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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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June 10, 2004
Ray Charles Mastermix CD
Brother Ray's passing is unfortunate, but it does provide a good excuse to happily root through bunches of his old recordings.
It was often said that Ray Charles could sing the phone book, and make it sound convincing. Better trick: He could turn "Take Me Home, Country Roads" into soul music.
Anyway, I put together a mastermix CD of Ray for friends and neighbors. It's mostly stuff on the Genius and Soul box set. The Sings for America album has a couple of them.
It starts out more rockin' and swingin' and gradually works toward more sad ballad stuff. Something like:
I'm Movin' On
Busted
Greenbacks
What'd I Say - Parts I & II
Hit the Road Jack
Hardhearted Hannah
Let's Go Get Stoned
Makin' Whoopee
(Nightime Is) The Right Time
Hallelujah, I Love Her So
I Got a Woman
Eleanor Rigby
Unchain My Heart
Baby, It's Cold Outside (w/Betty Carter)
Georgia On My Mind
Born to Lose
Crying Time
I Can't Stop Loving You
Yesterday
Sail Away
America the Beautiful
Seven Spanish Angels
Of course, it constitutes pure criminality to leave off any number of things, but for just one 77 minute CD, this seems a decent sample.
There's one special missing item, however, with which I would love help. It's something of a holy grail in Brother Ray rarities. I'm looking for the song "Questions." It is a Ray Charles composition, the last song from the 1980 album Brother Ray Is At It Again. As far as I know, it has never been released on CD. My only copy is on a vinyl album that I'm a dozen years past having any way to play.
P2P has been no use. Anybody?
Ray Charles Is God at MoreThings.
posted by Al at 6/10/2004 10:30:00 PM
Ray Charles 1930-2004
Brother Ray has left the building. He passed today apparently from liver cancer with family at the bedside. It's unfortunate, but we've all got to go sometime. He had 73 years, and he was in decent enough health to be appearing in public on April 30, just a few weeks ago.
He's departed from this veil of tears. He had famously bad experience with death and blindness even in early childhood, yet transformed that into musical expression that brought joy, and never seemed to be wallowing in misery. Anyway, he's past all that now.
His saddest sentiments often seemed to be lined with humor though, such as "Hit the Road Jack." Or was it that his funniest sentiments were lined with sadness. Listen to his Sings for America recording of Randy Newman's "Sail Away," and that little chuckle as the slaver/narrator promises the natives the "sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake" if they just climb on board. A little chuckle from Ray could dissolve or at least steel the will against a whole lot of pain.
He could be particularly pleasingly dark and willful in his humor. Notably, he recorded "Let's Go Get Stoned" some scant few months after kicking a 20 year heroin addiction. On SNL during the Carter administration, Ray waxed sentimental about their mutual Georgia roots, claiming to feel a special closeness to the president on the grounds that "his grandad used to own my grandad."
I was privileged to see Ray live on several occasions. I was within ten feet of him for one moment as he left the stage a decade ago.
That was as close as I've ever felt to being in the presence of God. I've said that for a decade, but thinking about it more specifically I'd be meaning that more in the aspect of God being all-knowing. Perhaps the top thing I'd be looking for in a God- more even than the ability to fix things- would be understanding the things that go on deep down in the heart and soul, those things that even your family or your woman don't get. Ray, he got it more than just about anyone ever.
Oh, he was also perhaps the singingest SOB in the history of recorded popular music.
Ray Charles is God at MoreThings.
posted by Al at 6/10/2004 07:27:00 PM
June 07, 2004
New album releases, week of 6-8-2004
Most likely gamble for music fans amongst this week's new releases would be an album from Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, Transatlantic Ping Pong.
Also promising: a new album from Etta James, Blues to the Bone.
The extremely much hyped GnR loaded supergroup Velvet Revolver have their first album release, Contraband. Don't know if it's any good, but unlike Axl they have at least actually put out a damned record.
Other artists of note with new studio album releases this week include Gene Simmons, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, and Chumbawamba.
CLICK HERE for the complete list of this week's major releases. Labels: new_album_releases
posted by Al at 6/07/2004 10:17:00 PM
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