Intermission IV [End of "D" Part 1, Or: Intermission MCMXXVII]

It has been much slower than before--my last intermission (not counting John's little deviant one) was four months ago. It's been a busy year suddenly--two new jobs, and more hours at one of them than I had at the one I started with when this blog started six months ago, a trip out of town, a new turntable, and a variety of odd occurrences in their own little ways have had their effects on my ability to keep this thing up-to-date. Of course, the addition of many records to my collection as I find new stores, make trips, and feel a collector's passion ignited isn't helping either. You may even notice I have seven artists uncovered in that collage above, and only two of them are singles. Some (Dead Kennedys) I've been looking for, some I've known for a while, and some I've been meaning to look further into than I have--and one was part of my large purchase of records from the Arctic Rodeo label in Germany.

It's a bit of a weird letter, D. It does tend to include an awful lot of metal--dark and death alone start with "D" so it does kind of fall to reason, even if only one of those bears out in my own collection of records. I wouldn't be averse to a copy of Death's Symbolic or Dark Tranquility's The Gallery, but the former has only received narrow European pressings, and the latter is not unreasonable for the various 2xLP etched incarnations, but is a lesser desire. A little more Dead Kennedys would not go amiss (Plastic Surgery Disasters, perhaps--skipping the copy of Frankenchrist I once saw was silly of me), and I occasionally ponder copies of Depeche Mode's Black Celebration and Deep Purple's Fireball when I see them. I could easily rock some Dinosaur Jr. or happily a copy of The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I ($75 and up! Somewhat lower and I might be watching it...). I've had an eye on Doomtree's self-titled release for a while, after stupidly passing up on it when it was released. Finding either Drive Like Jehu album would be cool, too--especially snagging a copy of Yank Crime that includes the 7" it originally did!

E's a short letter, unsurprisingly, with a whopping four artists hiding in it, only one of which might be surprising to people who know me--or, at least, unfamiliar. It does happen to contain my most valuable record of all, though--at least, based on what people will apparently pay for a copy!

If you feel like it, take a vote on the first artist to appear under that letter's umbrella: Echo and the Bunnymen, who may, at this point, be most famous for "The Killing Moon", which was already a single, but was also featured in the theatrical cut of Donnie Darko.

Drive-By Truckers - Go-Go Boots (2011)

ATO Records ■ ATO 0093

Released February 15, 2011

Produced, Engineered, and Mixed by David Barbe

Mastered by Greg Calbi

Side One: Side Two: I Do Believe Go-Go Boots Dancin' Ricky Cartoon Gold Ray's Automatic Weapon Everybody Needs Love Assholes The Weakest Man Side Three: Side Four: Used to Be a Cop I Hear You Hummin' The Fireplace Poker Where's Eddie The Thanksgiving Filter Pulaski Mercy Buckets

I came in to the Drive-By Truckers at a curious time: I was still working at Borders, and participated in the (extremely limited--about five stores) testing for vinyl sales. It was around 2008-2009, and the selection was largely limited, leaving me unsure of what actually led to titles appearing there. Certainly, it was a store in the Southeast (although a unique town within the state and region), and the Truckers do not suffer the absence of a following there. It did lead to my very mild introduction to Ryan Adams, which has served me well, though I didn't actually do anything with it for years. I saw our copy of DBT's 2008 album Brighter Than Creation's Dark. The art by Wes Freed was intriguing, and the title, too--I was reluctant, as I was still overcoming a lot of my resistance to "twang" in music, and the band's name was a dead giveaway for containing just that. At some point, I gave in and did pick up a CD copy of that same album, and found myself falling for it rapidly.

It wasn't long before I was going to see the band and buy all their albums--indeed, in 2010 I saw them play two shows on two concurrent nights, which was quite an experience. But the curious time is something that involves knowing about the band's history--initially responsible for a pair of interesting but often thought to be somewhat "slight" early albums (Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance), they really broke through and into their own with 2001's Southern Rock Opera, which addressed some of the issues that would in some way typify the band as both people and a musical entity--the "holy three" of frontman Patterson Hood's childhood in Alabama: football, via Bear Bryant, race politics in George Wallace, and music in Lynyrd Skynyrd. Some overlap, some confusion, some mixed signals and messages, all adding up to "the duality of the Southern Thing" as Hood wrote on that album. After its release, Jason Isbell joined the band and they released their most acclaimed pair of albums: 2003's Decoration Day and 2004's The Dirty South. To this day, many clamour for Isbell (now solo and successful at it, as I will prove here later on) to rejoin, even if only in brief or for a tour, or what have you, but he left after A Blessing and a Curse in 2006--and that's where 2008's Brighter Than Creation's Dark came in.