Liner Notes-04.Nov.2022
The Killer has exited stage left, I take a look at the new Carly Rae Jepsen, and Jerry Harrison is hitting the road. All that & a whole lot more this week!
We lost Jerry Lee Lewis over the weekend.
Love him or hate him-and, if my social media feeds over the last few days are any indications, there will be all manner of thoughts & spiky takes- he was one of a kind.
He was also the last one standing from the early days of rock & roll. By the time he’d shuffled off this mortal coil at 87, he’d outlived:
Elvis
Chuck Berry
Roy Orbison
Buddy Holly
And many, many more. Did anyone have him as their pick to be the last one standing? He certainly wasn’t on my bingo card.
When the clock finally struck midnight, he’d lived nine lives, every one of them at 120 miles an hour. He married seven times- including one wife that was 13 and one he may or may not have tried to kill.
So yeah…not good. But I’m not here to talk about his life offstage or rationalize any of it. For those of you cracking your knuckles and firing up your keyboards, I’ll save you the bandwidth- I agree with you. He was pretty insufferable and, by most accounts, had zero interest in any kind of redemption.
Except when it came to his career.
This brings us to his Another Place Another Time record.
By the late 60s, Jerry lee Lewis was washed up. His contract with Sun had expired a few years earlier, and he’d spent the middle part of the decade in a sort of rock and roll wilderness.
Some of that was out of his control and down to changing tastes in popular music. The first wave of rock Lewis was a part of was out, replaced first with the British Invasion and then by an era of peace, love, and weed. Not a good fit for a rowdy man with a penchant for booze and brawling.
And some of that was very much in his control, and self-inflicted wounds- not least of which was the marriage to his then 13-year-old relative.
Many of the pieces marking his passing will invariably include a clip of “Great Balls of Fire” or similar, but by 1967/68, no one was listening. He could still cut a good track on occasion but, by and large, had been reduced to recording whatever was shoved in from of him, quality be damned.
Out of contract and out of options. Lewis had nothing to lose. So he pivoted. To country—or rather back to it. One of his first singles for Sun records was a version of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms,” and he’d covered more than one of Hank Williams’ songs.
With Another Place Another Time, he went all in on hardcore country-the country of broken hearts and hard livin’- and refashioned himself as a sort of bar room ringleader.
The immediate effect of this refocus was on the charts, where both the title track and “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” made decent runs.
Of the title track, Nick Tosches wrote:
Another Place Another Time was a beautiful song of anguish
and loneliness, and Jerry Lee sang it in the studio that cold grey afternoon, January
9, 1968, with a voice of one trying to conceal rather than to reveal that anguish and
that loneliness . . . and when Eddie Kilroy and the musicians who were in the studio
that day heard that voice they felt shivers like cold crawling things up and down
their spines, and they closed and opened their eyes, breathing, as if to shake loose a
sudden inwards fright
There was no one quite like The Killer, and one of his superpowers was making every song (cover or not) sound as if it was made only for him. Even when he tackles the familiar, he makes it unpredictable, and therein lies the appeal.
Ultimately, Lewis would be a country singer for far longer than a rock singer, but this was a curveball to many at the time of its release.
The record itself is wonderful. For all the chaos outside the studio, this record sounds extremely personal and professional. He’s focused, and he’s signing with his whole heart.
Lewis clearly made a lot of mistakes in his 87 years; Another Place Another Time wasn’t one of them.
Below the jump for paid subscribers:
Carly Rae Jepsen’s new album
Shoegaze from Texas
Jerry Harrison is hitting the road with Adrian Belew
Rick Rubin on why using words to describe music is a terrible idea
And a whole lot more.
Check it out!
Other Reviews
Nuclear Daisies- S/T
A lot of shoegaze has become utterly boring. Just walls of fuzz or noodling that leave you stuck in place. The new Nuclear Daisies has me feeling optimistic. It’s only been out for a few days, but I’ve already played it several times. The record is a ride.
Swirling guitars and vocals and a sound that alternates between soaring in the clouds and being in the middle of a foundry. If you like Curve and/or My Bloody Valentine, this checks a lot of boxes for you. You can pick up a tape or digital copy here.
Carly Rae Jepsen-The Loneliest Time
I’m mindful that reading my work can occasionally give you whiplash. Going from post-apocalyptic dream pop to this would never be a smooth segue. That said, while the latest from Carly Rae Jepsen is at the opposite corner of the sonic universe from Nuclear Daisies, it too is a ride— and for all the right reasons.
