The home page gives a mission statement for RTH. I’ve also referred to RTH as the Uni-Mind for Rock.
I think there is another purpose it can serve. In AA, recovering alcoholics have a sponsor, the person they can call when they feel the urge to fall off the wagon weighing heavy, someone who can talk them out of making such a big mistake.
RTH should serve the same purpose. For instance: Please don’t ever let me buy another sunshine pop/orchestral pop/Brian Wilson-inspired album again!
The latest mistake I made was buying The Critters, Awake In A Dream: The Project 3 Recordings.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve been burned so many other times on stuff like this.
“Maybe there will be something as good as ‘Mr. Dieingly Sad’.”
“Maybe this one will really be of Brian Wilson-like quality.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe…”
Never is though. File this one next to The High Llamas, The Beau Brummels, and others even more forgettable.
Please help me—and tell me how I can help you avoid such mistakes.
Mining Wilson gold is risky prospect indeed. What are your thought on Beachwood Sparks. They run hot and cold for me. I prefer the side project The Tyde.
Cat Power.
I’ve tried. I’ve purchased albums. I’ve listened to them. There may be a track or two worth repeating or a duet that works, but on the whole, she leads my permanent Meh List.
That High Llamas’ “Hawaii” album really sounded great at first, but repeated listening revealed it to be totally hollow.
Hey, and what that record by King Radio, “Who is the Sick Passenger?” that a friend of mine turned me onto? Another failed Wilson inspired orchestral pop masterpiece?
King Radio is the exception that proves the rule! And come to think of it is probably a reason I keep buying these things.
Not familiar with them.
And, by the way, stop being an enabler!
Please don’t let me buy any “loner folk” album ever again. Thank you.
Please don’t let me buy any more late-’60s “dashiki jazz” albums. I own enough. I recently bought some communal dashiki jazz album by Don Cherry that put me over my limit on these things. I have to remember that I stopped taking drugs about 25 years ago.
The two High Llamas albums I like are Gideon Gaye and, I think it’s called Buzzlebee or something? Virtually every other album of theirs I found to be fairly tedious.
I’m not big on “dashiki jazz” myself, my jazz listening more or less ending with 1968, but I make a big exception for Pharoah Sanders’ Karma, featuring the massive, crazy, overwhelming, nearly 33 minute “The Creator Has a Master Plan.”
Please Don’t Ever Let Me Buy ______ Again:
Another series of Elvis Costello reissues.
Mmm…
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/jazzmat-beware-the-dashiki-wearing/
I’m not prescribing a steady diet of it! But once or twice a year I’m willing to let Pharoah phreak me out.
I also have several of the post-A Love Supreme Coltrane records (Sun Ship, Living Space, Live in Japan, etc.) and mostly can’t listen to them. And they make my wife want to stab someone, mainly me.
Well, hasn’t it been awhile for those? Aren’t we due for new ones?
I’m surprised Elvis is letting Bowie build up a lead in the reissue race.
I liked that Buzzlebee or whatever it was called, too.
But I like his work with Stereolab and Super Furry Animals better…
“Dashiki Jazz” – pure genius.
Anyone described anywhere as “the last great” rock & roll band (or any words to that effect)…last one I remember falling for was The Strokes…Pffft!!!!!
…and I mean “falling for”, in that, I purchased their album…and thought they sucked…a lot.
Hey — was my old Thrifty Music Critters post the cause of this misadventure? If so, I apologize!
I think if you collected all the great SP chunes from the dawn of rock history and assembled them in an album or travelling rock show, you’d have about 60-90 minutes of the purest pop gold; a selection of music the world actually needs to hear. But that would be it. No mas, ever. The problem is, each of the bands responsible for the SP music worth hearing is responsible for no more than one or two of those tracks each. Which makes them essentially shitty bands with shitty albums nobody in their right mind should buy.