songs are skippable, the majority aren't.
Talking Heads
Long one of my favorite bands, the Heads emerged strong, got stronger, then sort of peter out into pop music towards the end of their career. Some of the later albums I never replaced my vinyl copies, because it just wasn't worth it. David Bryne is a kindred soul, in some respects.
Fear of Music
I Zimbra is just mediocre, especially after multiple listenings, but the rest of this album is classic. Some great lyrics (“Find a city/Find myself a city to live in”) and consistently interesting musical interludes confirm that this is a Desert island disc. One of the best of the Heads oeuvre, which says a lot.
More Songs About Buildings and Food
My first T-Heads album (on vinyl, used, from the Record Exchange on Guadalupe on the “drag”) still holds nostalgic hold on my listening sensibilities. Great album, more sparse rhythms than later TH releases. One of my all time favorite songs: Artists Only (I'm cleaning again, I'm cleaning my brain), plus many others means this is yet another
Desert Island disc. I must be going to reside on this desert for a long time. Oh well, at least I'll have good tunes.
Remain in Light
Another near-perfect album. Much, much more dense than earlier albums. probably because Brian Eno is a producer/composer. Once in a Lifetime is a little over-played, but if you can clear your aural passageways, it is a good song after all, and a very interesting video. Born Under Punches (Life During Wartime) is just spectacularly polyrhythmical cerebral dance music, with added guitar bits by Adrian Belew. One of the few 5 star-rated songs I have in iTunes. Desert Island disc.
“The world moves on a woman's hips/The world moves and it swivels and bops/The world moves on a woman's hips/The world moves and it bounces and hops.”
Sand in the Vaseline
Bought this for a couple of dollars once, and surprisingly liked it. Several songs I didn't own, and they were good. Go figure. If you are looking to buy one CD to fulfill your need for Head, this is a good overview.
Speaking in Tongues
Some good songs, but nothing on this album is spectacular. This might be the last Talking Heads worth getting, chronologically speaking.
Stop Making Sense
If you have room in your collection for just one THeads album, don't buy this one. Not bad, but in nearly every case, the original songs pack a lot more oomph. Live albums are notoriously difficult, elusive to capture what makes a band compelling, even a band as good as the Talking Heads. B+, or B depending on my mood.
77
Great debut album. Much more sparse, lean than later Brian Eno productions. Would have loved to go to CBGB in 1977, and seen these songs performed live. Just misses being classified as a Desert Island disc.
I liked this description from Allmusic:
All pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that came across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy.
The Name of this band is Talking Heads
Spectacular live album, recently released on CD for the first time, and expanded to 33 songs. Desert Island disc.
Tarbox Ramblers
Discovered this band through the website of Tom Tomorrow aka Dan Perkins (here). As an aside, nearly all the political blogs that I read were referred by Tom Tomorrow. Strange how that works.
A fix Back East
Modern Blues-tinged Indie rock.
Stolen from Ted Drozdowski at Amazon:
Some tunes, like “The Shining Sun” and a cover of Dock Boggs's “Country Blues,” stomp as hard as a bona fide juke-joint band, with bold drumming and guitars that grind and squeal out ecstatic slide lines. Others, like “Ashes to Ashes” and “Were You There?,” use droning chords, simple beats, religious imagery, generous reverb, and leader Michael Tarbox's dark vocal intonations to create mist-shrouded soundscapes that raise the music's old spirits. There's also Dan Kellar's jazz-influenced fiddle, which adds a lonesome, crying voice to the title track and other cuts and, along with Johnny Sciascia's two-step upright bass, propels the hymn “No Night There” toward Nashville.Good stuff.
Tarika - Bibiango
. I have no idea of the pedigree of this CD. Sounds like something vaguely West African. Excuse while I check me some internets.....OK, Madagascar. Hmmm, not bad, not spectacular. B-
North African music, with electric guitar. From Mali, actually. Very good stuff. Discovered via an Uncut Magazine disc sampler (Robert Plant issue), also one track on the Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara.
Since its release in 2000, Ichichila has quietly assumed the status of a “desert blues” classic. Tartit are a group of musicians from the Timbuktu area of Mali, which explains the similarity of this music to that of their better known neighbor Ali Farka Toure. He draws heavily on Songhai and Tuareg traditions, while Tartit are Tuareg tribes people whose nomadic lifestyle seems to have prepared them well the for the international tours they now find themselves undertaking. Onstage they are a picture of grace and dignity with the men’s faces veiled and the women's proudly exposed--a unique reversal of the usual dress codes found in many Islamic cultures. Their songs are based on timeless hypnotic grooves created with only the sparsest arrangements. Unlike that other well known Tuareg group Tinariwen, the music of Tartit is largely “unplugged! ”. They sometimes use a single electric guitar, but more often their cyclical melodic motifs come from the scrabbling notes of the Tuareg lute (tehardent) or fiddle (imzad). Rhythm is supplied by the softly booming tindé drum and insistent hand claps, over which call and response vocals, (usually led by the women) ululations and sudden screams pile on the atmosphere. This is music to sway rather than dance to; they play most of it sitting down in a semi-circle and you might just want to lie down and chill for much of it. - John Lusk.
Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers
Gritty, gut-bucket Chicago (electric) blues. Not bad.
James Taylor Greatest Hits
Ok, I have this album, and I even like a few songs. This doesn't besmirch my indie-cred, does it?
Television
Marquee Moon
Can a band that only has one superb album be essential? Television says yes. Great, great album, possible desert Island Disc.
Temptations Anthology
Besides the ballads, I really like this set.
Thalia Zadek Been Here and Gone
quite, intense indie-rock. Not my favorite introspective album, but in a certain mood plays well with others. Sort of like a depressed Nick Cave, or maybe like music to listen to right before brutally slaying your in-laws, or something.
Richard Thompson (and collaborators), not including Fairport Convention.
Richard Thompson is one of the best guitar players, ever, and is sometimes a great lyricist as well. Frequently melancholy, even dour, yet with plenty of humanism peeking through the gloom.
“The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine - I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millenium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites - they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection. My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001. That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully receive a few more airings. The idea is that Popular Music comes in many forms, through many ages, and as older forms get superceded, sometimes the baby is thrown out with the bathwater - great ideas, tunes, rhythms, styles, get left in the dust of history, so let's have a look at what's back there, and see if still does the trick. I am unqualified to sing 98% of the material here, but me having a go could be considered part of the fun. Also, trying to render an Arthur Sullivan orchestration with acoustic guitar and snare drum is pretty desperate stuff, but may, at a stretch, be thought ”charming.“ What appears on this CD is a performance, rather than a chronological, distillation of several different shows - hence some gaps in the 17th and 18th centuries, and too much weight on Music Hall and Rock & Roll - we just felt that some performances weren't quite captured - perhaps on Part Two?”- from RT himself
Also includes Prince, Stick McGhee, the Who, Squeeze, etc. If you have a sense of humor, get this CD. Well, especially if you know the music of Britney Spears, and you know the music of RT. Might not be as funny if you don't have context.
Across a Crowded Room
You can't cry if you don't know how is the lyric of the first song, When the Spell is Broken. Ahh, yes, chant that to yourself for a few moments to feel its import. Other standouts include: Walking Through a Wasted Land
I'm walking through a wasted land
/Of soft sell concrete and rust
/What ever happened to this country?
/Where is the hand you can trust?
and I Ain't Gonna Drag My Feet No More. Solid album, not quite a Desert Island disc, however. A-.
Amnesia
Good cover, modestly successful album. Another A-. A couple of spectacular cuts: Waltzing for Dreamers, especially
Beat the Retreat
One of my favorite “tribute” albums, songs performed by X, REM, Dinosaur Jr., David Byrne, Beausoleil, Five Blind Boys of Alabama, etc. The only song that isn't well done is Bob Mould's hacking up of Turning of the Tide. Too bad, because the song itself is quite good, and usually Bob Mould is effective doing what it is that he does. Oh well, high signal to noise ratio, for sure.
Daring Adventure
Meh. For Richard Thompson, a lesser-release, though still several good songs (Al Bowlly's In Heaven, the novelty song, A Bone Through Her Nose) on it. Certainly a second tier album, but then, RT has never put out a 'bad' record (though, I have never listened to the out-of-print Sunnyvista).
First Light
Seems a little disco-tinged, (recorded in 1978) and I don't really care for the song, Sweet Surrender, though others do, but the rest of the album is decent. Not an essential part of the RT catalog, especially since it is currently out of print, and listing at Amazon for $35. Sufism-tinged, if that matters.
Front Parlour Ballads
Just received this album. Recorded and produced in RT's home studio. Ask me in a month if I like it as much as I think I do....
Guitar, Vocal
Spectacular early compilation (Hannibal records, now defunct I believe) covering the period of 1967-1976. Desert Island disc. If this was the only RT album I'd ever heard, I'd still be a fan. As it was, this was the second album I bought (after buying the soon out-of-print Small Town Romance), and soon fell in love with it.
