Nine Musical Discoveries of 2010

Most of these have been fairly well documented on here. But just in case you missed it (lucky you!), here are nine or so particularly fertile areas of the musical landscape that I've explored this year:

9. Mary Star of the Sea - Zwan. 2010 was the year my anti-Billy Corgan snobbery finally bit the dust. While Mellon Collie was the initial vehicle of reappraisal (it's good!), it was this 2003 outing that's stuck with me most. That the lyrics have more than a passing (and sympathetic) mention of spiritual matters doesn't hurt. Favorite tracks: "Declarations of Faith" and "Lyric".

8. Butterfly - The Hollies. Don't let the psychedelic pretense fool you, this is ridiculously tuneful and straightforward stuff, start to finish. Commercial and fun, and totally consistent release from some increasingly unsung pop gurus. Favorite Tracks: "Away Away Away" and "Step Inside" (but not "King Midas in Reverse").

7. Slaid Cleaves. Brokenhearted country-rock of the highest order. With such a keen eye for tragedy (and ear for melody), one would expect it to be a bit more of a downer, but Slaid's conflicted relationship with grace keeps a note of uplift resounding in the background. Favorite Tracks: "One Good Year" and "Temporary" and for its Mbird-relevance "Sinner's Prayer".

6. Montage. The "follow-up" project from Michael Brown of The Left Banke, a billing which this little-known album surprisingly lives up to. Favorite Tracks: "I Shall Call Her Mary" and "Grand Pianist".

5. Overnight Angels - Ian Hunter. I'd always heard this referred to as "Overblown Angels" and had therefore stayed away from Mr. Mott's third solo record. By no means his best, but that doesn't mean it's not still pretty phenomenal! Bombastic sure, yet full of Hunter's trademark sneering vulnerability. The Roy Thomas Baker production has dated remarkably well. Favorite Tracks: "Silver Dime" and "Shallow Crystals".

5a. The Artful Dodger - Ian Hunter. Released only in Norway, the first impressive gasp of Hunter's "third wave," when he emerged as the pioneer of aging gracefully. Favorite Tracks: "Michael Picasso" and "Resurrection Mary".

4. Chris Knight. Oy vey, this dude is heavy. Fortunately the talent matches the subject matter. When David Browder posted the insanely good "Love and a .45" (one'll kill you/one'll keep you alive) last year, my ears perked up. But nothing could prepare me for the deep, dark, Christ-haunted world of Chris Knight, the real McCoy if ever there was one. Favorite Tracks: "Send a Boat", "Love and a .45" and:
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Elvis Sings Blue Christmas

From the 68 Comeback Special. Never been bettered?

You Gave Me A Mountain - Elvis in Hawaii

Characteristically rousing version of one of The King's most (ridiculously) cruciform songs. Talk about the "old Adam" dying a slow death! How I wish Elvis could have heard Simeon Zahl's "Experiencing The Spirit In Failure And In Love" talk from last weekend's conference... Or at least yours truly's dead-serious "Mockingbird = Elvis Presley" opening gambit. But hey, that Ronnie Tutt sure can drum!


Another Week Ends returns next week. But not before the conference talks are posted. I promise.

p.s. Anyone else notice that Elvis' "American Trilogy" plays during the climatic scene of Kick-Ass?! Very gratifying.

Men With Broken Hearts - Hank Williams via Elvis

One of Hank Williams' greatest spoken word pieces and quite a punch in the gut. But also pretty fitting as we approach Good Friday. Williams understood the leveled-playing field of suffering better than anyone (ht DB):

You'll meet many just like me upon life's busy street

With shoulders stooped and heads bowed low and eyes that stare in defeat

Or souls that live within the past where sorrow plays all parts

Where a living death is all that's left for men with broken hearts

You have no right to be the judge to criticize and condemn

Just think but for the grace of God it would be you instead of him

One careless step a thoughtless deed and then the misery starts

And to those who weep death comes cheap these men with broken hearts

Oh so humble you should be when they come passing by

For it's written that the greatest men never get too big to cry

Some lose faith in love and life when sorrow shoots her darts

And with hope all gone they walk alone these men with broken hearts

You've never walked in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes

Or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies

Some were paupers some were kings and some were masters of the arts

But in their shame they're all the same these men with broken hearts

Life sometimes can be so cruel that a heart will pray for death

God why must these living dead know pain with every breath

So help your brother along the road no matter where he starts

For the God that made you made them too these men with broken hearts

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Another Weeks Ends: Unemployed Conversion, Galli on Love, Westerberg on Chilton, Tiger, LOST, Elvis' "Life"

