Today’s Cool Album of the Day is Johnny Cash, American Recordings V: A Hundred Highways The year was 1994, and it was not the best of times for Johnny Cash.  His health, starting to fail from a series of illnesses and decades of hard living, was seemingly bringing “The Man in Black” much closer to the end than he was ready to admit.  His latest major record label, Mercury Records had dropped him after one last commitment record, The Mystery of life, that was released in 1990 and included updated versions of “Hey Porter”, “Angel and the “Badman”, and “The Greatest Cowboy”, that were good simply because they are very good songs, but showed none of the outlaw grit...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#957 in the Series) is Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums that was completely digitally recorded. It was released in May of 1985. Right about this time I was itching to get my first CD player.  They had just started to get to a price level that ‘cattle’ like myself could afford one.  I knew the day was coming soon where I would have a player, so I grabbed a couple CDs that I could bring when I went player searching. I needed two discs that I liked. I needed two discs that had a sound quality so good, that when I heard them blasting...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#956 in the Series) is Shawn Colvin, A Few Small Repairs  A Few Small Repairs is one of those albums that takes love gone wrong and turns what could be a litany of heartbreak and “woe-is-me”  into an autobiographical  purging, and the listener goes along for the ride with some soaring beautiful melodies punctuated with  hard-knock lessons.  Colvin didn’t come to the making of this album without a lot of hard work, learning guitar in her childhood in South Dakota and performing in The King and I as a teen, then like most of us had some twists and turns which led to this release, her fourth, in 1996. The album opens...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#955 in the Series) is Shadowfax, Watercourse Way When you look at a listing of the best bands Chicagoland has produced it better have Shadowfax included, if it doesn’t find a new list. Are you familiar with Shadowfax? If not, let me go back a ways. The origins of this eventual Grammy-winning band begin in the early 70s in south-suburban Crete, Illinois. That’s where the band lived in a farmhouse popularly known as “The Triple B Ranch.” It was there that these five young men crafted a sound that really could not be pigeonholed. It was jazz, it was rock, it was spacey. It was acoustic, it was plugged in. It was good....

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#954 in the series) is Steve Earle and the Dukes, Terraplane. Steve Earle’s new album Terraplane is being billed as his blues album. We’ll talk about that a bit more in a minute. More importantly I think – it’s a Steve Earle and the Dukes album, and a damn fine one at that.  Steve Earle has had many different personas and approaches in his career, Country rock and roller, hard core troubadour, singer songwriter, bluegrass musician, political activist, you name it  – but mostly I think the best name to fit him – if he even needs one – is a folk singer.  And if you don’t think folk singers can play or sing the blues then you...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#953 in the Series)  is Alice Cooper, Billion Dollar Babies. About three years ago I listened to this album for the first time in about 12 years. I could not believe how great it still sounded. Of all the early 70s things that I loved, this one still kicked as good, if not better, than almost anything else I’d played in quite sometime from that old era. The quality of the tracks stood out, but what stood out the most was the quality of the arrangements and wonderfully intricate playing by the band. There was a ton great musicians in the early Alice Cooper band.  It’s great to hear hard rock played by...

Today’s Cool album of the Day (#952 in the Series) is The Doobie Brothers, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. Can you believe that this little gem was released 41 years ago this week!! I really enjoy the decade or so tradition of bands playing one of their albums in its entirety. I know it would probably never happen, but if the Doobie Brothers were to do add join that tradition, then they should play “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits.” This was easily my favorite album of theirs. I always loved the overall sound of it. The breezy feel that it had, the use of harmonies and wooden instruments and yes, a trombone tossed in here...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#951 in the Series) is Big Country, Steeltown 30th Anniversary Edition The 80s were, without a doubt, a golden era for Scots pop/rock music.  A storm which began brewing deep in the punk and new wave sounds of the late 70’s suddenly gathered it’s forces and unleashed a Tsunami of talent which didn’t diminish for years. One of those talents was the wonderfully gifted Stuart Adamson, a young man who was a founding member of The Skids, a fantastic band from Fife which had great success between 1977 and 1982, became very influential , and which these days has attained semi-legendary status among fans of the Punk/New Wave era. Adamson actually left the band...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#950 in the Series)  is Cat Stevens, Teaser and The Firecat. I was going to feature Catch Bull at Four because it contains “Boy With the Moon and Star on His Head” but went with Teaser and The Firecat instead. I love that song but I’ve read that it’s one of the few songs that Cat Stevens recorded years ago that he’s actually embarrassed about. Sometimes when I do some research for these pieces you learn little nuggets that you didn’t know about and they catch you totally by surprise.  For instance, I learned when looking up Teaser and the Firecat that Rick Wakeman of Yes fame played keys on the top 40 hit “Morning Has...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#949 in the Series) is Roxy Swain, Restless Hearts Restless Hearts, the second record from local Chicago favorites Roxy Swain, is about as perfectly crafted a set of songs as your ears will enjoy all year. With influences that seem to float from Fleetwood Mac to Emmy Lou Harris, with a hint of daisy-duke era Linda Ronstadt thrown in for good measure, Ms. Swain, the front-woman for the group, with her back of the barroom pipes, slight Americana warble, and abundance of Indie Rock-Chick swagger could be the love child of Chrissie Hynde and Lucinda Williams. There is definitely some palate cleansing retro fairy dust that is sprinkled throughout this highly addictive album...