The Rose Of England- Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit
Thought It Would Be Easier- Shelby Lynne
Space- (Universal Love Remix)- Prince
There's Still Time- Peter Wolf
Kool & The Gang- Kool & The Gang
Take Me Out- Franz Ferdinand
The Man Who Loves The Rain- Robyn Hitchcock
The Rose Of England- Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit
After "Jesus Of Cool" and "Labour Of Lust," each successive Nick Lowe album felt just a bit more disappointing than the one before it....back then. "The Rose Of England" sounded better than ever last week. Here's the title track, but you should revisit the whole album. It's a winner.
Thought It Would Be Easier- Shelby Lynne
Picked up a few dozen records last week. It wasn't a typical haul. This batch had a number recent releases instead of the usual six Graham Parker albums and six Carole King records, including the very out of print "I Am Shelby Lynne," which, like the Nick Lowe above, sounded better than ever.
Space (Universal Love Remix)- Prince
I once made a mix for the shop that included the Shelby track above followed by this Prince track. People loved the segue. Maybe you will, too.
There's Still Time- Peter Wolf
Another record in that batch was "Midnight Souvenirs." I couldn't just keep going with Shelby who sings the duet with Peter Wolf that opens this record. A killer track, indeed, but so is this one.
Kool & The Gang- Kool & The Gang
How many bands have a debut single named after themselves?
Take Me Out- Franz Ferdinand
That's right. This record was also in that collection. I don't remember having feelings about this album one way or the another when it was released. But when FF hooked up with Sparks for FFS, my interest piqued and this one sounded great last week.
The Man Who Loves The Rain- Robyn Hitchcock
Are you sitting down? If not, sit down. I think I am starting to really dig Robyn Hitchcock. Listening to the Soft Boys "Underwater Moonlight" a few weeks ago after not hearing it for 30 plus years, knocked me out. I forgot how brilliant that record was. So, I listened to "A Can Of Bees." Good, not great. Next up, Robyn's most recent "Shufflemania." Excellent! Why now? I can't answer that. It just happens. Don't give up on music, kids! You never know when something is going to hit.
10 comments:
That "I Am Shelby Lynne" lp is just sooo good. The very first song, just rivets your attention and it never lets go from that point.
Peter Wolf has had an awesomely consistent solo career.
I could never get into Robyn H either, although I thought I should (wheelhouse, etc). Then I heard some (recent?) live acoustic recordings. Mostly covers, funny, warm, likable. Now even his old stuff/Soft Machine seems better than I remember.
Plenty of others I should now revisit.
Thanks, Sal.
"Underwater Moonlight" is a career highlight, so "Can of Bees" was going to be disappointing.
You should relisten to "Robyn Hitchcock" -- I still think it's a brilliant late-career album.
Would The Monkees qualify for the first single being the group name?
Was 'Bad Company' the first single off the debut album 'Bad Company' by Bad Company?
Robyn Hitchcock has released some lovely stuff. My fave is the album Eye.
C in California
Shriner,
"Robyn Hitchcock" was the first album I really enjoyed. Might have even written about that at the time.
The debut single of my band The Michael Giltz Experience was in fact "Michael Giltz Experience." I can't remember why we didn't use "the" but maybe it was the label, second-guessing us as always. Does that still count?
Elroy, the Monkees theme is a great call and one of the rare examples where a band used it's name in a really good song (another example of course being Wang Chung with its call to "everybody wang chung tonight!"
Sadly (and surprisingly) though the theme song was the fourth single from the band, preceded by the brilliant "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm A Believer" (both deserved #1s) and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" which peaked at #2. Even more surprisingly, the theme song from the show didn't chart at ALL. Anywhere in the world! Except for Japan, because everyone is big in Japan at some point, including of course the UK band Big in Japan, whose first single was ...."Big In Japan."
Mic drop.
This new year's music has me bored so I turn to your lists to see what I might want to listen to. Often your picks are not available on my platform of choice, Spotify. This time both the Wolf and Lynne songs were not. But I added my old iTunes library that's full of the CD's I burned back in the day to Spotify through the Local Files option and found those songs there. Finding the CDs would be too much trouble.
I think the 80s Nick Lowe albums are all fantastic. So many great tunes and good playing from the Cowboy Outfit, or whatever he was calling them on each album. I just listened to Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit this weekend while I was out and about and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Shortly after the Rose of England came out, I saw Nick and band open up for Elvis Costello and the Attractions on what happened to be Elvis' birthday. Nick mentioned it was a special day for Elvis, who he said was "our Rose of England." And then proceeded to play the song.
I saw Robyn Hitchcock solo a couple of years back and he was very enchanting. I didn't know many of the songs; even so, I thought the show was great and would recommend seeing him if he swings by your town someday.
Bill
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