Otis Redding

The Tune for today is:

Otis Redding - Hawg for you

I'm a hawg for you, baby
I'm gonna root all around your door
I'm a dirty hawg for you, baby
And I'm gonna keep on rootin'
All around your door, baby, now now
I'm gonna keep on rootin', baby
Till I can't root no more

I got rockin' pneumonia, asiatic flu
I got something to tell you, baby
I wanna sock it to you
Hawg for you, baby
And I'm gonna rock all around your door
Keep on rootin', rootin'
Rootin', root, baby, yeah
Till I just can't root no more

Hawg for you, baby
Hawg for you, honey

They say I'm a dirty man
But I'm doin'the best I can
They say I don't do none right
But I'm gonna make love all night, huh
I'm a hawg for you, baby
And I'm gonna root all around your door
Keep on rootin', mama
Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord
Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord
Till I just can root no more
Let's take it home, boys, oh yeah

Recorded and released in 1966, Otis Redding's fifth album, Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul found the rugged-voiced deep soul singer continuing to expand the boundaries of his style while staying true to his rough and passionate signature sound. Redding's ambitious interpretations of "Tennessee Waltz" and especially "Try A Little Tenderness" found him approaching material well outside the traditional boundaries of R&B and allowing his emotionally charged musical personality to take them to new and unexpected places, and while his cover of "Day Tripper" wasn't his first attempt to confront the British Invasion, his invigorating and idiosyncratic take on The Beatles' cynical pop tune proved Redding's view of the pop music universe was broader than anyone might have expected at the time. While Redding's experiments with covers on this set were successful and satisfying, it was on his own material that he sounded most at home, and "My Lover's Prayer" and "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" are deep Southern soul at its finest, with Redding's forceful but lovelorn voice delivering an Academy Award-worthy performance. And once again, the Stax house band (centered around Booker T. and the MG's and The Memphis Horns) prove themselves both thoroughly distinctive and remarkably adaptable, fitting to the nooks and crannies of Redding's voice with their supple but muscular performances. With the exception of his duet album with Carla Thomas, Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul was the last studio album Otis Redding would fully complete before his death, and it proves his desire for a broader musical statement didn't begin when he encountered "the love crowd" at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Review by  Mark Deming on AllMusic

Tune the album songs here

Desert Sessions

The Tune for today is:

Desert Sessions - Crawl Home 

No more
It's done
Crawl home
Get gone
Your love
Is evil
Lonesome
My bones

Took me such a long time to figure it out
Now is it too late, I can't do it alone
Took me such a long time to figure it out
Don't take it away, away, oh

Snowstorm
In my heart
Crawl home
Your love
Is evil
I'm lonesome
Just get more and more
Where you've dared

Took me such a long time to figure it out
Now is it too late, I can't do it alone
Took me such a long time to figure it out
Don't take it away, away, oh

Took me such a long time to figure it out
Now is it too late, I can't do it alone
Took me such a long time to figure it out
Don't take it away, away, oh

Josh Homme returns with The Desert Sessions, Vol. 9-10, two more installments of his ongoing collaborations with likeminded friends and musicians. This time PJ Harvey, Ween'sDean Ween, Marilyn Manson's Twiggy Ramirez, Eleven's Alain Johannes, and Queens of the Stone Age contributors Troy Van Leeuwen and Joey Castillo (also of A Perfect Circle andDanzig, respectively), among others, join the festivities. Unlike some of the other Desert Sessions volumes, 9 (aka "I See You Hearin Me") and 10 ("I Heart Disco") stay more or less grounded in the kind of creative stoner rock that Homme purveys with Queens of the Stone Age. Despite the fact that Johannes sings on the opening track, "Dead in Love," the song's searing guitars and insistent grind make it a potential QOTSA track. Likewise, the driving "In My Head...or Something" could easily fit on their next album if it was given a little more punch, as could the dark, parched desert rock of "Holey Dime" and "Bring It Back Gentle." Out of all of Homme's collaborators, Harvey makes the biggest impression, sounding the best she has since 1995's To Bring You My Love. Whether it's because the pressure's off because it's not her own project, or she's just ready to rock again, she sounds freer and more ferocious than she has in a long time on "There Will Never Be a Better Time," a spooky, vaguely Spanish-tinged acoustic number, and slinky-yet-menacing songs like "Crawl Home," "Powdered Wig Machine," and "A Girl Like Me," all of which play her witchy diva image to the hilt. The collection's more experimental moments vary in quality, ranging from the loose, fun faux soul of "I Wanna Make It Wit Chu" and the thrashy workout of "Covered in Punks Blood" to "I'm Here for Your Daughter" and "Shepherd's Pie," both of which were probably more fun to make than they are to hear. Still, The Desert Sessions are intended as a sort of musical notepad, so it's not surprising that some of the ideas here are less sketched out than others. Bearing the project's off the cuff nature in mind, The Desert Sessions, Vol. 9-10 is another success.

