Music Library: Miles Davis

Yeah, like I'm going to write a comprehensive overview of Miles Davis' legacy in a blog post.  The guy went through so many phases that you could write a whole book on any one of those periods (recommended: Phil Freeman's Running The Voodoo Down on Miles's electric period).  So I'm going to stick to a few words about the albums I have, thanks.  I do want to mention how much I like, as a non-horn player, that Miles played the trumpet, the brassiest and most declarative of popular horns.  Where saxophones and sax players tend to expound in million-note expressions, being the Modernists of horn players, Miles used the trumpet for short bursts of profundity like a Zen master of jazz.  Dizzy Gillespie is the only other major trumpet player I can think of, and Dizzy tended to go for longer note-flurries.  But Dizzy also left a lot of room in his sound, and Miles expanded that same sense of space to incredible effect.  Miles was also a genius at assembling sidemen.  To most effectively play the part of cool, removed Zen master, he needed a band around him that would generate incredible heat and light, and he almost always achieved that.

Birth of the Cool (recorded 1949-1950, released 1956).  A collection of early sides that Davis released that happened to create the paradigm for the original West Coast gangstas of cool jazz.  Unlike most cool jazz dudes, Davis wasn't white, but like most cool jazz dudes, Davis was classically trained and he liked heroin.

Bags' Groove (recorded 1954, released 1957) and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (recorded 1954 and 1956, released 1958).  These albums share tracks from a session where Miles included Thelonious Monk on piano.  The problem with having two worldchanging talents in the same room is that immense talents are usually attached to immense egos, and the two men apparently did not get along well.  There was a rumor that they came to blows during the session, but Miles explained later to one of his biographers that these rumors were ridiculous because Monk was a much larger man than Miles, and Miles would never fight a guy who was sure to beat his ass. The results are pretty tasty, though.  On Bags' Groove, only the title track was from this session, which also included Milt "Bags" Jackson on vibraphone.  On the Modern Jazz Giants, all of the tracks except, ironically, Monk's "'Round Midnight" are from that session.  The rest of Bags' Groove is from an earlier session from 1954 with Sonny Rollins on sax.  The other track on Modern Jazz Giants is from a 1956 session with Coltrane on sax and the Red Garland Trio rounding out what jazz historians call Miles' first great quintet.  I hope the roster is enough to indicate that these albums are quite good.

Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1955, released 1956), 'Round About Midnight (recorded 1955 and 1956, released 1957), Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1957), Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1958), Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1959), Steamin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1961).  These are the albums by Miles's first great quintet (Miles, Coltrane on sax, Red Garland on piano, Philly Joe Jones on drums, Paul Chambers on bass).  Coltrane's first albums as a bandleader are with this same group sans Miles.  If you like hard bop, this is where it is at, the best example of the form.  The New Miles Davis Quintet album is the weakest of these, but it's far from weak.  The rest are extraordinary, although their punch has been a little dimmed by the fact that they are so well-known.  Start with Relaxin', which is my favorite.

Miles And Monk At Newport (1958).  This is half of an album that features Miles' 1958 band on one side and Monk's contemporary band on the other.  The musicians didn't play together, and each half has been expanded and released as its own album.  I don't have either, though.

Milestones (1958), Kind Of Blue (1959), and Someday My Prince Will Come (1961). If you are a fan of jazz, you probably own a copy of Kind Of Blue.  If you do not, you should remedy this immediately.  On these two albums, Miles was opening up a modal model for jazz that more or less revolutionized that way that musicians could improvise in music by getting rid of the extensive chord changes of hard bop.  Although Coltrane left his quintet for two years after the recording of the first great quintet albums, he rejoined the band for Milestones, which features said quintet plus Cannonball Adderley on alto sax.  Milestones is fantastic, but on Kind Of Blue, Miles' band rip open the songs in a completely new way.  The Kind Of Blue band has Jimmy Cobb on drums instead of Philly Joe Jones and Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly alternating on piano, but otherwise is the same as on Milestones.  It's one of the best examples of recorded music that there is, and that's not hyperbole.  Someday My Prince Will Come is a continuation of these ideas with mostly the same band (although Hank Mobley joins Coltrane on one track and replaces Coltrane and Adderley on most of the others).  It's a great album, too.

