| CARVIEW |
We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: De Stijl
Year: 2000
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Like John Doe and Exene from X and Mac and Laura from Superchunk, Jack and Meg White didn’t let a silly little thing like getting divorced get in the way of the musical chemistry they so obviously had. And so the White Stripes second album, 2000’s De Stijl, was a step forward from their self-titled debut.
Album: The White Stripes
Year: 1999
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While the debut album by the White Stripes definitely has its charms, for me, it still serves mostly as a blueprint for what was going to come next, as Jack White started figuring out how to turn his self-imposed limitations into a self-imposed framework.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3211: The White Stripes – “The Big Three Killed My Baby”
Album: Lost & Found Volume 1
Year: 2003
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Like “Tilt-a-Whirl,” “Choked Up” was a song from the original version of Pneumonia which didn’t make the official release. But unlike “Tilt-A-Whirl,” it eventually made the journey to being officially available; kinda like “The Battle.” That said, at least the first version of “The Battle” that people officially heard was on a Caitlin Cary record, whereas the first time people heard “Choked Up,” it was on the soundtrack album to 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
And it wasn’t even Whiskeytown’s version.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3210: Whiskeytown – “Choked Up”
Album: Pneumonia
2001
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If you discount the final “hidden” track, “To Be Evil,” which comes in after the usual annoying “three minutes of silence” on the official Pneumonia release, the final song on the album in any version in every part of the multiverse was going to be “Bar Lights.”
Which is because “Bar Lights” is as quintessential of a Whiskeytown song as was ever recorded, and a song that would have been a highlight on anything that they (Ryan Adams) solo ever released.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3209: Whiskeytown – “Bar Lights”
Album: Pneumonia
Year: 2001
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I was gonna say that “Easy Hearts” was another song that fell victim to the rejiggered version of Pneumonia that was finally released in 2001, but that’s not quite the truth: I could see where people might love the version which was released — which has a swelling horn section at the beginning and at the end — as much as I love the original, especially if they’d never heard the original version.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3208: Whiskeytown – “Easy Hearts”
Album: Pneumonia (Original Version)
Year: 2000
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Alright, I’m putting together this backstory from a combination of my own memories, what I could source from a couple of books about Whiskeytown I read, and the internets.
After about a zillion sessions, in late 1999 Whiskeytown was about ready to release their official third album, entitled Pneumonia, culled from sessions in Woodstock produced by Ethan John, son of Glyn Johns — who will enter (or re-enter) this blog in full force in a few months — and mixed by Scott Litt, the founder of their record company, Outpost.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3207: Whiskeytown – “Tilt-a-Whirl”
Album: Fucker Demos
Year: 1998
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Things got so crazy in the last couple years of Whiskeytown that there was “I Played In Whiskeytown and All I Got Was This Lousy Goddamn T-Shirt” shirt that was sold at shows. Though not the shows I was at, I guess. Cos I would have bought one. I’m still pissed I don’t have a poster from that Fillmore show.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3206: Whiskeytown – “Hurts Sometimes”
Austin City Limits, 1998
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The first thing you should know about “The Battle” is that might not be its name. It’s probably the song’s name, but there is an outside chance that it’s known by the longer “The Battle and The War” title. Or at least that’s what I thought it was called for the longest time, because it didn’t get released anywhere officially for nearly a half decade.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3205: Whiskeytown – “The Battle (Austin 01-28-1998)”
Album: Forever Valentine (Bootleg)
Year: 1997
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One of the thing we learned early about Ryan Adams — even during the immediate post-Strangers Almanac era — was that he was always writing songs. That he had tons and tons of songs, maybe even a Pollardian amount of songs.
It would be a couple of years before anybody who cared learned the truth about just how many songs that actually was, but what is known is that before 1997 even ended, the then-current incarnation of Whiskeytown — which at that time included former fIREHOSE guitarist Ed Crawford — went in to a Raliegh studio with former dB Chris Stamey and recorded a full album, which was called Forever Valentine.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3204: Whiskeytown – “I Don’t Care What You Think About Me”
by Jim Connelly
Album: Strangers Almanac
Year: 1997
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More of a mood than a song, “Losering” sits near the end of Strangers Almanac with its fraternal twin, the more rocking and equally high-concept “Waiting to Derail,” both of which posit Whiskeytown as doomed outsiders like The Replacements who have never and will never have a chance. And even if they did, they’d just piss it away.
The fact that both bands did have a chance doesn’t even enter into it, nor does it take away from the lovely grandeur of “Losering,” which fades in with Ryan Adams murmuring “loooosering” — Caitlin Cary quietly harmonizing — over and over again over quiet guitar arpeggios.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #3203: Whiskeytown – “Losering”