1. "What I Lost When I Lost My Job" by Dominique Browning is the sort of subtle conversion story that will leave you in tears. Published in this past weekend's NY Times Magazine (of all places), she touches on pretty much every major theme of this website: justification by work(s), achievement-based identity, the death/resurrection paradigm of personal change, etc - and she does so eloquently, with deep feeling and hard-won insight. But don't take my word for it - just be sure to read to the end. Here's an excerpt from the beginning (ht SZ):

My nightmare had finally come true... Work had become the scaffolding of my life. It was what I counted on. It held up the floor of my moods, kept the facade intact. I always worried that if I didn’t have work, I would sink into abject torpor.

I have always had a job. I have always supported myself. Everything I own I purchased with money that I earned. I worked hard. For the 35 years I’ve been an adult, I have had an office to go to and a time to show up there. I’ve always had a place to be, existential gravitas intended. Without work, who was I? I do not mean that my title defined me. What did define me was the simple act of working. The loss of my job triggered a cascade of self-doubt and depression. I felt like a failure. Not that the magazine had failed — that I had. 

Elsewhere in the tri-state area, a conversion led to an admission of guilt in a 30 year-old murder case (ht WDR).

2. The irrepressibly awesome Mark Galli hits another home run over at Christianity Today with the brilliantly titled "Love Needs No Reason" (ht AZ):
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"I Know Practically Every Religious Song That's Ever Been Written" Or, Elvis Sings Gospel

Can't let the Elvis flame go out quite yet... Here's an annotated playlist of 20 of the King's best gospel recordings, interpreting the term 'gospel' pretty loosely - anything related to the Bible, God or Christianity qualified. By way of a disclaimer, almost none of EP's earliest gospel recordings are included. They may be beautiful and noble examples of the 'gospel quartet' tradition, but I find them pretty boring, at least compared to his funkier stuff from the late 60s and early 70s. I should also say that despite the obvious kitsch, this isn't meant to be an ironic or tongue-in-cheek exercise, at least not entirely so. Elvis was dead-serious when he sang these songs - for the most part - and that's how they should be listened to. His faith was not a put-on; you can hear it in his voice. It's one of the main things that make these recordings so great. Elvis could channel feeling (spirit?) with the very best of them.

1. Run On. From Elvis' second sacred full-length, How Great Thou Art. As inspired as Johnny Cash's version on American Recordings V is (re-titled "God's Gonna Cut You Down"), I prefer Elvis'. The best example of the aforementioned quartet sound.

2. By And By. Listen for the electric guitar. In context, it was very wild.

3. Adam And Evil. From Spinout, one of Elvis' final and more forgettable movies, this song notwithstanding.

4. Clean Up Your Own Backyard. Pelagianism never sounded so good! The opening line about the hypocritical back-porch preacher - "come Sunday morning he's lying in bed, his eyes red from the wine in his head/wishin he was dead when he oughta be heading for Sunday school" - is worth the price of admission alone. Admission to his penultimate film, that is, The Trouble With Girls.

5. Let Us Pray. We've covered this one already. That bass sure creeps up on you...

6. Who Am I? The only Gospel tune from his 69 Memphis sessions. Subdued but passionate.

7. Where Did They Go, Lord?

8. I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago. I don't know about you but I would've loved to have seen Peter, Paul and Moses playing ring-around-the-roses.
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Another Few Weeks End: Hitchens & Galli, OK Go, Shaun White, Big Love and more Elvis

After taking a few weeks off to ponder all things Elvis-related, and to try out a new smaller-but-more-frequent approach to posting, I am returning to the weekly round-up. Mainly in response to the surprising and flattering popular demand (a la EP...?). Regardless, it will probably end up being more of a bi-weekly round-up from here forward. Here goes:

1. Everyone's favorite evangelical atheist, Christopher Hitchens, brings us another blast of what is becoming his trademark 'insightful lack of insight' in Vanity Fair this week, rewriting the 10 Commandments [Warning: considerable language and smugness]. It is truly astonishing - in the same way that his bemoaning the offensiveness of "vicarious redemption" (aka substitutionary atonement) in God Is Not Great ends up underlining exactly what is so powerful and shocking and good about Christianity - here he unintentionally brings out the true purpose of the Law. Hitchens has an uncanny knack for voicing the exact same stale objections that apologists have addressed for centuries (as if he was the first person to think of them - objections which I had always suspected Christians were unfairly charicaturing...), almost as if he were working from a script written by a straw man-happy evangelist, albeit a very witty one. Speaking about the 10th Commandment, he writes:

"This is the first but not the last introduction in the Bible of the totalitarian concept of “thought crime.” You are being told, in effect, not even to think about it. (Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament takes this a step further, announcing that those with lust in their heart have already committed the sin of adultery. In that case, you might as well be hung—or stoned—for a sheep as for a lamb...) Wise lawmakers know that it is a mistake to promulgate legislation that is impossible to obey." You said it, Chris!

On a Hitchens-related note, apparently this is for real... It would appear that these atheist groups have no compunction about sinking to the level of their opponents. Or perhaps they're just playing catch-up? Either way it seems pretty self-defeating [ht JD].

2. On a more positive note, current Mockingbird hero Mark Galli (aka the reason we subscribe to Christianity Today) offers up another of what is becoming his trademark brilliance with "What To Do When You Find Yourself Praying To The Quid Pro Quo God".
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Thursday Afternoon Rock N Roll: The King in Need

“Prayer is the expression of a relationship. This is easy to say, and sounds a little trite. But prayer is one word: ‘Help!’ That is what prayer is. It is the cry for aid in the circumstance where there is no aid and no resources to provide aid. Prayer is the ‘Help!’ of the person whose intrinsic givens offer no way out.” - Paul Zahl's Grace In Practice, pg 246

And here's Elvis reaching out with the same sentiment, albeit romanticized, at one of his final concerts - bloated and caked in make-up but undeniably full of feeling (almost desperately so):



Finally, from a press conference in 1972, one of Elvis' greatest utterances, his supremely understated summary of the Law:

"It's very hard to live up to an image".

Three More Hunks O Burning Elvis

A trio of amazing yet divergent clips, the first one from the same movie as Rubberneckin, with a bit of an EWTN vibe. The most rockin' (post-Vatican II...) Catholic Mass of all-time?

The second from Elvis' very brief psychedelic period (sort of a "Bringing You The Gospel Vein"):

Thirdly, there's the infamous "Song Of The Shrimp", dedicated to Jeff Hual and the whole Pensacola crew (entire mini-conference now available as a single file). Goodbye, Mama Shrimp!

Tuesday Morning Rock N Roll: The King Goes Rubberneckin'

Stop, Look and Listen, baby! I realized the other day that we have talked far too little on this site about Elvis Presley. I will work to rectify that. Elvis has one of the more powerful and extensive (and underrated) Gospel catalogues around, but that's not the focus of this post. This post is about Rubberneckin. Specifically, the song off the record From Elvis In Memphis. Some may call it sacrilege but I consider those sessions to have produced his greatest recorded work. They fully capture his brief revitalization at the end of the 60s, where the greatest singer in rock n roll finally had the band and the material (not to mention the belief and the production) that his talents deserved. He had the monkey on his back again, for a year or so.

My third favorite tune from that era (behind "Wearin That Loved On Look" and "Suspicious Minds") is "Rubberneckin'", which features in his final film, the cleverly titled Change Of Habit, where Elvis plays alongside Mary Tyler Moore as a doctor who falls for a plainclothes nun. Most of the movie sees Elvis fulfilling the Law of Cool in various scenarios - in the way that only he could - but the Christian overtones at the end of the film, where the camera flashes between the King crooning to a bunch of sick children and the King of Kings hanging on a Cross, have got to be seen to be believed.

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