Review by Heather Phares

Tune the album songs here

Blood on the Wall

The Tune for today is:

Blood on the Wall - Stoner Jam 

Gratefully, musical sophistication is something that doesn't much appeal to Blood on the Wall. Instead of being more carefully produced or less manic or just plain better, the trio's third disc is, as they christened it, simply Awesomer. Ben Shanks shrieks with the same lit-up, near-lunatic force he brought to the band's self-titled debut, and his sister Courtney Shanks continues to sound as though she wished she were playing with Yo La Tengo orCowboy Junkies; all the racket just makes her want to retreat into some lo-fi hollow. Still,Blood on the Wall -- which is way unfortunately named, calling to mind as it does a screamo or metal outfit -- is a band that manages to pull its disparate energies together, and that's what makes its music so likable and so genuinely fresh. Between "You Are a Mess" and "Mary Susan," Ben manages to recall both the Violent Femmes and the Beastie Boys. Opener "Stoner Jam," meanwhile, seems in service to Courtney's ultra-coolness. Combined, all ofAwesomer's songs stimulate a need to follow the band for its next few outings. Schizophrenia -- not to mention the vast bulk of safe-playing indie rock acts -- never sounded this good.

Review by Tammy La Gorce on allmusic

Tune the album songs here

Elliott Smith

The Tune for today is:

Elliott Smith - Shooting Star

You'll make the scene like you always do
Goin' upstream down the avenue
To fuck some trophy boy that you won tonight at the bar.
So bad, so far.
You'll make him sad, shooting star.

When it was me, I was momentarily proud
Drunk on dreams, now I'm glad I didn't say out loud
You said you'd be for real but I don't believe that you are
So bad, so far. 
You make me sad, shooting star.

You're distant and cold, and a sight to behold
Everybody just sighs.
But no one gets on with you very long,
'Cause you don't feel bad when you lie

I'm going to sleep now
Going back to find square one
Square two, be where I can deal with the shit you've just done
It won't be soon, to say the least it's gonna be hard
So bad, so far. 
Your love is sad, shooting star.
Your love is sad, shooting star

Almost exactly a year after his untimely death -- missing the anniversary by just two days --Elliott Smith's final recordings were released as the From a Basement on the Hill album.Smith had been working on the album for a long time. His last album, Figure 8, had appeared in 2000, and when it came time to record its follow-up, he parted ways with both his major label, Dreamworks, and his longtime producer/engineer, Rob Schnapf, working through a number of different producers, including L.A. superproducer Jon Brion, before recording a number of sessions with David McConnell, which were supplemented withSmith's home recordings. At the time of his death, Smith was still tinkering with the album. There was no final track sequence and only a handful of final mixes; it was closer to completion than Jeff Buckley's Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which he intended to re-record, but it was still up to his family to finalize the record. For various reasons, the family chose to work with Schnapf and Joanna Bolme -- a former girlfriend of Smith and current member of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks -- instead of McConnell, who went on record with Kimberly Chun of The San Francisco Bay Area Guardian the week before the release of From a Basement to state that this album was not exactly what Smith intended it to be. According to McConnell, as well as Elliott Smith biographer Benjamin Nugent, Smith wanted the album to be rough and ragged, and McConnell told Chun that "obviously Elliott did not get his wishes," claiming that three of the songs on the album were considered finished by both him and Smith, but appear on the record in different mixes. 

