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What rock music are you listening to? Non-Jazz, Non-Classical.


EKE BBB

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I come back to this one every 1-2 years. Only recently have begun to more deeply appreciate how much they influenced Paul Westerberg and the Replacements. (Westerberg actually attended their final concert in Minneapolis, Minnesota in November 1975, when he was a teenager.)

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Edited by ghost of miles
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Now on my turntable:

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Mickey Newbury - Lovers (Elektra, 1975)
Incredible music, as deep as a well and just as dark.  Newbury is probably best known for 'Frisco Mabel Joy (Elektra, 1971) -- some listeners might remember "An American Trilogy" -- but I think this album is his best work. 

 

from wikipedia:

As Thom Jurek notes in his AllMusic review of Newbury's 1975 LP Lovers, "As solid as Lovers is, it still failed to ignite on the chart level. It was greeted with indifference by radio and, hence, Elektra -- which had believed and invested in Newbury's creative vision and proven credibility as a songwriter -- let him go."  Newbury biographer Joe Ziemer sums up the singer's dilemma in his book Crystal and Stone: "Though diversity derives from aptitude and ability, diversity was Newbury's problem with radio stations. One dominant characteristic of his music is eclecticism, and that's what made his albums unattractive to strict radio formats."  Newbury had made several high profile appearances to promote Lovers, including on The Tonight Show, but began to sour on touring, telling Rich Wiseman of Rolling Stone in 1975, "I'll probably quit performing and just record on an album-to-album basis. I'm hating what I'm doing now."  In 1977 he elaborated to the Omaha Review, "I worked a few concerts, mostly college concerts, just to prove to Elektra that it wouldn't help. They kept blaming the lack of sales on me."

Ironically, Newbury's profile could not have been higher on the radio in 1977, albeit in a reverential way; in April outlaw country superstar Waylon Jennings released the #1 country smash "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)", which contains the lines "Between Hank Williams' pain songs, Newbury's train songs..." The song became an instant classic but most of the listeners who sang along with the tune likely had no idea who Newbury was. Although cited by Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, David Allan Coe, and several other country stars as a primary influence on their songwriting and albums, Newbury had little interest in cashing in on the outlaw country movement; according to Ziemer, Newbury was pressured by his record company to record an album called Newbury's Train Songs but Newbury turned them down: "They couldn't understand why I refused to do it. But I figured what little audience I did have would have immediately seen it for what it was: Jumping on the bandwagon when I didn't fit the mold."

 

Edited by HutchFan
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