music--other--main
Excursions on Wobbly Rail is an online zine for people who like quality entertainment written by people with their feet firmly planted in post-modern high quality astro-turf, their minds stuck in a hole, and their action grip grasping at clouds. We bring you reviews of live shows, records, films and videos, television shows, and whatever else we feel will add to this site. It's not Rolling Stone, but we print all the shit that's fit.Sincerely,
M. Scott Stobaugh,
UPDATED: 9/16/03 - Carla Bozulich's Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger. My Morning Jacket needs to focus. June Carter Cash loves you.
COMING SOON ! We'll have to wait and see.
You got country in my punk influenced experimental jazz.
Carla Bozulich and the Red Headed Stranger
by M. Stobaugh (Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com)Carla Bozulich is best know for her band the Geraldine Fibbers. The Fibbers three albums, Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home, What Part of Get Thee Gone Don’t You Understand, and Butch, mixed elements of 90’s alt rock, jazz, baroque, and old fashioned country music. Bozulich’s voice and songwriting made the band stand out in the group of other L.A. bands that came out around the same time, yet they didn’t achieve the same commercial success. They released their first and third album on Virgin records, but their small yet rabid group of fans and good reviews couldn’t keep them signed. After the Fibbers were dropped, Bozulich did a string of projects with guitarist Nels Cline, sang on a Mike Watt record, did a bunch of one-off songs on Kill Rock Stars compilations, scored a movie and a play, and did lots of collaborating.
Carla’s unique style and voice always made her take on different music styles seem fresh and twisted enough to keep things interesting. Songs like “Marmalade,” “She’s A Dog,” “Get Thee Gone,” and “Folks like Me” by the Fibbers are country songs that are slightly off kilter and although they reflect subject matter that wasn’t uncommon in the mid-90’s (like drugs, self-hatred, persecution for lifestyle), they are unique when put into a country song. Songs like these are what led to covering Red Headed Stranger.
Willie Nelson recorded his 1975 album, Red Headed Stranger, using both covers and a few originals to tell the story of a preacher whose lost love causes him to go on a murderous rampage until he is soothed by a new woman. The song “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” was written by Fred Rose in 1945 and became Nelson’s first number one song.
Touring in 2002 as Carla Bozulich and Friends (the friends were actually the Nels Cline Singers), Bozulich crossed the nation with her interpretation of Red Headed Stranger, a classic country folktale turned into an atmostpheric mix of experimental jazz and country, but keeping the theme and story of the original. The album, recently released on DiChristina Stairbuilders (available through Midheaven Mailorder, http://www.midheaven.com) is an eclectic masterpiece of sonic exploration, beautiful songwriting, and burning passion. Bozulich’s deep, yet strikingly feminine voice is unlike that of any other contemporaries. Her vision and vocal inflection keep the album from being a retread or a just another of Nels Cline’s instrumental albums. Going from dense, busy instrumentation of “Down Yonder” to the lonely, yet solid jazz stylings of Remember Me, the Nels Cline Singers, along with Bozulich and violinist Jenny Scheinman make the recording sound like nothing else you can find on records produced today. The band and the singer truly make the story and the songs their own and they do it with a touch of brilliance.
http://www.carlabozulich.comLong hair, Neil Young, Louisville, Reverb Aside.
My Morning Jacket’s It Still Moves
by M. Stobaugh (Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com)The opening song “Magheeta” immediately makes the listener feel at home. “Sittin’ here with me and mine/All wrapped up in a bottle of wine” conjures the good time feeling of a night spent with friends and booze that doesn’t involve Dave Matthews style fratboy sing-a-longs or middle-aged women dancing and singing classic R&B while preparing a meal, Sandra Bullock style. The songs puts at ease the listeners immediate trepidation about the major label debut of the uber down home indie darlings and reverb enthusiasts, My Morning Jacket. Less Roy Orbison influence makes the new album a bit less accessible, but also allows them to keep their indie cred without having to pull another sonic collage out of their asses like they did with the half hour long “Cobra” off 2002’s Chocolate and Ice EP.
Then again the album also lacks the darkness of the band’s 2001 breakthrough At Dawn, which featured songs about relationships, death, and losing sight of your dreams.
It Still Moves reads like Everybody’s in Showbiz by the Kinks. It’s an album of songs by a band that has spend too much of the time between albums on the road. The superb musicianship and solid, yet jammy arrangements prove that they’re practiced up, but the songwriting just isn’t as dark and compelling as it was on previous efforts.
The jam sound of the album is also worrisome. Every song seems to go on for about a minute or two longer than it really needs. While space for an instrumental breath can really add to a song, it can be overused. Even the best songs on the album seem to suffer from this. Every once and a while a song can just end. It doesn’t always need the extended solo or the added horn outro.
All that said. I still like It Still Moves enough to listen to it a lot. My Morning Jacket are a great band as they prove on this album. They just need Jim James to stop talking about Muppets and style over substance in interviews and start writing more songs for another album. Next time take some time off from the road to write.
http://www.mymorningjacket.comTies that Bind.
June Carter Cash’s Wildwood Flower
by M. Stobaugh (Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com)Both of June’s latest albums, Wildwood Flower and 1999’s Press On, are mostly about family, both here and those who’ve passed on. No albums I can remember evoke such a feeling of connectedness to family life and true affection for that life. As a member of the royal family of country and american folk music, when she covers classic songs like “Storms are on the Ocean,” “Keep on the Sunny Side,” and the title track, she pays tribute to her own parents, her aunts, uncles, and grandparents. June’s autoharp sings throughout the album as June lets her own voice ring out a kind of love that most people associate with a matriarch of their family but with the passion of the most youthful and rambunctious.
The players on the albums are members of Junes family either through friendships or by blood. With Laura Cash, Marty Stuart, Carlene Carter, Norman Blake, Nancy Blake, Joe Carter, Lorrie Carter Bennett, John Carter Cash, Roseanne Cash (writing liner notes), Johnny Cash, and June herself, the album is seeped in relations. The songs from past and present generations and plucked and sung by the present and the future. It all makes the concept of time and family take over as the albums theme. June also tells stories between songs and occasionally gives shout outs to the musicians during songs. June is at home with everyone on the record and everything surrounding it. Her genius is in the ease of her own talent and the love she shows in making this music.
Updated 9-16-03
Page by M. Stobaugh
Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com
Image of my grandpa and a train courtesy of my own damn self