B R A V E S O U L S R E C E I V E
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We just sort of thought today might be a good day to redo what's on the site considering it's been up awhile and we have a beautiful day on hand and should celebrate it with some small recognition or general announcement and maybe by doing so set forth a precedent for an excellent autumn. Today is Labor Day, does that mean anything to you? It should. But it doesn't. Especially if you've been working some shitty job. Oh I remember working on Labor Day long ago. So today we took a quick video of our hands typing the opening lines of what's above. If you click the image up there, in the background you should be able to hear a song by Bill Fay. He's touted as the missing link between Nick Drake and Dylan and Ray Davies. Whatever. He's really darn good, and I suspect he'll get better as the days get shorter and wetter and grayer. I can't think of anything we'd rather listen to these days more than Bill Fay, maybe Arthur Russell's First Thoughts, Best Thoughts, which is absolutely amazing instrumental genius, suitable for all sorts of weather. So Bill Fay released two albums in the early seventies. The first we listened to as we drove back east from Iowa. A guy who lived in the house we lived in in Iowa City for six weeks after we moved from the house we'd lived in for two years had all sorts of burned cds in those big black binders and he'd let me borrow them and I'd load all sorts of unknown stuff onto my computer then onto the olde iPod. On the way back east, I finally listened to Bill Fay's first album. It was a rainy summer evening in Ohio and I was getting tired having driven since the morning and then these songs (here's the first) sounded so perfect with strings and horns and surprising lyrics and everything very tastefully produced and in great synch with my windshield wipers. In the morning after a stay in western PA I played the first Bill Fay album over and over, then listened to something else, then back to Bill Fay. Hey, we want you to stay, we want you to stay, we want you to stay! But I was on my way home and then first thing I did back in NJ was buy Bill Fay's second album, Time of the Last Persecution, and listened as I drove to my friends' house at the Jersey shore. Disappointed at first for all the songs other than the amazing first one with horns again and Bill screaming at the end. Too much Christ talk. A song about pictures of Adolf Hitler (the link opens to an mp3 of Jim O'Rourke's faithful cover). But after say a dozen listens the album totally opened up and became even better than the first, more difficult but ultimately more rewarding. So I downloaded the last album, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and was seriously disappointed by the cheesy Seventies production and strings and chorus-y guitar, but then after maybe twenty listens, I realized the album seemed like two albums, with the later songs really killing, especially Jericho Road and the one in the background during the little video above. So that's it, really. Just wanted to write a little something and recommend a few good albums by Bill Fay and that amazing Arthur Russell album, which is worth the $20 or so, I guess -- I got a burned copy but will surely buy the sucker one day, maybe even on vinyl so I can stare more deeply at Arthur's handsome pockface. |
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B R A V E S O U L S R E C E I V E
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Enhanced Navigational Coherency - Long-Ass List of Contributors
Super Lo-Tech Slideshow - Seven Years Ago - Six Years Ago - Five Years Ago