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Tag: By Our Design

by Jeff Gemmill
Posted on October 7, 2019August 15, 2021

Today’s Top 5: Americana, Season 9

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Today’s companion for the road: #ShawnColvin’s Cover Girl. #classicalbum #folk #folkrock #singersongwriter

#PennStateProud (circa 1987).

No new #blogpost from me today. Instead, if you click on the link in my bio, you’ll be treated to a recap of #1992 that I put together in early 2017. It was a great year - Diane and I took our delayed honeymoon in California and, before and after those two weeks, saw a few memorable concerts (including #NeilYoung, #10000Maniacs and #ShawnColvin). I also share my Top 5 albums for ‘92, though I’d likely swap one or two of those for one or two of the runners-up I mention. (The pic, by the way, is me on Fisherman’s Wharf.) #memories #daysthatusedtobe

Today’s #junkmail.

Me on the front porch of what, by month’s end, will be our new home. #lookingforward #newhome

The pull of the past is strong, but the pull of the present is, too. Balancing the two is a work-in-progress, to an extent, especially as each year flips into the next and friends and loved ones exit stage left. That, more or less, is the fine line that the Long Ryders walk on their new album, September November, and they do it well. It’s a great album that mixes the band’s wry outlook and social commentaries with a newfound poignancy. Great album.

In the mid-1980s, when I wasn’t folking it up or embracing my inner-cowpunk, the Three O’Clock, Bangles and their Paisley Underground cohorts provided—in part—the soundtrack to my many halcyon days and nights. Their Arrive Without Travelling LP was and remains one of my favorite platters—as I wrote in my “essential” review of it, “It’s a true spacetime anomaly, simultaneously of its time and timeless, full of shimmering melodies and hooks galore.” Aquarius Andromeda, an odds-and-sods digital-only collection that they released last week, isn't quite that, but it's still a lot of fun. (I spotlight it on my blog today - link in bio.) #TheThreeOClock #paisleyunderground #OddsandSods #AlbumReview

I write about #TheKinks’ One for the Road album on my blog today. (Link in bio.) There are a myriad of reasons why it’s my most-played album of theirs. In a fashion, it’s little more than a live greatest-hits package released to cash in on their late-‘70s renaissance, when they transitioned to arena rockers after signing with Arista Records in 1977, featuring a mix of the band’s classic hits from the 1960s, a few gems from the earlier ‘70s, and a half dozen tracks from Low Budget, the 1979 studio set that cemented their comeback. Yet it’s also one of the greatest live sets to ever grace my turntable, coming across as if it was processed in spatial audio long before that gimmick became a thing… #classicalbum #essentials

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