Wine, Whites and . . . Doobies!

The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan have more than Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Michael McDonald in common. They are both ubiquitous 1970s pop-rock bands that I've come to love despite my best intentions to steer clear of obvious pop-music fodder. Just like with The Dan, I had a moment years ago when hearing either "China Grove" or "Long Train Runnin'" for the 100th time that I had to stop in my tracks and remark to myself, 'damn, that's a great song.' Once that happens, it's hard to go back. I'm not trying to say I'm a super fan and unlike The Dan, I haven't seen the Doobies live, but I also wouldn't pass up the opportunity if it presented itself to me.

As far as "Weed, Whites & Wine" goes, The Doobies pick up where a lot of the Laurel Canyon/SoCal country-hippies left off. My office-mate and friend grew is quick to point out that The Doobies are probably the most famous band from the South Bay/San Jose area and you can hear the similarity to other country-rock outfits from these parts, namely Creedence Clearwarter Revival. The Bay Area scene was more indebted to R&B it would seem then the SoCal scene, which had a little more folk and pop influences, depending on the artist. Most of The Doobies' repertoire doesn't fit too well in the WWW bag, but when I stumbled upon their first album from 1971 I was pleasantly surprised to hear the humble country-ish beginnings of one of the 70s biggest rock bands. You'll note that the line-up on the album is merely four people, three of which continue on to later albums and the smaller size is reflected on the more subtle songs when compared to the larger line-ups and baroque arrangements of later years. Sure, they never would have made it big if they kept it like this, but the following tunes show that they were on to something interesting back in 1971 . . .

The Doobie Brothers - Nobody
The Doobie Brothers - Greenwood Creek
The Doobie Brothers - Feelin' Down Farther

The Brothers Everly

Ok, so everybody knows the Everly Brothers from their ubiquitous oldies hits like Cathy's Clown, etc, but for my money they were the original country-rockers. Don and Phil's parents were country stars from Kentucky so when these boys started their thing they were naturally tapping into some country roots. I've read here and there that the early hippy rockers like The Byrds, CS&N and Gram Parsons and the Burrito Bros. all worshipped the Everly Brothers' early rock n' roll hits, so its only natural that the Everly Brothers would fit right in when the country-rock scene blossomed in the late 60s. Well, they did and they didn't. I don't have it yet, but their 1968 "Roots" album is supposed to be a great example of their adapting to the new/old country-rock sound that they helped invent, but this album from 1972 definitely finds the brothers stretching out in a country-rock style not unlike some of their followers.

Left to right: Paul Rothschild (producer), Phil & Don Everly
Some of their admirers even joined in on this all-star cast, including John Sebastien of The Lovin' Spoonful, David Crosby, Delany & Bonnie, and Chris Hillman among many others. The album was recorded in Sebastian's Laural Canyon home. The brothers cover Sebastian on the title tune, which is nice, and cover Delaney & Bonnie on the opening cut, but the three tracks here (and my three favorites) are all Everly originals. The heavenly Green River is possibly one of my favorite country-rock tunes of all time and will certainly make the cut for the forthcoming Weed, Whites & Wine compilation.

The Everly Brothers - Green River
The Everly Brothers - I'm Tired of Singing My Song in Las Vegas
The Everly Brothers - Up In Mabel's Room

Astral Weakness

Once again the Bay Area's bizarro weather is messing with me. Last week it was feeling very fall-like and the last few days it's been really warm. So I started prepping this post back when it was rainy and windy with the leaves departing their branches and accumulating in piles and on the sidewalks. I figure it's gotta be Fall-like somewhere else, so I'm going ahead with this post.

I remember working at Olsson's Books & Music in Washington D.C. and reading some Mojo or Q magazine top 50 list of the BEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME and Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" was definitely in the top 10 if not top 5. I picked it up and quickly got carried away by the emotion and otherworldliness of the recording. It's a special album that transports the listener to a strange and instantly nostalgic place, like a great film. For me the album reminds me of my year after college, living in Washington DC in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood and walking up Irving Street on the way to work with the sidewalks damp with rain and about half of the leaves on the ground on the other half dangling on the verge of joining the others.

