“DD Rockabillly Podcast / Summer 2015”

I call this a “podcast,” but it actually ended up as three mix CD’s. So yeah, it’s a load of music, no feeling lonesome when this puppy’s over. And it is some famous names, some usual DD suspects, your Tweedys, your Warehams, your Rutillis, but even better, some mind-blowing rookies of the year, music to really sink into with a whiskey in your easy chair (I apologize for posting this on a Monday), your Matt Pond PAs [1] your Kelly Hogans your Dignan Porches.

And then, you have the archetypal Camera Obscura. They are a burning fury of serenity, smote from the middle of town, macabre for the sore-fingered and sodden-hearted. From them, for this podcast, I’ve chosen the five-and-a-half-minutes-that-feels-like-three “Razzle Dazzle Rose,” from Let’s Get out of This Country [2], the 2006 installment that put them on the map.

“Razzle Dazzle Rose” eschews the style of the rest of the album. It doesn’t trot, in easy systematic display, it gallops with impossible grace, which atones to the coming night with perfect elegance, after the boiler room of emotion that has been the LP as a whole.

But, this is the type of music you can take in large doses, like a Joni Mitchell “case of you.”

Ironically, given that these songs “play so nice” together, so to speak, there were a lot of qualifications they had to meet in order to be included, though none more central than originality, as is the case with any and all other genres. If music is a language, genre is a dialect, all the more satisfying and enriching for its specificity. It’s not logical that all this rock and roll drollery would be so playable, permanent and enjoyable. It just happened, spawned by a love of the craft in the hearts and veins of each and every player.

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(Disc 1 of 3): The Dodos – “Fables” / Dean Wareham – “My Eyes are Blue” / Fear of Men – “Tephra” / The War on Drugs – “Eyes to the Wind” / Dex Romweber Duo – “Nowhere” / Better than Ezra – “This Time of Year” / Heartless Bastards – “Low Low Low” / Counting Crows – “Perfect Blue Buildings” / The Jayhawks – “See Him on the Street” / Lonesome Sisters – “Peachtree” / Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Don’t Cry No Tears” / Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – “Fix it” / Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Swamp Music” / Tracy Chapman – “Cold Feet” / Bo Diddley – “Bring it to Jerome” / Toad the Wet Sprocket – “Something’s Always Wrong” / Matt Pond PA – “New Hampshire” / Wings – “Venus and Mars (reprise)”. (Disc 2 of 3): Richard Buckner – “Go” / The Entrance Band – “The Crave” / Dawes – “Hey Lover” / Tomahawk – “I.O.U.” / Califone – “Oxtail (live)” / Fleet Foxes – “Helplessness Blues” / Clem Snide – “Hum” / Hospitality – “Betty Wang” / Kristin Hersh – “Aching for You” / The Lumineers – “Flapper Girl” / The Velvet Underground – “Lonesome Cowboy Bill (live)” / Matt Costa – “Movin'” / Moon Duo – “Circles” / Department of Eagles – “Around the Bay” / Django Reinhardt – “Swing 39” / The Wallflowers – “The Bleeders” / Tim Hecker – “Black Refraction”. (Disc 3 of 3): The Walkmen – “Nightingales” / Waxahatchee – “Lips and Limbs” / Death Cab for Cutie – “Death of an Interior Decorator” / Horse Feathers – “This Bed” / First Aid Kit – “Dance to Another Tune” / Elton John – “Daniel” / Kelly Hogan – “Sleeper Awake” / Dignan Porch – “TV Shows” / Los Lobos – “Do the Murray” / Marketa Irglova – “Only in Your Head” / Tom Waits – “Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards” / The Black Crowes – “Thick n’ Thin” / Credence Clearwater Revival – “Commotion” / Mazzy Star – “Lay Myself Down” / Psapp – “Fickle Ghost” / Camera Obscura – “Razzle Dazzle Rose” / Tweedy – “Summer Noon” / Son Volt – “Wild Side”

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[1] “New Hampshire” is my favorite song on disc 1, a scintillating tonal trek.

[2] I still remember when I first saw the album cover for Let’s Get out of This Country, I was like this is the coolest thing ever. Then I learned that the band was Scottish. But then I realized, hey, most of these songs take place in America.