The entire record is well-polished and danceable. It’s stacked with bangers (that’s a sentence I never imagined myself writing). Growing up, we used to refer to certain tracks as “mascara songs.” As in, the sort of songs people sing while getting ready to head out for a fun night. The Loneliest Time is lousy with them. It’s the sort of record Kylie Minogue used to make.
Given the outsize popularity of “Call Me Maybe,” it’s easy to forget that Jepsen’s been making music for almost 20 years now (“Call Me Maybe” is ten already!). If that song was insecurity or butterflies in musical form, The Loneliest Time is the sound of that woman a little older and a little wiser. Despite the title, she’s not really lonely- she knows what she wants, even if she’s not 100% sure how to get there.
Enumclaw-Save The Baby
If you’re going to refer to yourselves as “the best band since Oasis,” you better be ready to back it up. Fortunately, Enumclaw does just that. Save The Baby is ambitious, as if the band is banking on it as their ticket out of Tacoma.
Sounding like an homage to your favorite 90s college rock band, the record has bits of emo, jangly pop, and sugar-wet riffs in equal doses sprinkled throughout.
The band might compare themselves to the brothers Gallagher, but to my ear, they sound like a 2022 version of The Veldt.
Lead singer Aramis Johnson said of the tagline, “In the lineage of rock, Oasis is the last band to go from some random dive bar to a stadium. And if we’re not selling out stadiums, we’re not doing it how I wanted to do it.”
Fair enough. On “10th & J2,” he notes I will be, I will be/ Who I’m destined to be. After listening to Save The Baby a few times, I know they’ll get where Johnson wants to take them
Thoughts on any of these? Any records you think I should review?
What Was On
For newer readers: Below is the list of records I was able to listen to all the way through this week. Doesn’t include playlists, stuff in the car, etc. There will be repeats (I’m a creature of habits), and there is rarely any rhyme or reason.
My Bloody Valentine- Isn’t Anything
The Breeders- Pod
Wire-IBTABA
The Buckinghams- Portraits
Fleetwood Mac- Tusk
Throwing muses- Hunkpapa
Fleetwood Mac- Tango In The Night
KMRU- Epoch
Snail Mail- Valentine
Feir-S/T
The Stargazer Lillies-Cosmic Tidal wave
Spoon-Gimme Fiction
Areofall-Rh
Missing Persons- Spring Session M
New Order- Technique
Walter Becker- 11 Tracks of Whack
Ray Parker Jr. -Greatest Hits
Mighty Mighty Bosstones- Devil’s Night Out
Wussy-Funeral Dress
Blondie-Parallel Lines
Talking Heads- Fear Of Music
Jawbreaker- 24-Hour Revenge Therapy
Prince Dirty Mind
What’ve you been listening to?
B-Sides
Dolly Parton “likely won’t tour again” but could play one-off shows.
"I do not think I will ever tour again, but I do know I'll do special shows here and there, now and then," Parton said in an interview with Pollstar magazine published Thursday. "Maybe do a long weekend of shows, or just a few shows at a festival. But I have no intention of going on a full-blown tour anymore."
Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew announce 19-date “Remain In Light” tour.
Remain in Light is a high point in my career,” Harrison said in a statement. “Adrian and I had often discussed the magic of the 1980 tour and the sheer joy it brought to audiences. It is such a delight to see that joy once again in the audiences on the current tour.
Instagram supposedly working on becoming MySpace.
According to leaked reports, Instagram wants to add a profile song feature for users. The platform that hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be lately has decided to become MySpace. Cool, cool.
Jello Biafra with an awesome tribute to Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro, who we lost this week.
In 1981 we needed a new drummer. Somehow Ray found that guy from SSI. Or maybe Darren found him, I was never sure. From the first song, he was solid. Good kick and snare instinct, to make the songs go.
At the second audition, he was the one who’d done his homework, so hands down he was in. Ray said he’d learned “In-Sight” from hearing it once in his car on the radio.
Now we had more fire and feel than ever before, and the rest is history. He made the whole band 10 years younger, including all the damn carousing and pranks. Throwing food at passengers all over the plane on the way to Australia, til the pilot came back and threatened to arrest him.
The Damned play together for the first time in 30 years
11/10. No notes. What’s your favorite song by the band, and why is it “New Rose?”
A good tweet:
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