Porgy And Bess (1958) and Sketches of Spain (1960). The composer and bandleader Gil Evans contributed quite a bit to Miles' modality, although these are easily some of his most accessible albums for people who aren't fans of jazz.  Sweeping orchestrated arrangements dominate both albums, and some purists argue that it isn't jazz.  Get used to that idea because it will come up again and again over Miles' career.

Seven Steps To Heaven (1963) and Live In Japan 1964.  These albums don't have much in common, but they're both transitional.  Seven Steps features much of what would be Miles' second great quintet.  Live In Japan is a bootleg from Miles's tour with the great Sam Rivers on sax, the only time they would play together. Both are killer on their own terms and a glimpse of the greatness that was about to erupt.

E.S.P. (1965), Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965, Miles Smiles (1967), Sorcerer (1967), Antwerp Blues October 28 1967, and Nefertiti (1968).  These are the albums by Miles' second great quintet, which featured Miles on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums.  It's significant that Miles' first great quintet did not play together very long, and in fact, most of their recordings were made over the course of a few days and consisted of standards and songs by other writers.  The second quintet was together for a number of years and most of their work was written by members of the quintet.  They were, in a real way, a band like few others in jazz, but quite close to the more democratic and committed concept of a rock band.  E.S.P. is a fitting title to their first album together, because the members appeared to share a single mind and purpose.  The Plugged Nickel box is a recording of two nights in December 1965 that features the quintet knocking out standards and older Miles tunes.  Miles Smiles, recorded late in 1966, shows how well the rhythm section was meshing with the horn players.  Like all of these, really, it's a barnburner.  Antwerp Blues is a bootleg and it cooks. Sorcerer and Nefertiti are the best of these, though, with the quintet firing on all cylinders (minus the tacked-on track with singer Bob Dorough [of Schoolhouse Rock fame] from 1962 at the end of Sorcerer).  These albums are perhaps the finest example of a hard bop quintet looking to break through to something new, and they left Miles with nowhere to go but outside of the realms of what people had hereto considered jazz.

Miles In The Sky (1968), Water Babies (recorded 1967-1968, released 1975), Filles de Kilimanjaro (1969), and Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, 1965-1968.  This is the sound of the quintet in transition.  Miles In The Sky has Hancock playing electric piano and Carter on electric bass for one track, along with George Benson's electric guitar on another. Water Babies, which wasn't released for almost a decade, has the classic second great quintet on three tracks and the In A Silent Way variation on three.  It's decent material, but not as great as the studio releases of the time.  Filles de Kilimanjaro has the electricified quintet on three tracks, but replaced Hancock with Chick Corea and Carter with Dave Holland on two tracks.  Notable: the Wikipedia page says that Stanley Crouch says that Filles is "Miles' last great jazz album." This is because Crouch is completely wrong about anything that happens after 1968.  If you should ever watch Ken Burns' Jazz miniseries, this will explain their omission or demotion of pretty much everything after hard bop.  The Complete Columbia box is redundant with the albums of the second quintet, but features a few more outtakes, as well.

In A Silent Way (1969) and The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions (1969), and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (recorded 1969).  With both cool jazz and two of the greatest quintets in hard bop under his belt, Miles begat jazz melded with psychedelic rock and post-Stockhausen compositional music.  Critics of time did not know what to make of it.  They call it fusion, but much of the music they called fusion thereafter lacked Miles' sensibility and restraint.  In A Silent Way is an ouroboros, much like Finnegans Wake, with each of the  two tracks winding back around to the same piece of music that opens them, and each seamlessly flowing into the other.  It is a perfect album, and often I will say that it is my favorite album, even though there are about a dozen albums that could claim that dubious distinction.  The music is both driven and introspective.  Unlike almost all jazz that preceded it, it is wholly a studio invention, with producer Teo Macero editing together the tracks from different recordings.  It is the shape of music to come, and its influence can be felt throughout the sphere of interesting music regardless of genre.  Lineup is Miles, Wayne Shorter (sax), Tony Williams (drums), Dave Holland (upright bass),  Herbie Hancock (electric piano), Chick Corea (electric piano), Joe Zawinul (organ), and John McLaughlin (guitar).  The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions includes a few tracks from Filles de Kilimanjaro, a few tracks that would drop on later compilations, and the rough tracks that became In A Silent Way.  Bitches Brew, recorded a few months later and released in April 1970, has an even greater cast of musicians and employs even more editing by Macero.  I do not have a copy of that album, but I do have a copy of the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, which includes all of the tracks from Bitches Brew along with alternate takes, outtakes (many of which showed up on Big Fun, released in 1974), and rough tracks edited down for the album.  While considered a landmark recording, to my ears it is the inferior of both the studio album that preceded it and the one that follows, which is perhaps due to the mutable lineup including a number of musicians new to Miles' crew.

