Song of The Week: The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling

Good morning world. As regular flipsters know all too well, our articles tend to focus on more obscure music from garage bands of the 60s. But as Summer sets in and bands tour relentlessly all across the globe, we thought we'd look at a few modern bands we dig. One can't just sit in their music library and spin dusty grooves by themselves. One needs to get the heck outside and see some live music. Plus we think it's a good transition from our previous post where we gave some space to California musician Jeff Stovall to help him record his solo album (check that out if you can). 

Today we feature the ubiquitous dynamic duo of a band from Akron, Ohio, The Black Keys. I've had the very nice pleasure to see them twice. Once, so early on in their career that their set was only about an hour long, included tepid Beatles covers and they commanded an audience of 60 people, at best. Then again, I saw them right after they started to break. They played a much larger venue, had three albums under their belt and played a solid set of originals and a few tasty R.L. Burnside numbers. The band has changed sound on every album (after their initial two releases on the tiny Fat Possum Records). But the common theme on the timeline with the band is great quality work. Great songwriting, great production, great performance.

The band is so universally solid from album to album and song to song that it was hard to choose exactly which song to pluck from the rest. Today we feature a song from their latest album on Nonesuch Records, the damn near flawless, El Camino. The song is Gold On The Ceiling and we hope you enjoy it. It has a nice little T-Rex arrangement which we dig. Go buy the album, go see the band. If you want. Not trying to bully you or anything. 

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side.

Song of the Week: "Skinny Woman" R.L. Burnside

Listen - R.L. Burnside performs Skinny Woman

Walk into almost any blues jam in America, Europe or Australia and you almost assuredly will be hit with a tidal wave of guitar players with a Fender Stratocaster, a fedora, a Marshall amp, a ton of overdrive and a grimacing face that punctuates every overdrawn, noodling note they play. I like to call these guys the Strat-in-a-Hat players. They treat the other musicians, even the singers, with a sense that they only perform a utilitarian necessity to deliver their long Stevie Ray Vaughan influenced guitar solos that overwhelm everything and everyone.

But that is not what the blues always was. Nor what it should be. The art of the subtle has been lost in the electronic age. Today's Song of the Week comes from Coldwater, Mississippi in the late 60s. It's the first recording of a farmhand as he sits in his living room playing, alone, by himself, unaccompanied, without anyone else, on a cheap Kay acoustic guitar tuned to an open G. The song is Skinny Woman and it is just one of the 14 recordings compiled on the now out of print, First Recordings album.

R.L. Burnside would grab some notoriety late in life when bands like The North Mississippi Allstars and the Black Keys started covering his work and his more modern recordings, such as It's Bad You Know, got action on shows like The Sopranos. (read our May 10, 2009 article on this song here).

But this is R.L. Burnside at his rawest, and best. The influence of his neighbor, Mississippi Fred McDowell is quite evident. Enjoy. And seek out the First Recordings album on Fat Possum Records if you can.

Song of the Week: "Going To The River", Mississippi Fred McDowell

After World War II, in the northern hills of Mississippi, a music sub-genre grew like the honeysuckle vines that predominate the small farms of that area. It came to be known as Hill Country blues, and like it's older kissing-cousin to the South, delta blues, it incorporates finger picking, a healthy dose of bottleneck guitar, and stories of murder, deception, hard days working and, of course, the frustrations of love.

If anyone was to stake a claim on being the grandpappy of Hill Country blues, it would perhaps be Mississippi Fred McDowell. McDowell played a mean sounding, repetitive, rhythm-heavy solo blues that owed much to Son House and Charlie Patton. For much of his life McDowell worked the evening in local juke joints in and around his hometown of Como, Mississippi while working the days on his small farm. He had been doing this since the 1920's but it wasn't until 1959 that McDowell was "discovered" by folklorist Alan Lomax. For Lomax and a small number of blues fans, it was like opening a time capsule. Blues had moved North, had become upbeat, incorporated full bands and was edging into what was about to become Soul Music. But in the rural northern hills of Mississippi, a handful of musicians in abutting farms, perhaps unaware of the trends of the day, were still playing it the old way. Arguably, nobody did it better than McDowell. Mississippi Fred incorporated insanely catchy riffs with his his edgy slide playing as he would double the vocals and the guitar melody in perfect pitch and timing. As he once said in a recording: "What I sing, the guitar sings." The two instruments were one. And so it was, starting at the age of 55, McDowell made his first recording, filmed his first appearances, traveled abroad for the first time and became blues royalty overnight. He would be dead 12 years later. But in that brief time, his traditional country blues left a major imprint. McDowell's neighbors, Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside would soon get recording sessions and Bonnie Raitt and the Rolling Stones were just a couple of the popular acts who would pick up his style and would go on to have success covering McDowell.

In 1965, McDowell traveled to Germany with a group of blues musicians. Most of his tour mates, like Matt Murphy, had completed the transition to upbeat urban blues. Fred McDowell was still playing it old style. Sitting down and letting the guitar and voice sing it together. The song filmed in '65 Germany, Going Down to The River, is our Song of the Week.