Beautiful Blue Wind

I found this magical 45 a few years ago and have been meaning to post it ever since.  Hailing from Upstate New York, they craft a nice basement spell with these two sides of dreamy bliss.  "To Find This Place" especially floors me, with a light sci-fi undertone and odd fantasy lyrics.  It's pretty much perfect, and when the drums kick in you know you're on your way to the place!  So good!  Hopefully this marks the return of a weekly post here on the blog...  I'm not making lofty promises, but I would love to be more active on the site!  Stay tuned!


"To Find This Place"


"When I Was Young"

Chuck Senrick - Dreamin'

Here's one I just had to share.  Hipped by my good friend Mark, I was told to expect a supper club organ player that grapples with something much larger than his square acre of Fettucine Alfredo over the course of an album's worth of original songs.  And it's true, as Senrick's effortlessly simple and often repetitive chord changes stare you in the eye immediately across an empty room, a mannequin framework of drum machine pitter patter coercing his riffs and croons forward, the elegance of his voice blanketing wide eyes and a child-like heart in crushed velvet, satin-like.  A jazz man.  There's a lot of panache on display across this record, and I would argue that every song hits in one way or another.  Senrick has the ability of a great songwriter, to push you to a kind of elemental catharsis in a bridge and hold you there trapped in an amber glow over the course of the next verse.  He builds craft simply into each song, quietly, so that his subtle genius creeps up on you and it's totally fulfilling.  He has a joyful soul.  The mood is not explicitly melancholy, or wistful, but does occupy a kind of cartoon-like jazzy downs.  It's a rendering, not unlike an imagined world.  It's this latter fact that pushes the record that much further into greatness for me, as he's clearly a man at home in his imagination, and there lies the freedom that we all want to feel in music.  He comes from a familiar place, but he leaves you with the delight in something new.  The record morphs and mingles over the course of it's two sides into a wonderful micro-climate between jazz, soul, and lounge music.  Lyrically the concerns are simple, often universal, and times verge on the philosophic.  When so many people linger most exclusively in affairs of the heart it's nice to hear a grown man musing about what makes kids different from grown ups, or how he feels about his lost dog.  It's not to say that "Dreamin'" does not contain love songs, but they're often tempered and have a self-assured maturity that I'm assuming came from a married man (see "Wedding Trilogy").  Across the disc his vantage remains oddly pure and graceful in a way I don't always associate with the period, as on "Downtown" he spins with clarity how meaningless the rat race appears if you actually stop and observe things.  These concerns are never directives though, as he works like a painter, and the blended color is his own labyrinth for simple truths.  Take his ode to a friend who succumbed to drugs, "Drop a Dime," which blends metaphors rapidly creating a portrait of the addict as a part of a universal concern, "he's a little bit you, a little bit of me," yet pushing the song predominantly through a highly repetitive chorus that seems to illustratively offer that same man's base reality ("drop a dime, drop a dime").  The juxtaposition allows you to enter his world.  It's this kind of enchanting subtlety that makes the record, and is not altogether what one may have gathered from drinking in the soft blue cover with that hand drawn mug boomeranging out of a suburban abyss.  Or maybe it is that simple: music for a late afternoon, perhaps a bit wet with rain, when one might plunk down in a bean bag chair, with one light on and eat a graham cracker.  Haha.  I mean while you listen to the record obviously!  A time and place to relax, and think about the world.  So c'mon Duke, check it out!
   

Various Artists - Live at the Blood and Bones

From yesterday's barstool comes tomorrow's lamp-post cool: stumbling grog and bedfellow freedom pasted top down and mid center.  A special LP tentatively titled, "The More You Order the More You Get," or alternately "Live at the Blood and Bones" (subtitle?) - in any case, it's a variety of artists warming their bellies and rosining the bow in a stoney cafe somewhere south of never never.  I know I may be preaching to the choir, but stuff like this completely owns me even if it doesn't face off with the hyperion finish line.  It's a night carved out just for the blokes.  And maybe tonight they're south of stoked, but the fiddle, well it ain't yet broke.  On display: it's human endearment armed with soft tokes and crowd patter.  Kind of the sonic equivalent of post coital cuddling with a hairy stranger that randomly began giving you a back-rub in a crowded, auburn lit hippie night-cave.  And those little candles blinking bravely as the stone rolls away from the door...

