New Tunes

There are so many posts that I am just putting off here. Rutneskiland has been busy contending with the reality of some of those New Year resolutions. The baby on the way is wearing Car out. There is a lot of prep work involved in preparing to sell a piece of property that you live in as well. All of my computer time winds up being a real estate hunt instead of music pontification.

However, I am due to post my Bradlee awards for the best music of 2008. There has been a lot of great music to look back on. I'll try to get that together soon.

Until then, I have been digging the tunes that my brother in-law set me up with this Christmas.




BRMC - Baby 81
Out of this world. This one may be making the list for 2008. I'll say more then.




AC-DC - Live
This brings me way back to my mullety adolescence. As a kid, I was all about the showy lead guitar playing of Angus Young. But as an adult looking back at these songs now, I am far more interested in Malcolm Young's rhythm guitar work. The guitar production and song structures are so solid.




Tom Waits - The Black Rider
The first and only time I heard this album was just before Christmas in 1993. There is a great radio station out of Western Connecticut State University. The DJ had decided to play the album in its entirety. I was driving to a friend's house on an extremely snowy evening. Here I am, alone in the stillness of this evening. There was not another car to be seen, not even tracks in the fresh powdery snow on the road. Christmas lights lined the still and sleepy houses. If you haven't lived in an area that is prone to snowy winters, you are really missing a magical effect that nature can have on geography. Snow can be treacherous, but it can also take spaces that you only know as being alive with human activity and turn them into the most serene landscapes with a fresh coat of white devoid of a single soul. It can be eerily otherworldly. For the duration of that ride, mine was a world that was one of slowed time, solitude, and breath taking beauty. On comes this album. This has to be the most abstract Waits album that he has ever made. It plays like the score to a musical set in a circus side show from the depression and directed by David Lynch. Perhaps even a companion to William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch." It is out there and random, but bazaarly cohesive. I wound up meandering the neighborhoods of Southbury for the duration of the album. The combination of my environment and its soundtrack were so surreal.




Martin Denny - Exotica
Awe Yeah!! Where are the tiki drinks?