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
The title track to this classic album really sets the tone for this sonic journey. It's not my absolute favorite, but hearing it prepares me for the 40 minute trip down Van's spooky, surreal and emotionally loaded memory lane.
Van Morrison - Cyprus Avenue
I could have gone with "Sweet Thing", which is probably my favorite tune from this album, but I figured everyone else felt the same, so I included this one.

Van Morrison - T.B. Sheets
The mystery of "Astral Weeks" is only heightened when you think that it came immediately after Van's first solo album, the one that produced the radio-friendly hit "Brown-Eyed Girl". Listening to the "Bang Masters" CD that came out decades later you can hear that these sessions produced an extremely wide range of recordings, such as the blues jam "T.B. Sheets". While its closer to the style and content as "Astral Weeks" it's singular in its own way with its funky groove and ad-lib lyrics from Van about visiting a girl friend who's sick with T.B. He feels he has to pay his respects, but being there with her depresses him and he can't leave soon enough. Scorsese used this song perfectly as the recurring theme song in his highly-underrated 90s drama "Bringing Out the Dead."
Van Morrison - Madame George (Demo)
If you know the "Astral Weeks" version of Madame George, you'll hear that this one is the perfect bridge between his Bang Sessions and the AW sessions. The lyrics are basically final, but the instrumentation is entirely different. It just goes to show what a unique recording AW is, as this version is more blues-based and more in line with everything else that Van had done with The Them or solo. This begs the question of why or who influenced Van to create the acoustic, string-heavy and nearly drumless sonic palette he used on "Astral Weeks"?

Van Morrison - Bulbs
After digesting and falling in love with AW I went looking for more of the same, but despite the greatness of his subsequent albums (mainly "Moondance") I came up empty handed . . . until my brother turned me on to the 1974 album "Veedon Fleece". Like "Astral Weeks", this album is a concept album with themes and lyrics being carried across multiple songs and no stand-out singles. I picked two of my favorites to share here.
Van Morrison - Fair Play

The Other Graham

Around the time I first started WW&W I was just getting into Crosby, Stills & Nash. It was a late start, but like the "dead", CSN always seemed a bit too hippy -dippy and those radio hits were sounding pretty worn-out. First, my friend Josh turned me on to the solo David Crosby record, which proceeded to blow my mind. Next, I started picking up the first and second and subsequent CSN(Y) albums. More recently it was pointed out that actually ALL of the solo albums from C, S & N were quite good and that I needed to fill out the collection. This is where we come to Graham Nash's "Songs for Beginners". It might take a listen or two to adapt to Graham's extremely personal and fragile universe, but it's a rewarding listen and the record that has taken the most spins on my turntable and ipod in the past three months. On a related note, I just downloaded Stephen Stills' first solo album and despite what everyone else seems to say, I found it kinda boring, barring the "Love the One You're With" single, which I could do without for hearing it so many times. My money is with Crosby & Nash's solo records!

Graham Nash - I Used To Be a King
I'm not sure the timing of this album in relation to Graham's personal life, but around this time he and Joni Mitchell were living together in "Our House" in Laurel Canyon, but that was not to last and the poetic two parted ways. I like to think that this is one of Graham's break-up songs to Joni. Assuming the timing is right there are other break-up songs to Joni on this album.

Graham Nash - Sleep Song
Just a beautiful tune.

Rita Coolidge - Better Days
After discovering Graham, I remembered I had heard this song before and it took me awhile to place where . . . that Rita Coolidge album I had where she also covers Bob Dylan & Neil Young. Listening to it again, it's not a better version that Graham's but it does flesh out the tune with a full band and more structure. It's just a great song and another Joni break-up song.

I'm slowly picking up some later Graham Nash albums as well as some Crosby-Nash albums. The possibilities do seem endless with these prolific hippies . . .

