Song Of the Day by Eric Berman – “Some Fantastic Place” by Squeeze Cool For Cats, Argybargy, East Side Story, Sweets From A Stranger and Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti — all of the above named albums are among the best records in the Squeeze catalog. For unknown reasons, Some Fantastic Place is a Squeeze record that stands head and shoulders tall amongst the others, but seldom gets mentioned in the same breath. Today, I officially add this album to the list of all-time great Squeeze albums, and if you’re a fan, so should you. Some Fantastic Place was the band’s tenth album released in 1993. It was the follow up to the album Play, which was possibly the weakest...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Thelma” by Paul Simon It boggles the mind how a song this good could have been left in the can, but that was indeed the fate of the Paul Simon outtake “Thelma,” which was originally intended for his 1990 album The Rhythm Of The Saints. (The song would surface three years later on the Paul Simon 1964 – 1993 box set.) By 1988, Simon had to begin thinking about the near impossible task of creating a follow up record to his 1986 Grammy-winning smash hit album Graceland. But how do you follow up a record as dominant and successful as Graceland? For Simon, it meant fashioning a record along the same...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#859 in the Series) is Neil Finn, Try Whistling This By my inexact and rough estimation of my somewhere near 3000 records, CDs, 8-tracks and cassette tapes, tough as it may be, I would probably rank this my number one. I bought it in 1998 when it came out and I lived in Framingham, MA. and listened to it attentively and intensely and truly believe this is as close to a Lennon/McCartney composition that exists since that duo stopped writing and playing. I have recommended this to many and will tell you a small sample called me wrong, but I don’t care. It didn’t hurt that I got to see him do...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#845 in the Series) is Todd Rundgren, Live In Concert at the Warfield Theater It was 23 years ago today, Todd Rundgren brought his band to play.  Esoteric Recordings presents the Todd Rundgren Archive Series and if this is any indication, this is the start of something good. Todd Rundgren’s 1989 release Nearly Human was a bit of a re-visitation of his Philly Soul/R&B roots. Received to some critical acclaim, the album was recorded with a minimal amount of overdubs and this created a perfect live platform for a big 12-piece band. This recording documents the final show of this tour and has been newly mastered from the original master tapes, making...

  Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Rosanne Cash’s great album titled The Wheel.  Rosanne was kind enough to share some tidbits about the album and its recording with her facebook friends today. We’ve gathered them together for you here. If you’re a fan of Ms. Cash I highly suggest that you check out her facebook page. It’s mostly run by her and she does a great job keeping every one informed about her goings on. Here’s a link. While you’re at it, her twitter account is also very lively. Here’s a link. — Larry Carta Here’s Rosanne’s tidings on The Wheel. ———————————————————— I can’t believe this, but my album The Wheel came out twenty years...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#825 in the Series) is Chris Isaak, Speak of the Devil This is the 9th record of the California rocker and for me stands out as one of his best.  His voice is an instrument in an obvious Roy Orbison tribute kind of way. His songwriting and guitar playing make these 14 songs fun to listen to in a way that makes me think, did Elvis Presley ever comes this close to being great. I know I may offend some with that thought, but put this on the old phonograph and from the first track, “Please” compare it to anything the King did and you will hear where I am coming from....

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#823 in the Series) is Shelby Lynne, I Am Shelby Lynne Shelby Lynne had been a recording artist for quite a while by the time this album came out but I think it’s fair to say that things hadn’t been going quite the way she would have liked up until that point. It seemed the time was right for her to take control, make a stand, and get things back on track. Hence the title of this, quite wonderful, album: I Am Shelby Lynne, a definitive statement if ever there was one. It was actually her sixth album, although the first in almost five years, and not so much a comeback as...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Magdalene Laundries” by Joni Mitchell – Turbulent Indigo was Joni Mitchell’s last great album. That’s not to say that all that followed wasn’t any good, it’s just that Indigo was her last consistently good album from beginning to end. Coming in on the heels of a trio of experimental records on the Geffen label — Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Marks In a Rainstorm and Night Ride Home – that featured electronic textures and somewhat dated layered production, Turbulent Indigo returned Mitchell to Reprise records with a more stripped down straight-ahead sound that peeled back the atmospheric electronics of the previous records in favor of more organic instrumentation akin to...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#809 in the Series) is Lori Carson, Everything I Touch Runs Wild  Of all the foggy things that I remember well about the days of the turn of the century, one of them is the music the some friends and I were listening … You know, it was 2000, 2001: bonfires, lasers, champagne, lovers, the Y2K paranoia, and the mist of it all. I was happy as a child then, living in a little country town far from Buenos Aires: a strange, petit city plenty of smart and cosmopolitan people by those years. It was full moon, in a marvelous and calm summer night, and we were anticipating the celebration with full blast...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#808 in the Series) is Dave Alvin, Blackjack David I’d like to write a little about Dave Alvin. Because I LOVE Dave Alvin. Not in a physical way you understand, I don’t even know the man after all and neither of us are that way inclined (as far as I’m aware). Nevertheless, as a fan, an admirer and purchaser of his superb music, an attendee of (sadly only) one of his shows, I love Dave Alvin. The guy’s bloody brilliant. Oh and, specifically, I’d like to write a little bit about Dave’s crowning glory, his masterpiece, and of the very best albums of the last 20 years or so – Blackjack David....