{"id":8566,"date":"2015-09-29T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=8566"},"modified":"2015-10-25T01:51:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T01:51:44","slug":"lets-play-smash-or-trash-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/09\/29\/lets-play-smash-or-trash-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Play “Smash or Trash,” Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My first impression: humorless concept-world-prog. But humor is generally in short supply in progressive rock circles, and I like prog. So I shouldn’t hold that against ’em. All manner of styles are on display here. I was worried there’d be vocals, with the inevitable pompous lyrics. But this seems to be a wholly instrumental set. Oh, heavens: it’s a 2CD set! Still, it’s pretty interesting stuff, so it goes in the yes pile. Wow…more discs are making it through my filter than is typical of this exercise.<\/li>\n
  2. This is the kind of music that some call \u201csoulful.\u201d I call it dull, and the vocalist has a bit of that yodelly inflection that might endear her to the Americana crowd. And with notable exceptions, southern accents don’t resonate with me. Perfectly serviceable, but…pass.<\/li>\n
  3. I think they call this genre \u201cprogressive bluegrass.\u201d They remind me a bit of Mason Williams<\/strong>, which is good. Rootsy-flavored music with jazz-level instrumental chops. I don’t dislike this \u2013 not at all \u2013 but neither am I the right person to review this disc. Pass.<\/li>\n
  4. Nice enough, but if I wanted a Jackson Browne<\/strong> album \u2013 and I most assuredly do not \u2013 I’d go get one. Pass.<\/li>\n
  5. This was a disc placed in my hands at the recent Americana Music Festival and Conference in Nashville. And it’s a CDR that isn\u2019t playing properly, so I was all ready to pass, but then it jumped forward to a subsequent track, which is pretty damn fine. I think I’ll hold onto this one for review.<\/li>\n
  6. Spanish-language salsa\/Latina music. Very nice. Ah, now that I recall, I did tell the publicist, \u201csure, send me that for review consideration.\u201d But I more or less expected the accompanying one-sheet to be in English! Nonetheless, set aside for a brief review.<\/li>\n
  7. The Americana tag is a pretty big umbrella that apparently includes a lot of stuff that I’d call rock ‘n’ roll. This definitely has a suthun flavuh<\/em>, but it’s quite well done. In for review, yup.<\/li>\n
  8. About the best thing I can say about Dixieland is that I prefer it to opera and Scandinavian death metal. Pass.<\/li>\n
  9. Oh, wait: I forgot about dub reggae and ska. I prefer Dixieland to those too. Aaaand<\/em>…pass.<\/li>\n
  10. The label is already warning me that this is a genre-spanning disc. Or is it? I hear a white guy trying \u2013 in vain \u2013 to convince me he’s Blind Lemon Jefferson<\/strong>. Skipping to other tracks, it’s pretty lifeless (others might say \u201claid back\u201d). Pass.<\/li>\n
  11. Wow. Weird. At first listen, this sounds a bit like Station to Station<\/em>-era David Bowie<\/strong> crossed with Memphis soul. Or Lou Reed<\/strong> crossed with Meat Loaf<\/strong>‘s band. Tough to pin down, and intriguing. I think I’ll spend some time with this one. Yes.<\/li>\n
  12. How did this disc get into this pile? Clearly a mistake; I definitely want to review it. This is the latest from Terry Adams<\/strong> and NRBQ<\/strong>, a disc in which they pay tribute to the music of Thelonious Monk<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I should make it clear that none of the discs that I’m passing on are what I’d classify as trash; not by a long shot. Oftentimes I get stuff that I deem terrible. This latest lot is some pretty uniformly high-quality music. But there are only 260 work days in a year, and my once-a-day posting limits how much I can cover. So a good deal of worthy music is getting passed over. All I can say is that the stuff that made the cut will come with my enthusiastic recommendation (except when it doesn’t).<\/p>\n

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    Continued from Part One… My first impression: humorless concept-world-prog. But humor is generally in short supply in progressive rock circles, and I like prog. So I shouldn’t hold that against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9482,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8566\/revisions\/9482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}