Who Killed the King of the Rain?

This is the rare week when of my favorite bands (REM and Counting Crows) drop cds. So even though REM through a dud at me last time with Around the Sun, I'm gonna give them a chance to win me back. They've earned that with more great albums than I can count right now...wait it's 5. I just felt like sharing my honest first week reaction to the first of those two discs. Enjoy, discuss, spit at me, whatever.

There was a time when I staked out a local music shop for their opening at 10:00am. Counting Crows were getting ready to drop their third cd This Desert Life and I had to get it here so I could get the bonus disc of live material from a concert a few years back. Rarely have I so anticipated the arrival of new music by behaving in such way. Only twice since have I shown such dedication for a band.

After the great comeback in All that You Can't Leave Behind, I was expecting U2's next album to be monumental in it's greatness. After finding out about Walmart's 12:01 policy for stocking new music, I arrived at 5 til midnight to find a line already waiting. I think most of them were waiting for the next DVD set of Friends or something. However, a few other people were waiting Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam's newest effort. I repeated this another time at Walmart for the release of Seven Mary Three's Dis/Location. That time I had to make the dude working the electronics department tear through 4 boxes to find the meager 5 discs they had ordered for the store. Ultimately both discs were good - not great... but I just haven't felt that same need since then.

Normally I would have ushered in the release of the newest cd from the Crows in a similar fashion by jetting to Walmart at midnight. Things were different now. It felt like Adam and the boys didn't really care about new music or have anything new to say. The new tracks I heard in concert and a few more on the web created a empty feeling inside o me towards the whole affair. TDL was acceptable and Hard Candy had a few memorable tracks buried in the saccharine soaked shite that was released to radio. Although these new songs seem to be lifeless retreads of prior efforts. After listening to Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings the last few days, I find myself trying to find something good in it. A few tracks are enjoyable, but where have the music of my teens and early 20's went? None of the lyrics are particulary memorable... the album has all of the classic listen-to-for-a-few-weeks and forget about in in the shoeboxes of cds that make up my closet.

The jangling opener 1492 seems an obvious rip on their sing AOTS from Recovering the Satellites. Maybe that's because they invited producer Gil Norton back to handle the rock half of the record. What you get is mostly a hodgepodge of lyrics and themes from the glory days. None of the rock tracks really work. The band sounds pretty solid and loose, but the lyrics never go further than the superficial. Cowboys sounds better here than in concert... the live version plays like a b-side from years before, but here you can hear that nice guitar riff. No doubt that has a large part to credit to David Immergluck and with some other nice touches of guitar work later on.

"There's always something on my mind..." Well yeah Adam, it's like that for all of us dawg. I read a brand new interview with Adam on www.rollingstone.com and it pretty confirmed what we all knew about the dude: he's a fucked up mopey bastard who has a dissociative disorder and a vanity problem. He's also obsessed with his own shallowness and that permeates the record. I'm fine with that... I mean we all have problems and generally the more messed up fellows write all the great songs. For the record, Adam was quite nice and a little shy both times I've met him.

All you get on this record is clumsy lyrics like "I wandered the highway from Berkeley to Dublin..." Not exactly flowing there...and that is on one of the better tracks Washington Square. During On a Tuesday in Amsterdam..., the song seems to devolve into Sparklehorse with Duritz gently asking "Come back to me" over and over. That's kind of nice in that Good Luck way... with a simple piano accompanying it. and On Almost Any Sunday Morning you get a bit of guitar that is quite nice. The momemtum is at the end with Come Around. It feels like a track that was lying around destined to be included on some single as a b-side.

I hate to bust on the boys this much since their music has meant so much to me over the years. However, I can't be one of those people that "hangs on til they can't anymore." (credit to Paul Durham for that) Maybe I've changed... the reviews of the cd by most rock critics have been somewhat positive so why don't I feel that way? Because I've lived with the music for over a decade with the words and music providing a soundtrack of my life. Maybe it's just me, but I find the growth and direction of Jason Ross (Seven Mary Three) to have more relevance to me at this time of life.

