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Friend brought by Ry Cooder’s Election Special album. Sometimes the beat is so infectious is obscures the story the lyrics are telling but heck, the mighty Ry and today’s events? Good for everybody’s tune-box. And good to have friends to bring and sing the music.
My current favorite is the above, The Wall Street Part of Town. The lead song is a cry on behalf of Romney’s mutt. Or for a Woody Guthrie-esq teaching song here is The 90s and the 9
And the terrific, pulsing, jeremiad, a marching boogie everyone can sing, Get Your Hands Off It, above.
..You don’t speak for God, you know He don’t belong to you…
or the too danceable poke at the real reasons the delegates had for Going to TAMPA.
His previous album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, had the marvelous No Banker Left Behind.
What’s your goal with this record?
“Use your mind and think a little. Put the small screen down. We have to hurry up and be smart.”
[Cross posted at The Last Dog Watch]
The first disc starts with “Get Rhythm” the title track from Ry’s 1987 album. This Johnny Cash tune just plain rocks out. If you think Cooder is just a guitar player, you are missing out on his vision of rhythm, his arranging skills, his ideas of harmony. That’s right vocals! Maybe Ry is no Pavarotti but he surrounds himself with tip-top singers and the vocals tracks become as deep as the guitar tracks. And that’s what Joachim was looking for. Music that was deep and greasy, with a groove. This anthology is full of just that. Even the thinner recordings done on acoustic guitar, Ry’s bottleneck floating over the strings, seem heavier and more intense on this album. One of the things I always loved about Cooder’s playing was that you could hear his fingers on the strings, you could hear the glass rub against the windings on the strings. It just sounded real. Years ago, maybe 30, I played an album for a guitar playing friend who said, “Oh, that’s Ry Cooder…I can’t stand him his records sound so sloppy. You don’t need to have all that extraneous noise!” What one man’s noise is another man’s music, I guess.