Mix for '13: Sample Page Sexy Cut Out

Hey gang.  It took me forever to pull this one together.  Hopefully it was worth the wait.  AOR rubbish and basement treats from dusk til dawn.  Accent on the undulations of light and dark, Hollywood, Atlantis, neon, and flame.  Stay stoked, and get rad in '14!  Peace ~~~ J. D. F.

MIX

Mohs - The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Mysterious, charming, and very rare.  Mohs hailed from New Mexico according to the Acid Archives, but I can find no reference on the LP other than a song title.  Back cover is blank, and no artist names are included on the labels.  But what a stunning visage, that greco-roman blueprint staring sideways, donning real mucklucks for some kind of rocky mountain climb.  Such is the rustic, slightly windblown, but at times manicured, or at least curatorial output of the Mohs, as it were - collective.  We'll defer in that sense, until further information can be elucidated.  Education is important, but so also is getting clam-baked in your camper and recording very completely sincere soft wisdom from a place that is more internally laid back than I think anyone can entirely access anymore.  I bring a tear from my eye.  But listen to the record, enjoy something for crissakes.  Slow down a little bit.  The unexamined life is NOT worth living.  But your life will certainly go on.  Even with their two goofus trax.  Period charm.  You'll have to deal.  Lots of deep stoney gaze.  Immaculate.  Mohs lets dream together.  Good night!

Everything Will Be Alright... (The Ledge - Rock Affair)

This is probably one of my favorite one-trackers of all time.  Which is to say, actually, that the rest of the LP is far from unlistenable.  But one glimpse of the title track with your third ear, and it's sort of game over on their covers of "Dancing in the Moonlight" or wherever else the AM compass was guiding the Ledge's weathered late night live sets at one haunt or another roundbout Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Stunning cover photo, and something ever so cryptic as to where that voice is coming from, even if it's just some soft focus 70s melancholied blue eyed soul.  Totally sends a chill everytime.  Big ups to Rockadelic Rich for turning me onto this!  Another crazy score...

 
Everything Will Be Alright

Mix-Host Shake-down: Permanent Places, Wide Open Spaces

Hey, Greetings.  After a lot of procrastination I finally got all my mixes uploaded to the server for the indefinite future.  Having received a ton of inquiries about them, and scrambling on and off to upload individual links for thirsty parties, I just decided, f-it, let's make them available for good, for the good - yeah, the good of the people, man!  Haha!  It's a fun breeze through my "personal musical odyssey" (gasp), and a deep well of some really unseemly obscurity, sometimes house-be-rocking, others in time let the knock defrocking.  Sigh.  November may be the finally realized month de blog, in which I really devote some heave-ho to getting stuff up and reeling for your dancing and dining entertainment...  feel like I'm always under a cloud of one kind or another when it comes to really giving this site it's proper re-recognizance.  Life, what was it, what was that thing, I was looking for?  Music... music... music...

Alone Again, Or (2006)

love poem - richard brautigan
better dad than dead - mark levine
ill (worst) - r. stevie moore
frog song - merry airbrakes
Side B, Track 1 ["Untitled"] - david allen coe
mudiang priangan - the steps
one night - the shoes
lonely faces - dave bixby
love out of a crumbling forge - gene f. steiker and larry s. chengges
the fires are burning - charles manson family jams
mists and rains - ruth white
lost at sea - department store santas
inner light - index
in the eyes - virgin insanity
lonely fog - michael yonkers
mr. man - hickory wind
lamentation for hank williams - tina & david meltzer
i don't wanna love ya now - mistress mary
nature is my mother - yays and nays
persephone's song - journey of persephone
fingernail poem - alan watts
open road - hopkins & bradley
a song off of the HALF TRIBE surf lp

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Bummer in the Summer (2008)

Side A

Euphoria - Lisa (A Gift From...)

The Dots - ??? (Tape - MA, 80s)

Conte Four - Shangri La (Music for Your Dancing Pleasure)

Ken Nordine - Zebras (Twink)

Michael Farneti - Good Morning Kisses (Good Morning Kisses)

Sonny Padilla Jr. - Dreams and Stories (7")

Gary Neiland - Album Tonight (S/T)

Les Paul and Mary Ford - ???

