Introduction to List & Album #25

I’m Michael, thirty-one, male, average height, average weight, and probably average IQ. However, being a child with parents who grew up in the sixties gives me one significant advantage. I know music. I don’t know how to play it, I certainly can’t read it, I own a guitar but it’s become just like an old weathered pair of shoes, I won’t throw them out but I never wear them. And so, why does having parents who grew up in the sixties give me any type of advantage – I’m going to tell you.

I grew up in a small southern Idaho town, small as in a few thousand people; small as in “art” didn’t really live there. The theatre, a music scene, no such thing lived within the walls of this predominantly farming community. However, dead center between the walls of our red brick home art had a place to breath, a place to kick back, a place to call home, even surrounded by alfalfa fields, even far and away from any populated city. It was early mornings waiting for my warm breakfast that my ears first heard Van Morrison sing “Into the Mystic”. Still today, when I hear the horn section from that song come in around the midway point, I travel directly to that large open kitchen, my feet dangling just above the cold linoleum floor, warm air from an old gray electric wall heater blowing on my bare legs, and a Mother waiting on my every want and need. The true blessing is not just the gift of a perfect Mother but a Mother who rarely went without her Van Morrison, her Dylan, Cash, Jackson Brown, Tom Petty, Neil Young, the Stones, and Beatles.

I have a memory, I was probably ten years old and I must have listened to “And it Stoned Me” the first track from Van Morrison’s Moondance record at least a hundred times in a single sitting. I couldn’t stop, I didn’t understand the lyrics, “And it stoned me to my soul, stoned me just like jelly roll” of course those words were puzzling to me. But I just kept listening, over and over, really great songs have this power, this hold on us that as we listen, perhaps only twenty, thirty seconds into the song we have a burning urge to start it over - Van Morrison certainly does possess that gift. And so you see from within the walls of my home I was educated by a Mother who understood great music, who had her own discoveries from sessions with Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited or the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, perhaps what she didn’t know was the water of inspiration and wonder was beginning to trickle into my veins. The very blood that streamed into my heart was being filled with the sounds and words from a library of unequaled songwriters. The seed was planted.

Now that I have told you that, let me please tell you this; Great, I mean truly great musicians, the ones who write their own songs, who create their own melodies, these artists, they still exist. I am here to tell you that our free and beautiful country is still riddled with magical music. Every year during the last fifteen years I have been fortunate enough to find artists that have put out complete albums, records that are absolutely note worthy from beginning to end. There has been one remarkable difference during the past twenty-five years concerning music and that difference belongs to the airwaves of the radio. You see, when my parents were growing up what played on the radio was exceptional music and also extremely popular. Those three ingredients blended together, radio play, quality and popularity…they went hand in hand. That is why on any top 100 list, any list claiming the greatest albums of all time, you’ll rarely find an album even remotely close to the top of that list that has been made in the last twenty years. Are you telling me great albums of my day cannot be found? Are you telling me in a world were revolution and progression dominate our way of life, that little progression has been made in the way of a singer songwriter. Well then, if so, that cup of tea is a tough swallow for me. And so, I’m going to give you twenty-five albums, none older than fifteen years that I believe stand toe to toe with any album out there. I’m talking Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, Bruce’s Born to Run, The Clash’s London Calling, Dylan, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Eagles, Townes Van Zandt, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, I’m not leaving any out, I know and understand with great humility the brilliance and magnitude that lives within those albums. However, also know this, to do it first does not always mean you did it best. Originality is a wonderful thing, to pave-the-way is historic, it’s pivotal, but don’t forget we get better at most everything as this round world continues to spin. It’s important that I leave this one addendum: For the most part, I’m speaking of a specific genre of music. I’m not really sure what to call the genre. Some call it folk, traditional, Americana, rock, or country. I happen to believe it’s singer songwriter with the aid of man/woman played instruments, guitar, piano, harmonica, violin and so forth. It’s music that sounds the same live as it does playing through any type of sound system.

#25 – Ray LaMontagne – Trouble (2006)

Trouble is the first album from Ray LaMontagne with the title track opening the record. A total of ten songs, just under forty-five minutes in length – This album feels like something from the 60’s, his voice raspy and real, emotion packed lyrics and a gentle melody throughout make this one of the great albums in the last fifteen years. If radio paralleled that of the 60’s & 70’s, Trouble would garner 2-4 songs on the top ten charts, possibly even grabbing the number one spot for a week or two. “Jolene” my favorite song on the album is story telling at its finest.

Been so long since I seen your face

or felt a part of this human race

I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long

A man needs something he can hold onto

A nine-pound hammer or a woman like you

Either one of them things will do

I love this album.

I have two sons, their young now, they’ll be older before I know it…wiser too. And I’m sure they’ll hear a certain song from Trouble and they will shoot back to the past, I hope it’s like the past I shoot back to. I hope it’s like Van Morrison, I know Ray LaMontagne has that gift; I just hope I’m enough like my Mother to pass it on.

The List continues on Monday (10-19-09) check in for album #24 and be sure to check out Ray Lamontagne.

http://www.raylamontagne.com/

Stream some of his music at his myspace page below:

http://www.myspace.com/raylamontagne