Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1054 in the Series and #38) is The New Barbarians, Buried Alive: Live in Maryland The band The New Barbarians was formed in 1979 as a means to promote Ron Wood’s most recent album Gimme Some Neck. The album was a minor success peaking at number 45 on the billboard charts and was the first to feature Wood’s own artwork on the album cover including a self-portrait. The band and the subsequent eighteen gig U.S. tour may have gone largely unnoticed were it not for the exceptional musicians that accompanied Wood on the tour. The stellar line-up included Ron Wood and Keith Richards on guitar, Stanley Clarke on bass, former Faces keyboardist Ian...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1048 in the Series) is Jeff Beck, Rock N’ Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul) Every Monday night for 12 years up until his death at age 94, Les Paul would hold court with his Les Paul Trio with a show at The Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.  The shows more often than not included guest musicians that happened to be in town at the time.  The club after his death, in keeping with this tradition, has renamed the room he would play, The Les Paul Room, and invites special musical guests to play with The Les Paul Trio each Monday to keep this time honored tradition alive.  To give you an...

    Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1047 in the Series) is Arc Angels If there is such a thing as a one-hit wonder record, The Arc Angels self-titled debut album, released in 1992, would probably rank at the top of the heap.  The Parker Lee of rock bands, comprised of the Stevie Ray Vaughan rhythm section Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton along with Austin guitar legends Charlie Sexton and Doyle Bramhall II, the band that was named after their practice facilities at the Austin Rehearsal Center, was ready and seemingly able to take the Stevie Ray torch and become the preeminent power blues band in the world, or so it seemed. Charlie Sexton, guitar prodigy extraordinaire, returned...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1045 in the Series) is Paul Weller, Wild Wood Operating out of an office located deep in the recesses of Buckingham Palace is a covert organization of artistically minded individuals that govern and regulate the art, artists, and entertainment content that is released to the United States. This organization known as E.A.T.M.E (Englanders Against The Music Exportation) has been in existence since the 1960’s, and is considered to be the sole ruling body in determining which artists are released to the unsuspecting U.S. public. Their mission is to keep the good stuff within the realm and export the rest. The Beatles were a “canary in a coal mine” test project where they sent...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1021 in the Series) is Rodriguez, Cold Fact Recording under the single name “Rodriguez,” Sixto “The Dylan of Detroit” Rodriguez, was a psychedelic folk singer in the early seventies.  Long on talent and short on patience for “The Man,” Rodriguez was one of those folk singers that straddled that socio-political fence somewhere between the hippy-trippy sounds and somewhat obtuse themes of Donovan, and the more lyrically dense word-smithing of a folk era Bob Dylan. Vocally he soared slightly above the Dylan growl, and marginally below the sometimes off-kilter refrains of Scott Walker. Sonically the sound is Syd Barret-meets Arthur Lee and Love-meets Donovan, and the entire conglomeration can probably be described as...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1010 in the Series) is Buddy Guy, Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues The process of selecting a blues album to review is not an easy one.  First of all, a lot of people will not think they like the blues or will say they don’t know enough about the blues.  The real answer to both of these questions is that if you listen to music at all, and like music, then you are by definition a fan of the blues.  All of the great rock & rollers of today were heavily influenced by the blues in one form or another. “I’m a King Bee,” “Walking the Dog,” and “Now I’ve Got a...

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 (#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 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 (#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...