Juan-les-Pins, France July 1969, The Lost Quintet Bootlegs, Discs 7-12 (all recorded November 1969), and Live At The Fillmore, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time. Miles could not take his cast of thousands (ok, it's really about 20 or so) who played on Bitches Brew out on the road with him, so he compiled a new quintet, often called the Lost Quintet because they never recorded an album together in the studio.  At least they didn't record as a five-piece, since I believe all of them play on Bitches Brew.  The group is Miles, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette replacing Tony Williams on drums.  It's About That Time is an official release but the rest of these albums are bootlegs.  And oh, sweet voodoo, are they all great.  It's About That Time is a recording of Wayne Shorter's last show with the lost quintet.  Some of these also feature Airto Moriera on cuica and hand percussion.

A Tribute To Jack Johnson (recorded 1970, released 1971) and The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (recorded 1970).  My other favorite Miles album is A Tribute To Jack Johnson, which is the most heavily spliced album in Miles' catalog, pulling together chunks of music from many different sessions and ideas, along with a small portion of "Shhh/Peaceful" from In A Silent Way.  Where Silent Way is introspective, Jack Johnson is aggressively funky and psychedelic.  The interplay between John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock's guitars on the section called "Willie Nelson" is the closest to atonal noise that Miles ever reached, and its ugly beauty can rip your heart out.  Unlike some of the other Complete box sets, The Complete Jack Johnson box is disc after disc of rough tracks.  Some of the outtakes crop up on Big Fun and Live-Evil, true.  But of any of the Miles box sets, this is the one that peels back the mask and delves into the wildly creative process with abandon.  Awesome, in the sense that dumbstruck awe is my primary response to this music.

Black Beauty: Miles Davis At Fillmore West (April 10, 1970), Miles Davis At Fillmore: Live At The Fillmore East (June 17-20, 1970), Isle Of Wight (August 29, 1970), The Cellar Door Sessions (December 16-19, 1970), Live-Evil (recorded 1970, rel. 1971), Live In Belgrade, November 3, 1971, and Live in Cologne, November 12, 1971.  These albums show how Miles was focused on his live sound over this year-and-a-half despite some churn in his band.  After Wayne Shorter left, Steve Grossman stepped in on sax, and can be heard on Black Beauty and Miles Davis At Fillmore.  Gary Bartz took over on sax and Keith Jarrett joined as a second keyboardist by the time of Isle of Wight (a bootleg with one live track from the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival [one can hear this in its entirety on the new Bitches Brew Live album] plus outtakes from the Bitches Brew Sessions and the Jack Johnson Sessions and, strangely enough the later On The Corner sessions).  Bartz and Jarrett were still in the band for the stellar Cellar Door Sessions, some of which popped up on Live-Evil, which was chronologically Miles's next release after Jack Johnson. Chick Corea was out of the band by this time, and Michael Henderson had replaced Dave Carter on bass.  Awesomely, John McLaughlin joined the band for one of the sets, which was, I think, the only time McLaughlin played with Davis live. Live-Evil also features more Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson outtakes.  By the time of the tour that the Belgrade and Cologne bootlegs were taken from, Jack DeJohnette was replaced on drums by Ndugu Leon Chancler with Charles Don Alias and James Mtume Forman replacing Moriera on percussion.  The Cellar Door Sessions is the best of these, but any and all of these albums are stunners.

On The Corner (1972), The Complete On The Corner Sessions (1972-1974), Right Off: Complete Live At Paul's Mall, September 14, 1972, Live At On The Corner September 24, 1972, In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall (September 29, 1972).  It is hard to express how incredible On The Corner is.  Bringing together the groundbreaking editing work from the previous five albums with a sense of psychedelic groove taken from funk, the propulsion of krautrock, and a repetitive structure taken from Stockhausen and minimalism, On The Corner synthesizes all of these into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, which is the essence of Miles' genius.  There are 20 musicians credited for On The Corner, including two electric sitarists and four percussionists.  The Complete On The Corner Sessions box includes rough tracks for On The Corner, tracks that would later turn up on Big Fun and Get Up With It, and previously unreleased outtakes.  It's almost as good as the Complete Jack Johnson box.  Right Off and Live At On The Corner are bootlegs recorded shortly before the official release In Concert.  All are excellent.

