Ladies And gentlemen: Welcome to the former For Science songwriter/guitarist, current Modern Hut songwriter/guitarist/sing , and always Don Giovanni co-owner Joe Steinhardt’s playlist reviewed. Joe Steinhardt’s playlist and headaches kept me up all night but it was worth it!!
Butch Hancock – 1981: A Spare Odyssey – When it comes to country supergroup The Flatliners, this is the one nobody remembers. Here he sounds like dylan down to the harmonica. Alright with me.
Lucinda Williams – Sharp Cutting Wings _ from her first and still really her best album, Happy Woman Blues, Lucinda sang better but I don’t think she ever got the songs better than on that album. John Morthland got somebody to interview her round this time for the mag I ran and she came across as a lot sweeter than she does now. That Wheels On Gravel crap ruined it. No “Passionate Kisses” here either, but a twang as cool as the whole outdoors and place between art and commerce she never found again.
Vic Chesnutt – Danny Carlisle – Dark, upset, paralyzed, despondent: my problem, and I have never been an unmitaged fan, never the fan Steinhardt is, who speaks of seeing Chestnutt (I saw him once at the Bottom Line) live many times. My problems are twofold: Vic’s MELODIES were too dark for me. And they are here. I could take his voice, enjoyed his lyric the way you might enjoy imagining your own funeral, but the song is so low key and sorrowful I don’t particularly like it.
Eddie Hinton – Hard Luck Guy – Now your talkin’. A bloke I don’t know but should, Hinton is a Muscle Shoals Sound System guitarist and session person, and at first this sounds like “That’s How Strong My Love Is” but it settles into a soul groove you’d love to hear Otis sing.
Drive-By Truckers – Zip City – Another band I am less keen on then many people. And might I add with, except for perhaps a resolute professionalism, nothing much in common with our heroes songwriting. Drive-By Truckers are second rate Stones in southern boogie mode. BUT THEY ARE SECOND RATE STONES IN SOUTHERN BOOGIE MODE. This reminds me a little of “Memory Motel” and sure that’s a compliment and Steinhardt immortalized em forever in “Headaches”. But that was like ten years ago or something. Their last coupla albums really sucked.
Elton John – Funeral For A Friend – Remember how six years ago with Peachtree Road, John wanted to be taken seriously as a musician again? What he couldn’t do was capture this opening off a great double. A dramatic faux-classical piano intrumental segueing into “Love Lies Bleeding”.
Connie Dungs – Kitty – Now we’re getting a touch cl
oser to a sound you could associate with Steinhardt. 90s punk and it is all thrust with your chin and don’t forget a toon you can whistle.
oser to a sound you could associate with Steinhardt. 90s punk and it is all thrust with your chin and don’t forget a toon you can whistle.
Witch – Seer – Ooooh, J. Masci from Dinosaur jn. He sounds spunky. I hate spunk (what sitcom). This is pretty riffarama hard stuff, like a beer and a black jack chaser.
The Roches – Hammond Song – I can hear this guys somewhere in the back of a song like “Louis St.” So Joe and I have that much in common. This is off their first album and it is a great song (the harmonies are stunning) but two years they’d release one of my fave albums Keep On Doing. I remember writing a longish review and my idiot editor at the time cutting it in half. PS Robert Fripp produced.
Prince – Purple Rain – Hmmm. I have my problems with Prince and this song I can’t even hear anymore. I got back to Dirty Mind for my fix
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Shellshag – Garys Note – Don Giovanni recording artists and the clearest antedecent to Modern Hut’s demos though not their live performance.
Stormshadow – Compassion Confection – I don’t anything about these guys but they sound like For Science except the blokes voice isn’t as good, and the girl forwards an interesting shading and the songs aren’t as good.
Iris Dement – The Way I Should – There are two types of people, those who worship Iris and those who have never heard her. A country singer of such delicacy, beauty and pain, she chases her christianity but her faith isn’t enough and the stories she tells are not shining in god’s light but struggling towards it. And here I can see one road Steinhardt’s song writing can take.
Warren Zevon – Poor, Poor Pitiful Me – My fave West Coast songwriter, er, ever. Love the verse where the girl asks him to beat her. Ronstadt has a totally different one in her excellent cover. To change the subject a little I would guess Joe knows Zevon’s The Wind album so I’ll just recommend it to every one else.
Natalie Merchant – San Andreas Fault – Are you joking me? SHE WENT ON STAGE AT THE VBEACON IN HER BARE FEET. Ugh, I can’t take this chick. Didn’t much like Tigerlilly much either.
Joni Mitchell – The Last Time I Saw Richard – Everything about Blue is tremendous, but this isn’t the most tremendous.
The Cure – In Between Days – I am not the Robert Smith fan the rest of the world is. I’ll give him Three Imaginary Boys and all the “Fast Cars” in the world but his gloomness doesn’t coincice on my state of disaster.
Fleetwood Mac- Second Hand News – OK, speaking of influences, Lindsay might not have influence Joe DIRECTLY, but this hookladen taught him how to do what Joe does : viz., write songs you wanna hear again and again by guilding the mine with verbal and musical repetitions. I know that sounds like a million other people but it isn’t. A modern pop producer, a Dr, Loke for instance, layers his songs with backing tracks which sludge through looped repitions, but Buckingham builds his songs through layers of musical repetition so that you keep on wanting to hear what’s coming next: it is almost a form of dissatisfaction or like Hannah Arendt’s description of the Will: a wave that crests and repeats and crests and repeats. The brain wants something, the will executues and the execution of the will leads to a different want. That is how songs work, through that iteration of desire/sation/desire. Buckingham’s verse plays like a chorus: this song leads you to the ‘down down down” and that would be enough for an average song, but he is really going for the “second hand news” bridgey third chorus.
The Cure – In Between Days – I am not the Robert Smith fan the rest of the world is. I’ll give him Three Imaginary Boys and all the “Fast Cars” in the world but his gloomness doesn’t coincice on my state of disaster.
J Church – Tide Of Fate – Another 90s pop punk band – Steinhardt were never have lost the song the way J. Chuch do after the first verse.
Screeching Weasel – Leather Jacket – Formed after a Ramones concert according to Wikipedia. And the best I didn’t already know. Fast Loud rules.
Alejandro Escovedo – Always A Friend – The great old punker off his terrific album from a coupl
a years ago.
a years ago.
Sgt. Sunshine – Vega _ Yeah, repeat, no. Sorta Brian Jonestowny freakout without the melody.