Vox Hunt: This Album Is All Good
Audio: Share an album in your collection that's a classic from the first to the last cut (no need to use the skip button). Submitted by Cortadito.
(I had originally started with Dire Straits' "Making Movies." However, the entry became too long when I started talking about "Drum Hat Buddha," which is probably the stronger album. Both are worth a listen.)
On a sleepy endless ocean when the world lay in a dream
There was rhythm in the splash and roll, but not a voice to sing
So the moon shone on the breakers and the morning warmed the waves
Till a single cell did jump and hum for joy as though to say
...
Then the day shone bright and rounder til the one turned into two
And the two into ten thousand things, and old things into new
And on some virgin beach head one lonesome critter crawled
And he looked about and shouted out in his most astonished drawl
Wow--science in a song! I was hooked. Years later, it became one of the lullabies I sing to my daughter. I found an sound clip, and shared it with my wife, who found a clip of "Tillman County." This is perhaps my favorite on the album. It is one of the few songs where the phrase "rockin' mandolin" can be said and appreciated. I ordered the CD from JoBeth, as they were sold out.
For whatever reason, I had to work late the evening it came in. My wife picked it up, and, by the time I got home, had heard it several times. We took the trip down "Highway 80," and danced to "I Go Like the Raven" (almost hard shoe Irish dancing). Every song on there proves that Dave Carter is a poet. They described their work as "Postmodern American Mythic." The allusions in "236-6132" bare that out.
We bought their other disks, and were equally impressed. The title track off "Tanglewood Tree" is amazing:
I'm walkin' down a bone-dry river but a cool mirage runs true
I'm bankin' on the fables of the far, far better thing we do
I'm livin' for the day of reck'nin countin' down the hours
I year away, I burn away, I turn away the fairest flower of love
(To truly appreciate this, you have to hear the harmonies)
In the Spring of 2002, we went up to Columbus to see them live--truly a great time. I joined those who were convinced that it would be a song of their next album, or the right cover off their current one, that would have them leap into the popular conscious. I really wanted it for them.
Unfortunately, that summer, before their biggest show of the year, Dave Carter passed away. He was only 49.
Tracy Grammer put out one more album of music recorded prior to his death, along with a few disks of her solo material (mostly written my Carter).
IRL, I select Artists->Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer on my iPod, and let them be the soundtrack to my morning.