Big Fun (recorded 1969-1972, released 1974) and Get Up With It (recorded 1970 - 1974, rel. 1974).  These are two compilations released in 1974.  Big Fun reaches back to the Bitches Brew Sessions and has outtakes from Jack Johnson and On the Corner, as well.  Get Up With It has four tracks recorded after On The Corner (with the great Pete Cosey on guitar) and four from prior sessions back to Jack Johnson.  Both albums are phenomenal, and surprisingly coherent given their disparate recording times over a rather tumultuous period for Miles.  But Get Up With It has "He Loved Him Madly," a 30-minute tribute to Duke Ellington that is basically proto-ambient music (and Brian Eno has discussed how influential it was on his own ambient music).  "He Loved Him Madly" is astonishing, even in the context of Miles' consistently astonishing output of the time.

Black Satin: Tokyo June 19, 1973, Olympia July 11, 1973, Dark Magus (March 30, 1974), Another Unity: Tokyo January 22, 1975, Agharta (first set, February 1, 1975), Pangaea (second set, February 1, 1975), and Unknown Sessions bootleg (1972-1976).  Four bootlegs and three live releases from the period in which Miles had the twin lead guitars of Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas in his band.  This is the heaviest funk-space-jazz-krautrock-head music ever made, and considering its relative inaccessibility, it is the great lacuna of Miles's career.  The Unknown Sessions include some of the amazing recordings Miles made in the mid-70s with Cosey and Lucas.  Some tracks from this period cropped up on the Complete On The Corner box, but most are still unreleased.

Music From Siesta (1987). Unfortunately, Miles released only live albums and compilations between 1972's utterly brilliant On The Corner and 1981's tepid The Man With The Horn. I'm not a fan of Miles in the 80s, where he seemed more lost than anything.  Music From Siesta is not bad, though, with its deliberate references to Miles's Gil Evans period. Considering how many brilliant, game-changing, genre-shaking albums were in Miles's past, however, "not bad" is a damning assessment.

Music Library: Mike Watt

If you read this blog, you surely know that Watt was so key to the whole DIY post-punk movement that words like "seminal" and "essential" fail to capture how important his music is.  One of the guiding figures behind The Minutemen and fIREHOSE, Watt is practically a secular saint. I may be guilty of engaging in hyperbole sometimes, but this is on the level: the guy makes amazing music, made a lot of amazing music possible, and still is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth dudes you could meet. There's not a lot of people you can say have given to the world far more than they will ever receive back, but Mike Watt is one of them, a guy whose whole life is a labor of love.

Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and BH or TB Outtakes (both 1995). Watt's first solo album is a who's-who of indie rock from the late 70s to the mid 90s.  His collaborators include members of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, that dog, Beastie Boys, plus Nels Cline, Spot, Evan Dando, Frank Black, Hank Rollins, Epic Soundtracks, Flea, Dave Pirner, Bernie Worrell, and Kathleen Hanna, who delivers a scathing and hilarious monologue via answering machine about why she won't be appearing on the album, which is even funnier because a) it is on the album and b) it winds up with an insistence that Watt return her Annie soundtrack.  It's an ass-whoopin' great album.  The outtakes include a cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "Dominance and Submission."

Contemplating The Engine Room and Contemplating Live Bootleg (both 1997).  Watt's next trick was to record an intensely personal and touching rock opera with only two collaborators, Nels Cline and Stephen Hodges.  The narrative is autobiographical, comparing the life of Watt's father, a sailor, with the journeys Watt made as part of the Minutemen using a nautical theme.  The latter half of the album explicitly deals with Watt's grief over losing his dad and his best friend, Minutemen guitarist D. Boon.  This is a sublime album, as much a statement of purpose and philosophy as an expression of joy and sorrow. The trio mixes new melodies and riffage with elements of Minutemen songs and Cline's unique guitar freakouts, and the overall effect is, well, astounding.  The bootleg is marred only by bad sound.

The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004).  Watt nearly died in 2000 from an infected perineum.  His third solo album is a song cycle that compares his illness and recovery to Dante's Divine Comedy with an organist replacing the traditional guitar spot.  It's powerful material, but also the first Watt album that I rarely revisit, mainly because it's a little too alien to my ears and a little too intense for listening pleasure.  That said, when I do hear it, I never regret it.