Hand of Kindness
First album after RT's very public divorce of his long time musical partner and wife, Linda Thompson, and also an almost-reunion with Fairport Convention (Dave Pegg, Simon Nicol, Dave Mattacks, even producer Joe Boyd). A-. There's an alternative version of Heart of Kindness available at iTunes as well.
Hokey Pokey
Linda and Richard Thompson's second album together, while not quite as transcendent as their first, is still pretty damn good. A few points off for the stupid song, Smiffy's Glass Eye. Almost a desert island disc.
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Linda and Richard Thompson's first album together, and easily one of my favorite recordings. Desert Island disc. Great blend of folk music (from England and elsewhere), guitar explosions, and melancholy delight. Every song is classic. I even like the cover a lot: scrawled graffiti, or something.
Danny Thompson and Richard Thompson - Industry
meh. Not above average. Not much of a fan of Prog-Rock, doesn't swing enough for me.
Mirror Blue
AllMusic complains about the Mitch Froom production, but it doesn't bother me. Well balanced set, acoustic-based weepers, some rockers, some wry humor. A-.
Mock Tudor
More rock than folk, with brisk sounds and up-tempo melodies, for the most part. I should listen to this album more often.
More Guitar
Guitar pyrotechnics, recorded live in 1988. From Amazon:
someone had a DAT machine rolling on the evening in 1988 when Thompson and his band played the firestorm of a set preserved on More Guitar. One of the tracks on this album, a nine-minute workout on “Can't Win,” was previously released as an example of Thompson's live prowess on the box set Watching the Dark, and most of More Guitar is every bit as jaw-dropping as that stellar performance. The set list is strong, concentrating on the then-current Amnesia while also paying a few visits to gems from the back catalog (including a surprising version of Henry the Human Fly's “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”) and a pair of choice covers. The band is one of Thompson's better road units, with the always welcome John Kirkpatrick on accordion, Clive Gregson and Christine Collister adding lovely harmonies, and drummer Kenny Aronoff driving the show like a locomotive. But the real draw of this disc is hearing Thompson go gloriously nuts on electric guitar, and his frenzied down stroking on “Don't Tempt Me,” the over-the-top string bends and modal insanity of “Gypsy Love Songs,” and ominous Stratocaster gunfire of “Shoot out the Lights” are manna from heaven for fans of the man's electric work. And even the most subdued numbers on this set display a passionate emotional intensity that's gripping and beautiful. In short, this was unexpectedly a show for the ages, and More Guitar allows Thompson fanatics to hear it at their leisure. Those who enjoy the more pastoral side of his music may be a bit put off, but if you love to hear him rock out, you've got to hear this disc
Pour Down Like Silver
Desert Island disc - just so many good songs on this album.
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Richard Thompson and his wife Linda had converted to the mystical Islamic discipline of Sufism when they recorded this stark, riveting folk-rock album, which retains its powers as a uniquely spiritual document long after the couple's subsequent divorce and Richard Thompson's migration beyond its shaping doctrines. Modern listeners are left with a bracing essay noteworthy for such classics as “Streets Of Paradise,” the brooding valentine of “For Shame Of Doing Wrong,” the classic folk-rock love song, “Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair,” and the powerful dirge of “Night Comes In,” which transforms the image of dervishes dancing toward enlightenment into a deliberate yet hard-rocking climax worthy of Neil Young--with accordion, no less.
Rumor and Sigh
More of a straight-ahead AOR/Adult Contemporary album than some others, though the subject matter is still heartbreak, death, and modern ills. A-.
Shoot out the Lights
Possibly a desert island disc, but probably just misses due to overplaying. Still a very good album, brooding, slinky guitars.
A large part of listening to music is autobiographical. Where in your life did you start listening to a certain artist? What was your mood? How did the music resonate with your emotional state. Small Town Romance was the first Richard Thompson album I owned (on vinyl). Soon after I purchased it, the album was deleted from the Hannibal/Carthage label because Richard Thompson wasn't pleased with his own performance. I didn't listen to the album much at first, but then my girlfriend at the time left me for a fast food heir, moved out of our small 2 bedroom house rental, and took most of her furniture. This happened perhaps in February, maybe March of what was supposed to be my last semester of school. Suddenly Small Town Romance became a daily soundtrack for my pitiful life. I would sit on my front porch, drinking Bushmills with Frangelica, or just Bushmills on ice, or sometimes red wine, smoking Drum cigarettes, and flipping this album from side one to side two, over and over, crying and generally feeling miserable and sorry for myself. I ended up getting incompletes in two classes, and a D in another (really messing with my GPA that was finally creeping toward a 3.5 after a few semesters of adjustment when I was but an immature lad of 17).
