Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#975 in the Series) is Warren Zevon, The Wind In the final episode of season 2 of the hit Showtime series Californication, down on his self-inflicted luck, writer Hank Moody has just finished a book project and is ready to begin his post-project ritual. “Every time I finish a book, It’s Whiskey, Weed and Warren Zevon, It’s the little things” he says, while ”Keep Me in your Heart” plays delicately in the background. “Keep Me In Your Heart” is the emotional core of The Wind, the last album that Warren Zevon made prior to his death of lung cancer in September of 2003. The album was already in the works in late August...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (# 974 in the Series) is Blood, Sweat and Tears, 3. In many ways, this album had more to do with long love affair with music, than any other album ever released. When I was a wee lad, my sister gave me copy of this. It was actually on cassette. It was right when those lovely pre-recorded cassettes first hit the market. I had a player and played it over and over and over. I even remember starting and stopping the songs over and over so I could write out the lyrics. I was hooked. I had to get more of these! Blood, Sweat and Tears 3 contained some of the bands...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#973 in the Series) is Justin Townes Earle, Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot Records) When your father is one of the best singer-songwriters in the business and you are named after another about whom Steve Earle once said “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that”, the expectations are very high, and with his most recent release for Bloodshot records, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now, Justin Townes Earle, the son of Steve Earle and the step-son of Allison Moorer, has emerged in his own...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day is the Original London Cast recording of  Jesus Chris Superstar. It”s now our Cool Album of the Day every Easter Sunday. Don’t give me the knock-offs. Give me the original 1971 release featuring Ian Gillian as Jesus. I remember playing the hell out of this back in the day. To me this has always been the definitive version of  Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera.  It’s the Original London Concept Recording.  Yes, I also realize that the story told in the opera ends on Good Friday.  We still feel that it’s fitting for Easter Sunday. The music here is absolutely brilliant.  It includes some wonderful performances from Deep Purple lead vocalist Ian Gillan...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#972 in the Series) is Richard & Linda Thompson, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. This is an album I’ve went back to recently and it’s captivated me, full to the brim as it is with wonderfully bleak, world-weary and fascinating songs. I actually found my old cassette copy of it and realized that I hadn’t played the full album in years, most of my Richard Thompson stuff is on compilations. Well, I’m glad I put it on because this is one of the best adverts you could ever get for the Keep The Album Alive! campaign, it’s magnificent from start to finish. Thompson, one of the very best British...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#971 in the Series) is Hal Ketchum, Past the Point of Rescue. I don’t know what it is. I’ve always been a sucker for those songs when an artist takes a known track, their’s or possibly another artists, and recreates it using a slower tempo.   I’m thinking of tracks like Joe Jackson’s live version (played as part of the Big World tour) of “Steppin’ Out” or Loey Nelson’s take on “To Sir with Love” if you were lucky enough to hear that. Here, Hal Ketchum does a spectacular rendition of The Vogues, “Five O’Clock World.”  Please check it out below. That was the track that first exposed me to Hal Ketchum.  As I...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#970 in the Series) is Jellyfish, Bellybutton. My guess is that a good number of you don’t know this album or even this band. In one word, “you should!” They were one of the best power-pop bands of the early nineties, Jellyfish.  One of those bands that you ask yourself, Why wasn’t this all over radio, why were they not more popular? They definitely had some radio friendly songs, a good look a unique look and a major label.   So it’s hard to say what happened.  They should have had much more success. You can hear a little Squeeze in their sound, a little XTC and a little Beatles. The songs that did...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#969 in the Series) is The Pixies, Surfer Rosa  Playing my Surfer Rosa album last night reminded me that the album is not just The Pixies first album, but my favorite album as well. It also reminded me why I keep my record collection in my room away from my kids- the album’s cover features a topless woman who I remember swooning over when it first came out. In case anyone is wondering I bought the album at Sound Stage Direct, which is where I usually get my vinyl when ordering online. Check it out. You’ll find other cool stuff there as well. People always talk about Surfer Rosa’s subject matter but...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#968 in the Series) is Ten Years After,  A Space In Time When you are three pints in, and the conversation as it inevitably does, turns to the greatest guitar players of all time, and the usual suspects Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and the rest are shouted out from around the bar, the name Alvin Lee is largely and criminally ignored.  As one of the early pioneers of Blues Rock, Lee and his band Ten Years After were mostly known for their spacey psychedelic blues jams that were groovy enough to grab the ears of concert promoter Bill Graham, who brought the band to San Francisco for a series of...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#967 in the Series) is Traffic, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Back in 1986, my friend Bruce Embree and I went to see Steve Winwood in concert. He was touring in support of his Back In The High Life album.  We had second row-center seats.  That was a treat considering I nabbed them via phone order!!   On the way to the show we had discussed ‘what were our chances to hear any Traffic tunes?’ This was one of the first solo Winwood tours that I had remembered. We certainly had not seen him before.  So we weren’t sure what to expect. Some artists will play quite a number of songs from...