Random songs: "Pushcart," "The First Cuss," "Walking The Cow," "Stomp," "Bass Bit For Bryce," "For E's Cousin's Baby's Baptism," "Like A Ghost On Fire," and "Little Blue Gene."  A handful of loose tracks here, including a Daniel Johnston cover and a Beefheart cover.  There's a new Watt solo album due to drop next month, and I almost held this post until I could hear it, but I've been dragging my feet too long.  I'm sure Watt himself wouldn't want me to hold my oh-so-important thoughts on Miles Davis back on his account.

Music Library: Michelle Shocked, Michio Kurihara, Mickey Baker, Midlake, Midori, Mike Doughty

Michelle Shocked - Arkansas Traveler (1992).  She's not my favorite songwriter, but Shocked's collaborators on this album are some of the best musicians of the last 40 years, and her approach to the material is surprisingly light and fun.  Among the people who play on this album are Pops Staples, members of The Band, Uncle Tupelo, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

Michio Kurihara - Sunset Notes (2005). Kurihara is a legendary Japanese psychedelic guitarist who plays in Ghost and often sits in as a fourth member of the mighty Boris.  This solo album covers a wide range of styles and will please any fan of, well, psych rock.

Mickey Baker - The Wildest Guitar (1959). Mostly known for "Love Is Strange" (a song that always brings Sissy Spacek in Badlands to mind), Baker played on many of the seminal hits of the rock and roll era.  On this instrumental album, he demonstrates a style that is so advanced for the time that it is practically the blueprint for the blues-less blues of the Velvet Underground and all that followed.  Robert Quine usually made a point of mentioning Baker's influence. You can hear it here.

Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006).  This is a next big thing band from 2006 that unfortunately bores me to tears. They sound like Gerry Rafferty and Bread and cocaine, and I guess I can appreciate that 70's Laurel Canyon soft rock sound a little bit sometimes, but usually it's despite the production, not because of it.  This album is hard to hear because it seems that the production is all that it is. I remember 70s radio; I don't want to relive it.

Midori - Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto In D Major, Op 35: Allegro Moderato (with The Berlin Philharmonic, 1998) and Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, Concert For Violin, Piano and Orchestra in D Major (with Nobuko Imai and Christoph Eschenbach, 2001). I'm way too much the dilettante to tell you anything about Midori's style or skill.  She plays this lovely compositional music very well.  Per my modus operandi for classical music, I will now reclassify these albums under the composer's name.

Mike Doughty - "Sunkeneyed Girl." Not being a fan of Soul Coughing, I'm not much a fan of Doughty.  This song, it's okay.  Off a comp from some time in the past, I believe.

Music Library: Michael Hedges, Michael Hurley, Michael Jackson, Mike Nix

Michael Hedges - Breakfast In The Field (1981), Aerial Boundaries (1984), and Best of Michael Hedges (2000). Hedges was an amazing stylist on the guitar, but he considered himself a composer above all.  What you call him isn't important, though, because the first two of these albums are utterly amazing. He was great when he was writing music that employed elements of 20th century composition, and these albums are that. Hedges released a number of later albums before his premature death in 1997, but although he was passionate about singing on his albums, I find his vocal tracks painful. I saw the guy in concert a number of times - in fact, his cover of "I Misunderstood" in a 1992-ish show is what led my friends and me to Richard Thompson's music - but I found his originals in the more traditional folk/rock sense to be not so good.  I don't know if there's an compilation that focuses on the compositional work on later albums and leaves off the singing and the goddamn flute, but that's an album I would consider a worthwhile investment.

Michael Hurley - Blueberry Wine - The 1st Songs (1965), Armchair Boogie (1971), Hi Fi Snock Uptown (1972), Have Moicy! (with Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick and The Clamtones, 1976), Long Journey (1977), and Snockgrass (1980).  Hurley is a delightfully loopy folk songwriter who is one of the best alive at creating timeless songs with one foot in the past and one in the present.  The best of these is, of course, Have Moicy!, which is as much the work of Peter Stampfel and Jeffrey Frederick as it is of Hurley. I stuck it under Hurley's name more or less randomly.  The Hurley albums are all worth a listen or thirteen and are jam-packed with catchy melodies and clever little chunks of wisdom.

Michael Jackson - "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." Not much of a fan of Jackson, am I?  I actually like all of Off The Wall (which I used to have on vinyl, but must have lost along the way) and listened to Thriller enough as a child to remember every single falsetto "whee-hoo!" And that's all I need.