It's hard to dispute that Smith did not get to finalize the mixes, the track selection, or the sequencing -- he died, after all, with the album uncompleted -- but that's the nature of posthumous recordings: they're never quite what might have appeared had the artist lived. Critics, fans, and historians can have endless debates about whether this particular incarnation of the songs on From a Basement on the Hill would have been what would have been heard if Smith had finished the record, but that doesn't take away from the simple fact that the music here is strong enough to warrant a release, and that it offers a sense of resolution to his discography. While it's likely that From a Basement is cleaner than whatSmith and McConnell intended, it is much sparer than Figure 8, and it feels at once more adventurous, confident, and warmer than its predecessor. Perhaps it's not "the next White Album," which is what McConnell claims it could have been, but it has a similarly freewheeling spirit, bouncing from sweet pop to fingerpicked acoustic guitars to fuzzy neo-psychedelic washes of sound. It's not far removed from Smith's previous work, but it feels like a step forward from the fussy Figure 8 and more intimate than XO. The most surprising twist is that despite the occasional lyrics that seem to telegraph his death (particularly on "A Fond Farewell"), it's not a crushingly heavy album. Like the best of his music, From a Basement on the Hill is comforting in its sadness; it's empathetic, not alienating. GivenSmith's tragic fate, it also sadly seems like a summation of his work. All of his trademarks are here -- his soft, sad voice, a fixation on '60s pop, a warm sense of melancholy -- delivered in a strong set of songs that stands among his best. It may or may not be exactly what Elliott Smith intended these recording sessions to be, but as it stands, From a Basement on the Hill is a fond farewell to a singer/songwriter who many indie rockers of the '90s considered a friend.

Review by Thomas Erlewine

Tune the album songs here

Caetano Veloso

The Tune for today is:

Caetano Veloso - It's a long way

Woke up this morning
Singing an old, old Beatles song
We’re not that strong, my lord
You know we ain’t that strong
I hear my voice among others
In the break of day
Hey, brothers
Say, brothers
It’s a long long long long way

Os olhos da cobra verde
Hoje foi que arreparei
Se arreparasse a mais tempo
Não amava quem amei
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/c/caetano_veloso/its_a_long_way.html ]
Arrenego de quem diz
Que o nosso amor se acabou
Ele agora está mais firme
Do que quando comeu

It's a long road

A água com areia brinca na beira do mar
A água passa e a areia fica no lugar

E se não tivesse o amor
E se não tivesse essa dor
E se não tivesse sofrer
E se não tivesse chorar
E se não tivesse o amor

No Abaet tem uma lagoa escuraArrodeada de areia branca

Transa was the first LP recorded by Caetano Veloso upon his return from exile in London, England (1972). The sound of '70s electric rock predominates, fused with Brazilian rhythms and percussion, berimbau sounds, and his own violão playing. Several lyrics in English, and also in Portuguese, carefully avoid direct reference to politics, which may be found disguised in all songs, especially in the melancholic and depressed images of the poem by Gregório de Mattos, "Triste Bahia," for which Veloso wrote the music. "It's a Long Way" also makes ciphered references to the political situation and was broadly played in the '70s. The broad use of pontos de capoeira (music used for accompaniment of capoeira, a martial art developed by Brazilian slaves as a resistance against the whites) can also be understood in that sense. The album also has "Mora na Filosofia," a classic and beautiful samba byMonsueto that scandalized people with its rock rendition.

Review by Alvaro Neder on AllMusic

Tune the album songs here

The White Stripes

The Tune for today is:

The White Stripes - Take Take Take 

I was sitting there in a comfortable chair
And that was all that I needed
Then my friend offered me a drink for us to share
And that was all that I needed
Well, then I felt at ease
But then I'm not too hard to please
I guess you couldn't call me greedy
Then I was shocked to look up
And see rita hayworth there in a place so seedy
She walked into the bar with her long, red, curly hair
And that was all that I needed
And I said to my friend, "good god, we're lucky men just to even see her"

Take, take, take
Take, take, take
Take, take, take

And I could not resist, I just had to get close to her
And that was all that I needed
I walked and loomed around her table for a while
And that was all that I needed
Then I said, "i hate to bug you, ma'am, but can I have your autograph?"
And that was all that I needed
She pressed her lips against a white piece of paper
And that was all that I needed
Then I saw what she wrote, my heart is in my mouth
And that was all that I needed
Then she handed it to me, and I think that she could see
That that was all that I needed
I started to walk away but then I remembered 'hey, I forgot to get a picture'
So I asked her one more time, "could I have another favor?"
That was all that I needed
She was kind and posed with me
Then I knew my friend would see my celebrity meeting

