» Listings for 2023

1. 2023 Albums Thing 232 - John Mellencamp “Strictly A One-Eyed Jack”

   Posted on 9:05am Wednesday 13th Dec 2023

   It had been many years since I’d bought a John Mellencamp album. I read about this one in an interview with Bruce Springsteen who had contributed guitar and vocals to 3 of its tracks for his long time friend (who knew ?). So I thought I’d take a chance on it.

   It’s a quite different John Mellencamp from the one on “Scarecrow”. His voice has deepened and roughed up, he now sounds not unlike Tom Waits. It took me a while to get into this album but the wait was worth it. It’s very, very good. 

   I like first song “I Always Lie To Strangers”…a lot. It’s taken at a beautifully world weary, sedate pace. You’re introduced to that gritty new voice (he may have been singing like this for years, I don’t know, I haven’t been listening for a long time). There’s a sense of “don’t blame me, you (the world around us) made me this cynical”

   “I always lie to strangers, I am a man of low degree

   This world is run by men, Much more crooked than me”

   Once he started writing Mellencamp said he realised the songs were all coming from one character, one voice, so he continued with that in mind which gives the album a real consistency. The sedate pace continues through the whole album, we’re not rockin’ in the USA this time, it’s music made by an older man for an older audience that has grown with him.

   The music itself is American roots, Americana whatever you want to call it. Miriam Sturm’s fiddle is prominent throughout. “I Am A Man That Worries” has a great Dobro/slide/barroom feel to it, “Sweet Honey Brown” is a life lost to Heroin, “Wasted Days” with Bruce Springsteen is very much in the vein of the Boss’s previous album looking back on life and willing yourself to make the most of what’s left of it. Springsteen also adds guitar and backing vocals to “Did You Say Such A Thing”.

   This one may not be for all of you but it’s an album I’ve played a lot over the past year or so. I think it's the grumpy old man-ness of it that appeals, I wonder why that could be...

   I Always Lie To Strangers - https://youtu.be/_1CtmRdvxXY?si=uB4-_GYJpazsX_D8

2. 2023 Albums Thing 231 - John Cougar Mellencamp “Scarecrow”

   Posted on 9:10am Tuesday 12th Dec 2023

   The reasons why I was drawn to this album are lost in the mists of time. It may have been because a friend who worked security at the NEC Arena in Birmingham asked if I wanted some tickets to see him (it can’t have been the reason as without knowing more about him than “Jack And Diane” I probably would have said no)…anyways I accepted a fistful of tickets and couldn’t give them away. So I went on my own, bought a slab of those horrible plastic bottles of lager they served at the NEC and set myself up dead centre on the very back bleacher of seats. 2 hours later my mind was suitably blown, the place was barely half full, there was no-one sitting within 5 rows of me and it’s still, to this day, one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen.

   Well if that was the reason I bought “Scarecrow” then good, cos it’s a fantastic album, one of the first I owned that could be described as Americana. Yes it has hit singles on it, “R-O-C-K In The USA”, “Lonely Ol' Night" and “Small Town”, but elsewhere it has a similar feel to Springsteen’s “Nebraska” about it. It’s not as low-fi and stark as “Nebraska” but the songs about the trials and troubles of ordinary Americans, this time based more on farming communities than Springsteen’s songs of bars, cars and cops, feels familiar.

   It starts right from the off in “Rain On The Scarecrow”

   “The crops we grew last summer weren't enough to pay the loans 

   Couldn't buy the seed to plant this spring and the Farmers Bank foreclosed 

   Called my old friend Schepman up to auction off the land 

   He said “John its just my job and I hope you understand” “

   The video for the song begins with an interview with three farmers telling of their struggles. Feels like stories we’ve heard before on Drive-By Trucker and Jason Isbell records. Single “Small Town” describes where the people that haunt these songs come from and how they think. “The Face Of The Nation” bemoans the changing times, “You’ve Got To Stand For Something” is an exhortation to do just that, no suggestion on what just believe in something, preferably yourself.

   There are lighter moments, Mellencamp and his band had spent some weeks in rehearsal before entering the studio playing through a list of a hundred rock and roll songs from the 1960s which led to the single “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to 60's Rock)” and “Between A Laugh And A Tear” is a nice duet with Rickie Lee Jones.

   “Scarecrow” was released in 1985, just a year after Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”, both at the height of Reagan-ism. Both albums are recounting the stories of ordinary Americans and how they were coping in that world, for many, not well.

   Rain On The Scarecrow - https://youtu.be/joNzRzZhR2Y?si=A_h92A7QnvO7X30W

3. 2023 Albums Thing 230 - Mega City Four “Terribly Sorry Bob”

   Posted on 10:15am Saturday 9th Dec 2023

   A short one today...

   “Terribly Sorry Bob” is a compilation of Mega City Four’s early singles. Side One covers the three that I’d bought while waiting on the release of “Tranzphobia” which is what really attracted me to this as I no longer own the 7”s. As with “Tranzphobia” there will be no surgical breakdown of what’s here. Click on the link below, if you don’t like it move on, but know that I find it hard to understand anyone who can’t find complete satisfaction in the Mega City Four.

   Distant Relatives - https://youtu.be/24B0EClRAT0?si=XTVT3UjMsn2CGP2n