Mike Nix - three demos.  My buddy and former bandmate Mike writes good songs.  He's in a band in Nashville, but I forgot their name and can't find it on his Facebook page.  Dammit, Mike, what's the name of your band?

Music Library: Meters, MF Doom, MGMT, Mice Parade

The Meters - A Message From The Meters (recorded 1969-71).  Although this may cause irreparable damage to your view of not just me but perhaps your entire relationship with music, I cannot fail to inform you that the Meters are quite funky.

MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday (1999), MF (with MF Grimm, 2000), Mmm...Food (2004), and Live From Planet X (2005).  So there's Danger Doom, DOOM, King Geedorah, KMD, Madvillain, and later Viktor Vaughn, but here's MF Doom himself.  Should I file these all together under any particular name (say, DOOM or MF Doom) or keep Daniel Dumile spread out through my library?  I don't know, but if you have an opinion, please share it.  It seems a little confusing to hit Doom at so many different stages of his career in so many different places in the library, but, then again, maybe that's by design.  So these albums spread from Doom's relatively rough first solo album under this identity to an EP collaboration with MF Grimm that's fairly contemporaneous with the first album to Mmm...Food and Live From Planet X, both of which feature Doom at the height of his powers.  Well, the former is significantly better than the latter.

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (2007). Pretty good rock album that managed to fall upwards on its release into some now-embarrassing (or so I hope) hyperbolic prose from the critics on the strength of being fairly inoffensive.  Unfortunately, while I find it likable enough, I can't remember anything about it some five minutes after it ends.

Mice Parade - Mice Parade (2007). Now this is more memorable.  Mice Parade is a post-rock band that's been around for a while, and their output is quite varied, apparently.  This album reminds me of Gastr del Sol's last album Camoufleur, which has a similar mix of folk, jazz, noise, and big rock.  I suspect that Mice Parade, like Gastr del Sol, cannot be judged based on any single album.

Music Library: Mermen, Merzbow, Meshuggah, Metallica

The Mermen - Live At The Haunted House (1994).  The best damn psychedelic surf band ever.  Saw them back in 2003 or so and they rocked my world.

Merzbow - Electric Salad (1996). MMMmmmmmMMMWHRRRSKKKK-kkk-KKK-kkk.  ShhhhK-IIIIIIII-iiiiwiwiwiwwwwk-IIIIII! tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Grrrrrmmmmmmkkkkkkklllklklklk.

Meshuggah - Destroy Erase Improve (1995). Math thrash hardcore prog.  By all rights I oughta like them more than I do, but they've never mattered to me as much as their reputation says that they would.

Metallica - Kill 'Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1984), Master Of Puppets (1986), ...And Justice For All (1988), and Death Magnetic (2008).  Ah, the original Metallica albums, back before their music was, in the words of Skwisgaar Skwigelf, "dildos." That'll take you back to being 16, if you're my age.  Death Magnetic is a supposed return to form after a lot of jerking around, but while it's the best thing they've done since they became rock stars, it's not so good, either.

Music Library: Merle Haggard and Merle Travis

Merle Haggard - Down Every Road (compilation, 1962-1994), Strangers (1965), Swinging Doors And The Bottle Let Me Down (1966), I'm A Lonesome Fugitive (1967), Branded Man (1967), Sing Me Back Home (1968), The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde (1968), Mama Tried (1968), Same Train, Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers (1969), Vintage Collections Series (compiled 1996), and If I Could Only Fly (2000). I started to break these out, but then I realized that Merle in the 60s is good, no matter what.  So these include the first seven studio albums plus his Jimmie Rodgers cover album plus two compilations (one long, one short, both excellent) plus a quite touching recent album, If I Could Only Fly.  All worth a listen or fifty.

Merle Travis - Folk Songs Of The Hills/Back Home/Songs Of The Coal Mines (1947/1957/1963) and The Merle Travis Story: 24 Greatest Hits (released 1989).  A triple release of a few of Merle Travis's early albums plus a best-of that sounds re-recorded to these ears.  Still good, though.

Petardcast No. 9, No. 9, No. 9

Another item of self-promotion to mention: I was the guest on Leonard Pierce's Petardcast about a month back.  Leonard's a good guy and a great friend, and we chatted it up on a rather dreary day here in NC.

Here's the link to his blog and the relevant post.