Anyway, I wore out Small Town Romance for nearly a month, started getting drunk by noon, missing classes, etc. I got out of the funk after a while, and then started going out with Deanna Miesch later that spring. She really cheered me up, and we were quite happy together for a few subsequent years, going to Europe together, moving to Chicago together, etc. If I had her address, I'd thank her for saving me from suicide. In retrospect, I don't even know why I was so depressed about being left, the girl who left me wasn't even very compatible with me, nobody in my family really liked her, etc. Could have been also pressure about graduating college with a useless B.A. in liberal arts. Who knows.
As far as Small Town Romance, years later, Richard Thompson was finally convinced to re-release it on CD, and listening to it still brings a certain pensive emotional mood over me. Which is why listening to music is always an autobiographical thread.
Starring as Henry the Human Fly
Another near Desert Island disc (you'd think I like this RT guy or something). Roll Over Vaughn Williams has a great guitar lick, for instance, and a chorus that cries: “Live in Fear, Live in Fear”. Allegedly was Warner Brothers worst selling album ever, at least at one time.
Strict Tempo
collection of instrumentals. Meh. Not bad, but....
The Old Kit Bag
Good album, not great. Nothing that grabs me by my emotional lapels and shakes me to my core, but not everything can do that I suppose.
Watching the Dark
Very good compilation (3 disc set) album.
You? Me? Us?
meh.
Timbuk3
Austin based band, now defunct, I believe, consisting of husband-wife team, plus boom-box. Saw them several times, always was a good show. On vinyl, I owned their first three albums, but on CD, only the greatest hits collection.
Field Guide: Some of the Best of Timbuk3
Clever lyrics, mid-tempo songs. Probably like this album more than it deserves due to nostalgia for my Austex slacker days in the late 80's-early 90's.
Tinariwen Amassakoul
Massively cool North African blues-drone music, just purchased. Another good suggestion from Robert Plant.
Toots and the Maytals
Reggae pioneer, still touring (though when I saw Toots Hibbert at the Park West recently, felt like he was just coasting). Mixture of James Brown, The Temptations, maybe a little Otis Redding, and Jamaican Rastafarian sensibility.
Funky Kingston/In the Dark
Two best albums, combined into one 21 track-long dance party. Happy music. Possible desert Island disc, especially for the songs Funky Kingston, Pressure Drop, 54-46 Was My Number, and Take Me Home Country Roads, but some other classics too (Pomp and Pride, for instance).
Millions Living will Never Die
instrumental indie rock. They were better as Tom Ze's backing band.
Peter Tosh
Peter Tosh is very nearly an equal to Bob Marley, except for a few songs that were lesser tunes. Both men were geniuses, poets, and musicians of the highest order. However, Tosh will always be slightly in the shadow of Marley. Tosh seemed slightly more militant, also perhaps blunter in speech and appearance. And, even in my silly thumbnail reviews, I'm putting the Wailers work with the M's, for Marley, which unfairly slights Mr. Tosh. Oh well.
Honorary Citizen
Spectacular box set, covering hits, rarities, and live versions, respectively. More than worth the money. Desert Island disc.
Legalize It
Reggae, and soul music to dance to. A- only because I've heard it so damn many times.
Tricky
British Trip-hop artist.
Angels with Dirty Faces
I like this album, for some reason, but I can't quite put my finger on why I do. I don't have a very deep library of so-called Trip-hop, perhaps it is only my ignorance talking. Could be that it is sort of low-key, and downbeat, of which I don't have enough of either. Includes a collaboration with PJ Harvey on the bluesy “Broken Homes” and singer Martina Topley-Bird lets loose of Billie Holiday's “God Bless the Child” on the song, “Carriage for Two.”
Maxinquaye
“Languor and Lust”. Couldn't say it better.
Tsitsanis was born the son of a craftsman who played bouzouki but forbade his son to touch the instrument. After his father's death, however, Tsitsanis was unable to resist and rapidly became a skilled performer. Although he intended to pursue a career in law, he was unwittingly drawn into a musical lifestyle. Unlike earlier rembetika performers, however, he did not sing tales of debauched hashish consumption, but instead melancholy songs of love. His first recording, in 1937, was entitled “This is Why I Wander the Streets of Athens,” and his compositions during the occupation of Greece were widely acknowledged, although they were not recorded until after the War.
Tuva Voices from Center of Asia
Either you like Tuvan throat chanting, or you don't. I do.
Two Dollar Guitar Weak Beats and Lame-Assed Rhymes
What a great title. I maybe bought this because of the title, or because Steve Shelley, drummer of Sonic Youth, plays on it. Regardless, great melancholy, minimalist record.
