Please read to the end for information about how you can win a copy of this album.
The Village in question is Greenwich, and 429 Records has gathered together an accomplished cast to celebrate the music that shook the world from that corner of New York City in the Sixties. Lest you think my use of phrase “shook the world” is an overstatement, I offer the first three songs on the album as evidence. Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds Rickie Lee Jones putting a pin in the balloon of pretension that surrounds Dylan these days. Though not of his making, it marks his every movement. Jones jabs at it with, of all things, a slide whistle, returning the humor inherent in the song.
Songs two and three are Dylan covers too, albeit more serious in tone. There’s nothing funny about “It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding,” and Winnipeg band the Duhks perform it with requisite intensity and respect. Lucinda Williams makes Dylan’s bitter rant “Positively 4th Street” her own by bringing it from a less angry, more heartbroken place, and very few people do heartbreak like Lucinda Williams.
Sixpence None the Richer contribute a wonderfully inventive take on the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger,” and John Oates’ retelling of another traditional song, “He Was A Friend of Mine,” is something of a revelation. The extremely underrated Philadelphia singer/songwriter Amos Lee closes out side one with a typically understated, soulful version of Fred Neil’s “Little Bit of Rain.” (more…)
![RS430~Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/RS430Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters1.jpg "RS430~Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters[1]")
Take a look around you. You, my friends, are the soul of Popdose’s vast readership, the very backbone of music-blog culture! And that makes you – let’s face it – cool. Hip. Happenin’. You are steeped in music history and well-versed in the loose morals and bad attitudes that make rock ‘n’ roll what it is and always has been, at its best: Cutting-edge. Rebellious. Dangerous. You know perfectly well which music lives up to those standards, and which does not. You know which artists have provided major contributions, and you know – perhaps more than anyone – that with a fat recording contract and a complacent rubber-stamp from radio, a swill merchant like Mr. Lewis can do enormous damage to this music, this culture, this … industry of cool in which we are all invested.
The kid from Maple School broke away and dribbled down the court. Just five steps ahead of me, he had a wide open lane for an easy layup. As he lifted the ball for his shot, I plowed into him, sending the two of us into the padding against the gym wall. The ref blew the whistle on me, but I didn’t care. I knew this guy would never make his free throws. I had saved our team two points. And there you have the crowning moment of my basketball glory days on the Chestnut School seventh-grade basketball team.
