(no subject)

[kmusser]

Ok, some more random music. "Dear God" by XTC. XTC wasn't really on my radar in the 80's, but apparently was on my father's as he had a bunch of XTC albums in his collection. This is off the Skylarking CD from 1986. The rest of the album I was sort of meh on, but this song . . this song is kind of hard to ignore. As relevant today as it was 30 years ago. An emotional questioning of God when there is so much evil in the world. Not surprisingly the anti-religious message made it controversial back in the day, but it ended up being XTC's biggest hit in the U.S. going to #37.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p554R-Jq43A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_God_(XTC_song)


Next I got "It's A Dirty Job" by Koko Taylor and Lonnie Brooks. Just some straight up awesome Blues, this is off of Taylor's Jump for Joy album from 1990. My father took me to see Koko Taylor live in 1990 at Grant Park, which is a very fond memory, and her title of "Queen of the Blues" is well deserved, just an amazing performer. I got to see her twice more before she passed, the last time at a Blues festival in DC. My favorite CD of hers is Force of Nature, which is the one that came out after this, so I sometimes neglect this album, but it definitely has some good stuff on it, and her partner in this song is another Chicago Blues powerhouse and his guitar playing is nicely showcased in this track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx1m2gnjds4

Comments

[theandrewhickey]

Taylor is absolutely great.
If you're interested in revisiting Skylarking (which is a personal favourite album of mine, particularly side one, and is very much a grower), it might be worth your while getting hold of the "corrected polarity edition" from 2013 or thereabouts. Apparently when Todd Rundgren was mixing the album, he had a badly-wired mixing desk that put the stereo out of phase, which meant the album lost almost all of the sound spectrum, leading to the tinny sound of the original record. This was finally discovered when doing a remaster a few years back -- before that, Andy Partridge had just assumed that Todd Rundgren, who he'd found impossible to work with, was a terrible engineer -- and it was put out with the corrected polarity. It turns out there's actually a bass on there! Who knew?!

[kmusser]

Good to know! I'll definitely try and hunt that down.

[duskpeterson]

I actually got to see XTC in concert at a modest-sized venue in DC, back in the eighties.

(Your comment about your father's interest in XTC confused me for a moment; my parents never showed any interest in my generation's music. Then I remembered, "Oh, right, I'm 57. 'My generation' was two generations ago.")

[kmusser]

It is weird, my father had a massive music collection, most of it compiled after I had left for college. I inherited it when he passed in 2008, it was mostly blues, but there were a lot of surprises in there as well including pop and alternative stuff that I don't remember him listening to when it was "current", so he must have discovered afterwards.

[duskpeterson]

I inherited my mother's big collection too!