Take, take, take
Take, take, take
Take, take, take

She turned and said to me, "I need to go to sleep,"
And it seemed so mean
It's almost as if she could not appreciate how cool I was being
She said, "good night" and walked away
And I didn't know what to say
I just couldn't believe it
Well, it's just not fair
I want to get a piece of hair
That was all that I needed
Or maybe a kiss on the cheek
I wouldn't wash it for a week
That would be all that I needed
But she didn't even care
That I was even there
What a horrible feeling

According to Jack White, Get Behind Me Satan deals with "characters and the ideal of truth," but in truth, the album is just as much about what people expect from the White Stripes and what they themselves want to deliver. Advance publicity for the album stated that it was written on piano, marimba, and acoustic guitar, suggesting that it was going to be a quiet retreat to the band's little room after the big sound, and bigger success, ofElephant. Then "Blue Orchid," Get Behind Me Satan's lead single, arrived. A devilish slice of disco-metal with heavily processed, nearly robotic riffs, the song was thrilling, but also oddly perfunctory; it felt almost like a caricature of their stripped-down but hard-hitting rock. As the opening track for Get Behind Me Satan, "Blue Orchid" is more than a little perverse, as though the White Stripes are giving their audience the required rock single before getting back to that little room, locking the door behind them, and doing whatever the hell they want. Even Jack White's work on the Cold Mountain soundtrack and Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose isn't adequate preparation for how far-flung this album is: Get Behind Me Satan is a weird, compelling collection that touches on several albums' worth of sounds, and its first four songs are so different from most of the White Stripes' previous music -- as well as from each other -- that, at first, they're downright disorienting. As if the red herring that is "Blue Orchid" isn't enough warning that Get Behind Me Satan is designed to defy expectations, "The Nurse"'s ironically perky marimbas and off-kilter stabs of drums and guitar -- not to mention lyrics like "the nurse should not be the one who puts salt in your wounds" -- make its domestic skulduggery one of the most perplexing and eerie songs the White Stripes have ever recorded (although Meg's brief cameo, "Passive Manipulation," which boasts the refrain "you need to know the difference between a father and a lover," rivals it). "My Doorbell," on the other hand, is almost ridiculously immediate and catchy, and with its skipping beat and brightly bashed pianos, surprisingly funky. Meanwhile, "Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)" turns cleverly structured wordplay and those fluttering marimbas into a summery, affecting ballad. 

But despite Get Behind Me Satan's hairpin turns, its inspired imagery and complicated feelings about love hold it together. Though "the ideal of truth" sounds cut-and-dried, the album is filled with ambiguities; even its title, which shortens the biblical phrase "get thee behind me Satan," has a murky meaning -- is it support, or deliverance, from Lucifer thatthe Stripes are asking for? There are pleading rockers, like the alternately begging and accusatory "Red Rain," and defiant ballads, like "I'm Lonely (But I'm Not That Lonely Yet)," which has a stubborn undercurrent despite its archetypal, tear-in-my-beer country melody. Even Get Behind Me Satan's happiest-sounding song, the joyfully backwoods "Little Ghost," is haunted by loving someone who might not have been there in the first place. The ghostly presence of Rita Hayworth also plays a significant part on the album, on "White Moon" and the excellent "Take, Take, Take," a sharply drawn vignette about greed and celebrity: over the course of the song, the main character goes from just being happy to hanging out with his friends in a seedy bar to demanding a lock of hair from the screen siren. As eclectic asGet Behind Me Satan is, it isn't perfect: the energy dips a little in the middle, and it's notable that "Instinct Blues," one of the more traditionally Stripes-sounding songs, is also one of the least engaging. Though Jack and Meg still find fresh, arty reinterpretations of their classic inspirations, this time the results are exciting in a different way than their usual fare; and while the album was made in just two weeks, it takes awhile to unravel and appreciate. Get Behind Me Satan may confuse and even push away some White Stripesfans, but the more the band pushes itself, the better.

Review by Heather Phares on AllMusic

Tune the album songs here