A friend of mine said that this cd was crass and hopeless. I can definitely see crass in the first half of the album, but I can't understand hopeless. Most early Counting Crows fans latched onto that since of detachment from reality and the overwhelming feelings we all go through at certain times of their lives. Recent fans to the band seem to forget the raw emotion of those first two cds and concentrate more on the limited radio success they've had with the latter ones. You haven't heard hopelessness until you hear Adam moan out a little Raining in Baltimore. But there isn't a cut here that breaks the surface. I guess I should have seen it coming... after all this is a man who wrote that "you can't count on me."

Why is this here?

Because.

Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon

Of all the James Taylor albums... only one is consistent throughout. Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon is one of the most perfect albums recorded in the '70's. Sure Led Zep and Pink Floyd did some good stuff too, but what I want out of music is that emotional attachment. You don't have to go very far into Mudslide Slim to find that. The opener Love has Brought Me Around is very anti-James Taylor with its positive upbeat tone, but there is that Taylor pervasive feeling of doom in the first verse. By the time James hits the second verse he declares


When my sky was full of gray
And my day was full of blue
There was nothing I could do
To see myself through
Now my head is full of springtime
And my heart is full of you
Good-bye lonely blue
It shall all come true

Despite how he might feel inside... he thinks all this is a foregone conclusion. He is in love and nothing else matters. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, he isn't gonna fuck it up this time. So it seems no wonder that the second track is the massive Carole King cover You've Got a Friend. James feels a little weary... yet almost like someone who is waiting for that chance to make you his own.

Places in My Past is another weary anthem that will be touched upon later. He has enjoyed the company of married women and the like, but never settled down. James hints at that the fact he might be ready to if only to relieve himself of the pain and loneliness.

He follows it up with a song that alludes to the control God has on us.

"There's a man up here who claims to have his hands upon the reins..."

Taylor later admits that maybe he and another person will meet again on their travels... perhaps an old lover... or an old friend.

To follow it up with a song about Vietnam seems a little bit of an odd pairing... but with the song questioning God supplying a prelude before it... it fits into the grand scheme of things.

A somewhat joke song providing satire for his own life is given as the title track. James seems to feel the pressure of leading music into a "blue horizon" and clearly he is that Mudslide Slim.

All of this is just set up for the tremendous country ballad Hey Mister, That's Me Upon the Jukebox. Taylor has always loved country music and has never really strayed all that far from it. He does a splendid cover of George Jones's Bartender's Blues later on in his career. He gives a gutwrenching turn here as a man who finds himself in a bar listening to his own music.

All of this is merely prelude to the pearl he drops next which is my favorite JT track. You Can Close Your Eyes is a moody, acoustic number that tells his lover that

"I don't know no love songs... and I can't sing the blues anymore...
But I can sing this song... and you can sing this song when I'm gone."

He seems to say I can't cry for you anymore... I can't give anything more than this song you can repeat as comfort. And what could be more comforting than JT telling you that he loves you no matter if he can't find a way to put his affection into words.

You get a few well intentioned tracks til you get to the heart of the cd. Highway Song might be JT's ultimate opus. He tells the sad tale of love that he just can't stay to embrace. Everytime it starts happening he has to get out on the road to escape it. Witness the second verse:

I had a little woman in Memphis
She wanted to be my bride
She said, settle on down, traveling man
You can stay right by my side
I tried so hard to please her
But I couldn't hold out too long
'Cause one Saturday night I was laying in bed
And I heard that highway song

This tracks provides a marvelous brother to the short, but sweet Isn't Nice to Home Again. Even though JT wants to be out and about he feels that relief about being home... of course it is shortlived, coz like every great musician... he has to rejoining that great big journey on the road. Our narrator loves the feeling of love, but can't deal with all the attachments of it... sooner or later he has to flee...