Weed, Whites & Stones

Apologies for the long delay in posts, but I go married a couple weeks ago and naturally that took up a lot of my time. Today we're listening to a few Rolling Stones' cover tunes from a broad spectrum of talent. The first tune is classic WW&W material as it comes from the godfather of the genre: Gram Parsons. The stones were first and foremost a blues-based rock band, but thanks to Keith's friendship with Gram Parsons they began incorporating more and more "country" influences into their music. I can't find the original quote anywhere, but if the anonymous internets are to be believed, Keith Richards confirmed to Barney Hoskyns that to Gram this song was "a logical combination between their music and our music."

Our other two examples come from the English country-side and Brazil where some varied musicians picked up on the universality of some of the Jagger/Richards songwriting and refitted their songs in more cosmic-country tones, ala Ronnie Lane's cover of the Exile on Main Street classic "Sweet Virginia" and Caetano Veloso's live cover of "Let It Bleed."



















The Flying Burrito Brothers - Wild Horses
The story goes that Keith sent Gram a master of "Wild Horses" a year before the 1971 release on the Stones album "Sticky Fingers." According to Jagger & Richards this song was their attempt to write something in a Gram Parsons style. I remember reading somewhere that Keith asked Gram to not release the Flying Burrito Brothers version until after the Stones released their album. Thankfully Gram and the boys included it on their second album "Burrito Deluxe" against Keith's request because by the time "Sticky Fingers" was released in 1971, the Flying Burrito Brothers were no longer in existence. There's no question that the Stones' version is a classic, but to me the FBB version matches it, if not tops it with Gram's wavering ad plaintive vocals and the killer piano solo.


Ronnie Lane & the band 'Slim Chance' - Sweet Virginia
As a certifiable Ronnie Lane obsessive I had to go and buy every single Ronnie Lane-related release out there and this one came pretty late in the game but was well worth the wait. This 2CD set has a whole bunch of live and live-in-studio performances from the key years of 1973-76 or so. Most of the tunes on here are Lane originals, but this cover song really fits right in the Ronnie Lane mold especially given the original's rustic feel and acoustic instrumentation. What's funny about this one is that it was recorded for radio so the swear-words ("Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes") was changed to silence in one chorus and "brown" in the last chorus.

Caetano Veloso - Let It Bleed
I have no idea where this recording is from, but this tune surfaced on a 1999 Japanese compilation of rare Caetano Veloso tracks. In the mid-seventies Veloso started to regularly do English-language cover tunes on his albums, mostly of Beatles songs, but this is a rare Brazilian cover of a Stones song. It kind of drifts into a march tempo at the end. I can't say I've listened to Veloso's covers album from a few years back, but I can say the man has a knack for putting his own voice and style on other people's tunes. The first cover tune of his I heard was Bob Dylan's "Jokerman" from an early 80s live album of Veloso's.

Vetiver: Things of the Past and Present

So far this blog has been solidly dedicated to older tunes from the 60s and 70s mostly, with the exception of Arthur Russell and some later John Martyn cuts. This is not because I'm some music purist that believese that only the old stuff is good (though I'm guilty of that 75% of the time), but because I spend most of my energy digging backwards rather than in the present. So usually when I find something new it's by accident, like what happened with Vetiver.

For the last two years I've been pretty solidly obsessed with Ronnie Lane of the (Small) Faces. One evening, hanging out with my friend Matt on a visit to NYC I was playing a mix that included Ronnie Lane's cover of D. Adam's "Roll On Babe." Matt said something like, "Vetiver's awesome," to which I gave him a confused look, explaining that we were listening to Ronnie Lane. He explained that Vetiver covered this song on one of their albums, to which I was skeptical and intrigued. He ripped me a copy and since then I have been slowly and irreversably falling in love with Vetiver. What I find interesting is that had it not been for their cover of a song I already loved I probably wouldn't have bothered to dig deeper, but their commitment to an obscure, yet wonderful song like "Roll On Babe" meant that we were kinda in on the same deliciously underappreciated secret.





















