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Today's 1st album: Doc Watson, Portrait. A solid late-career album from one of the greatest of all time
Today's 2nd album: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Country Music Hit Parade: 1956. These are great entry points into the awesomeness of country music at its height.
Today's 3rd album: Bobby Bare, Cowboys and Daddys. One of his finest albums. He knew he wasn't a good writer, but he could have great taste in others' songs, including this one, written by Tom T. Hall.
Today's 4th album: Ralph Stanley, Cry from the Cross. Perhaps the greatest of all bluegrass gospel albums, though there is a lot of competition for that tile. I love this album though, and I'm an atheist. Here's a different Stairway to Heaven.
There also needs to be a club for socialists who spend the rest of their time thinking about the history of country music.
Today's 5th album: Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump. Part of the great definitive series of Nigerian music from this amazing era. Of course it includes some Fela.
Today's 6th album: Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit. "Pedestrian at Best" is the platonic ideal of a rock song.
Today's 7th album: Joe McPhee, Nation Time. One of the free jazz classic albums. I saw McPhee play a few years ago in someone else's band (can't quite remember whose now) and it was amazing just to be in the same room as him.
Today's 8th album: John McLaughlin, Devotion. Probably his best work, outside of with Miles.
I saw McLaughlin play with Al DiMeola and Paco DeLucia in 1997 in Seoul. McLaughlin was well into his sort of New Age stuff by then and I always though DiMeola was kind of a wanker, but it was still cool to see him live.
Today's 9th album: Tom Russell, The Rose of the San Joaquin. To say that Russell's career has been inconsistent is to define the word down. He has some of my favorite albums of all time and some of my most hated. But this is a good one.
I've seen Russell a few times. The last was in 2010 in Austin. At that show, he went on this rant about how historians were sucking the life blood out of the past. The reason? Someone gave him a copy of Elliott Gorn's The Most Dangerous Woman in America, about Mother Jones.
It was so eyerolling. He wouldn't even read the book. But he stole the title and wrote an incredible song on the Blood and Candle Smoke album about how depressed Mount Olive, Illinois is. The whole thing sums up how great and infuriating the guy can be at the same time.
Anyway, all his last 4 or 5 albums have been awful, so if you end your exploration of him with Blood and Candle Smoke, you have a pretty good set of albums, with some exceptions.
Today's 10th album: Robyn, Honey. Time to pretend I am hip with what the kids are listening to.
Today's 11th album: The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet. Not sure what else needs to be said.
Today's 12th album: Richard Thompson, Watching the Dark, Disc 3. This is the original RT box set from the early 90s. It includes a live version of "Al Bowlly's in Heaven," so here's a different performance but the same era.
