the_record_on_my_turntable
raze the aladdin sessions
(lester young)

from leonard feather's liner_notes:

"'prez got that tone, so different from coleman hawkins', because that's the way he wanted everything in life,' a former lester young sideman told me many years ago. 'i got him a pair of shoes once, and one day i came in and found them in the wash basket. then i realized they were hard-soled shoes, and he would always wear moccasins or slippers. it had to be soft and gentle or prez wanted no part of it.'" 		241125
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raze music from big pink
(the band)

the band lost a good chunk of their soul when richard manuel's songwriting voice slipped away. that voice was never stronger than it is right here. "in a station" and "lonesome suzie" are almost too beautiful for words. and i always have to stop myself from moving the needle back to the beginning of "tears of rage" so i can hear it again. few album openers hit so hard. 		241129
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raze don juan's reckless daughter
(joni mitchell)

the critics have always said this one of joni's worst albums. the critics are fucking morons. 		241204
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raze swordfishtrombones
(tom_waits)

this wasn't my first tom_waits album. that was "heart_attack and vine". but i think it was my second or third.

i grew up in the eighties, so i have a higher tolerance than most for the period's sometimes unwise production touches. still, one of the wonderful things about albums like this and "rain dogs" is that they sound like they were recorded yesterday. while other producers were busy sticking a million microphones in front of a drum kit until it sounded like nothing and cranking up the reverb to eleven, mr. waits here was dragging a metal chair across the studio floor, barking into a megaphone, and bashing a dresser drawer with a two-by-four.

human noises don't date. as time goes by, they just put on weight. 		241208
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raze show some emotion
(joan armatrading)

i don't really know what to say about this one other than, "holy shit, this is some good stuff."

killer bookends, too. 		241217
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raze tramp
(sharon_van_etten)

not my favourite thing sharon's done. that's always going to be "epic". but i like this a lot more now than i did when it was new to me. she's got a way of weaving vocal melodies that stop me in my tracks.

it needs to be said: this is not a great-sounding record. i don't think it's a bad pressing. i think whoever cut the lathe was working with the digital master used to make the cd, which is never a good idea. what was already compressed to death as a spinning piece of plastic sounds almost absurdly congested in this format.

the music is good enough to survive that indignity. but it sure would have been nice if they'd left some dynamics intact. 		241221
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raze the walking
(jane_siberry)

there's never been anyone else like jane_siberry. she builds songscapes that are at once cinematic in scope and as emotionally unguarded as one hand holding another. for my money, this is her finest hour, though "bound by the beauty" gives it some stiff competition, and there are great chunks of "when_i_was_a_boy" and "maria" i wouldn't want to be without. 		241229
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raze elite hotel
(emmylou harris)

i swear i could listen to emmylou sing junk_mail and it wouldn't be wasted_time. 		250102
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raze smile
(laura nyro)

this isn't quite as idiosyncratic as the likes of "new_york tendaberry" and "christmas and the beads of sweat", but i don't think laura was capable of making music that wasn't gorgeous and arresting. 		250106
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raze a wizard, a true star
(todd rundgren)

twenty-three years ago, gord called to tell me he found this album in josh's record collection and gave it a spin, not knowing anything about it.

"are you sure you didn't record this and just not tell anybody?" he said. "because it sounds just like you."

it was one of the best compliments eighteen-year-old me ever got. 		250110
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raze pirates
(rickie lee jones)

if laura nyro has a soul sister, it's gotta be rickie lee.

in a contemporaneous review for rolling stone, stephen holden called this album "a cloudburst in the desert of eighties formula pop music and recycled heavy-metal rock" and noted "the bravura way it weaves autobiography and personal myth into a flexible musical setting that conjures a lifetime's worth of character and incident".

sometimes the critics *do* get it right. and "skeletons" will never not wreck me. 		250124
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raze mark hollis
(mark_hollis)

half a lifetime ago, i packed some pot in a tobacco pipe, smoked until the night felt a little more forgiving, and listened to mark hollis' only solo record while a storm raged outside. in the middle of what passed for a turbulent passage in "watershed", the wind whipped the thin arm of a tree against my bedroom window. in shadow, it looked like the evergreen was flailing at the glass, trying to get inside.

something about that felt almost too perfect to be real. i wrote in a book i filled for someone who would never read the words i wanted them to have: "this is music that knows the world."

few artists have wielded silence with more power or consideration than mark did, treating it as an instrument in its own right. all the hushed beauty makes those moments when things get loud that much more striking and meaningful. 		250128
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raze beauty and the beat
(the go-go's)

the sort of thing that gives pop-punk a good name. as great as the hits are, it's the deep_cuts i dig the most. belinda carlisle might have been the face of the go-go's, but jane wiedlin was the band's hook-laden heart. 		250204
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raze indelibly_stamped
(supertramp)

i think roger hodgson is one of the great unsung guitarists in popular music. he always serves the song, never sacrificing melody or soul for meaningless fretboard fireworks.

the solo he chips in at the end of "crime of the century" is a good example. it's nothing flashy. just a few notes. but their emotional impact is immense.

this is pre-"crime", pre-fame 'tramp. i've always liked the cut of its jib.

(homer says, "what's a jib?") 		250205
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raze moon_pix
(cat_power)

the cat_power album i love most. always has been. always will be. even if the supposed audiophile pressing makes "he turns down" sound like it's being sung through a fan. 		250209
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raze either_or
(elliott_smith)

my favourite elliott smith album changes all the time. some days it's "xo". some days it's "from_a_basement_on_the_hill". some days it's the self-titled one.

today it's this. 		250213
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