I committed to purchase the album with that song, "Thing of the Past", on vinyl and absorbed the band's subdued and understated tone. At first it didn't really penetrate my armor of skepticism, but by the third or fourth listen I really began to appreciate the quirky selections - all the songs on that album are covers of relatively obscure folksy singer-songwriters, a style that is clearly the foremost influence on the band - and the sensitive treatment the band gives each piece of music, demonstrating a serious amount of respect for the source material. Come to think of it, that's one of the reasons I like them, because they seem to have a clear sense of where they sit and what they're trying to do, because they know what came before and what elements to cherry pick and what dated sounds or themes to leave on the rehearsal space floor.

More recently I picked up their newest one, "Tight Knit" and then there was no going back. This album is all originals (I think) and is their strongest release to date, though I still haven't gotten around to pick up their first one. The songs have a wider emotional range that extend from giddy "Everyday" to nostalgic "Rolling Sea" to ethereal "At the Forest's edge" as opposed to most of the previous albums that refused to budge too far from warm and melancholic nostalgia. Seeing as I got into the group because of a cover, I have included that one and another perfect surprise, finding out they also covered my favorite Lindsey Buckingham Fleetwood Mac song, "Save Me a Place." I rounded it out with an original, "Rolling Sea" from the newest album.

Now I just can't wait to check them out live. They're a local band I've been told, though they've been on tour since I discovered them, but I hear they're coming back in a couple months . . .

Vetiver - Roll On Babe











Vetiver - Save Me a Place











Vetiver - Rolling Sea

Sahm the Mahn

One of the best things about starting a blog like this where I showcase a particular style of music, however narrowly or broadly defined, is that friends and strangers want to suggest certain artists that they think fit the bill. Sometimes I might already be on the same page and I might be planning to get to these nominations, but in other cases, I get schooled in the best possible way. For instance Dave's contributions of Ramblin' Jack Elliot and John Martyn were eye-openers and jaw-droppers and I'm glad that WWW made that possible. (aside: that's crazy, I just remembered a dream I had last night where I was in a small bar and a very old, but living John Martyn was performing in his charismatic style)

Today's artist is an introduction from my good friend Brad who considers San Antonio a home away from home, namely for its enchiladas and Doug Sahm. Even before I started WWW he raved about Sahm and having not enough music-listening hours in the day, it went in one ear and out the other. Actually, I remember that my dad had his classic Atlantic record released as "Doug Sahm and Band" but listening to it a dozen years back in passing, it must not have been my style at the time. After a recent road trip with Brad I became convinced that I really did need Doug Sahm's music in my life and I went out and got the below "best of" comp.

For a compilation that covers only 7 years of a thirty-year career, this CD is mind-blowingly diverse in its approach to music, all anchored by Sahm's plaintive vocals and eclectic mix of instruments. Hailing from San Antonio, Sahm brings his native tejano style to his unique brand of pop music. This comp. focuses on his prime hippy/country-rock years, the first several when he was living out in the Bay Area and feeding off and feeding into the burgeoning music scene in San Francisco. Towards the end of this comp.'s timeline Sahm had transplanted himself into the now-legendary 1970s singer-songwriter scene based out of Austin, TX.

The three songs here are an interesting side-story to Sahm's career when he recorded a couple of fairly straight-ahead country tunes to be released under the name "Wayne Douglas" as his attempt to cross-over into the country scene. Recorded in Nashville and released on Mercury as a 45 "Be Real" and "I Don't Want to go Home" was Sahm's "Sweetheart of the Rodeo". Listening to these tunes and the other tracks on the CD and a record I recently scored ("Texas Tornado" on Atlantic) I can say that Sahm was more country than a whole flock of Byrds.

Wayne Douglas - I Wanna Be Your Mama Again (previously unreleased version)

Wayne Douglas - I Don't Want To Go Home


Wayne Douglas - Be Real