Music Emporium - Winds Have Changed

Side B

Donnie Bletz - Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (7")

Crystalaugur - You've Got to Rap (Terranaut)

Marc Brandt - Roaring Texas Chief (Back to Better Days)

Dave Lamb and Gye Whiz - I Wonder Why (I'll Be Alright)

Donnie and Joe - Good Time (Dreamin' Wild)

Paul Levinson - Antique Shop (Twice Upon a Rhyme)

Billy Ashe - Friendship Song (You 'n You)

Austin Sirch - Rail Ride (Alter Alert)

Duncan Martin - Propane (Tape) 

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You Really Would (2009)

A Wave - Woo

Measurement - Pat Madden

Take Me Home - Bert Keeley

Anthony Burgess - Bing Selfish & the Ideals

Have You Ever Had That Feeling? - Jim Hansen

It's Over - Gatsby

Misty - The Estate

Anybody Home - Dennis Soares

Dogs - Glenn Phillips

Fear of Flying - Jenny MacGregor

Where Are You? - Tim McKenna

Searchin' - Charmer

Universal Person - Grand Canyon

A Simple Thought - Greg Todd & the Jacks

Try Baby - Pat Madden

Diamond Love - Philip John Lewin

Tots in the Way - Ice Skates with Arms

The Stars are Bright - Benny Cook

A Job Well Done - Jo Ann Stokes

The Cleaner - Woo 

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Duende (2010)

Keep Workin’ - Misty Hush Revival

- Eric

- Wailing Wall

Stone Phase - Moonlyte

- Utopia

Amor - Saints & Sinners

You Came to Me - Morly Grey

Journey of the Mind - El Gusano

3 AM - Misty Hush Revival

- Collective Tools

Salsa Friquea - Bandolero

On the Brink - Grapes of Rathe

- Eric

Drug Country - New Dawn

Our Love - Dennie Dioguardi

Girl From the Mountain - Ghetto Brothers

- Unity

- Haku

- Grupo Irakere

Outro - Misty Hush Revival

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Nocturnal Plant Life (2010)

How Can You Know Yourself? - Cathy Ragland

River - Arica

The Wabe - First Lite

Crimson Dawn - Turiiya

Guide Me to the Light - Rohrbacker, Hendren, & Kingen

Bye Bye - T-Kail

Hey Guy - Harlem Avenue

I Owe It All to You - Froc

Seems Like One of Those Days - Konrad

Black River Lady - Drendall, Thrower, & Friends

Spring - Joey Garone

Atmospheric Dreams - Lightdreams

Dream of the M - Once

Take My Life - Ron Rude 

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Exercise Your Face (And Smile) (2011)

Damage Done - Plateau

Midnight on Mopac - Aerosol Lettuce

Sweet Sirene - Zoa

Turnaround - Ambiance

Secret Squirrel

It Gets Me Hot - Slippery When Wet

Hummingbird - Marc, Tim, and Group

No Not Really - Michael Land

A Dream Shared By Two - Tubular Face

Before the Snowfall - Sixth Station

Jesus, Watch Over Me - Jerry Hawkins

Chinga Tu Madre - The Jugs

Blue Sea - Follies Bazaar

The Impossible Dream (Excerpt) - Kay Dennis 

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It’s the Same Moon in China

Good Times Rock’n’Roll Band - Khamba Shuffle (Variations)

Summer Wine - Lady of Dreams

Stir Crazy - I Am Free

Pumpkin - Frightened Little Girl

The Calliope - Everybody’s High

Mark Dutton - Sun on the Run

The Waterproof Candle - Electrically Heated Child

Betty Everett - 1900 Yesterday

The Eldees - Don’t Be Afraid to Love

The Westwinds - Summer

Pittsburgh Phil - Don’t Tell Her Lies

Josie Taylor - I’ll Love You For Awhile

Staff & Management - Fresh Dirt

Yellow Hair - Talent for Lovin’

Daisy Clan - San Francisco China Town

Strimbling Blimbles - Perfect Dream

Gloria March - The Other Side of the Moon

Bran’ Spankin’ - You Gotta Change

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Hope this all hits the spot, drop me a note if anything specific touches you...