Widespread Panic

Choice Cuts: The Capricorn Years: 1991–1999

Volcano/ Legacy

originally published August 15, 2007

Widespread Panic's tenure with Southern rock flagship label Capricorn is highlighted on the band's first "best of" comp. Choice Cuts presents highlights from the band/ label partnership that saw the Athens-based Panic go from soulful, blues-infused bar band to beloved successors of the working-man's-touring-band throne left vacant by the departed Grateful Dead.

Far from an anthology, Choice Cuts does compile a weighty sampling of favorites and deep cuts from the band's decade-long (1988 through '99) run with Capricorn. It also presents, more often than not, the band's most familiar lineup - vocalist John Bell, guitarist Michael Houser, bassist Dave Schools, keyboardist Jojo Hermann, percussionist Domingo Ortiz and drummer Todd Nance - which provides a thread of connectivity throughout.

From the slow'n'psychedelic "Papa's Home" and the ragtime-bent "Blue Indian" to the near sinister, Vic Chesnutt-assisted "Aunt Avis," Team Widespread incorporate stinging blues, hippie folk, bottom-heavy R&B and more into the hand-picked song selection. The disc also includes two from the free 1998 Panic In the Streets concert that drew an estimated 100,000 onlookers to the streets of downtown Athens. This is far from a definitive document of the band's past, but a substantial and lingering taste nonetheless.

Michael Andrews

Robyn Hitchcock

Jewels for Sophia & Storefront Hitchcock

Noble Rot

originally published August 15, 2007

Two late-'90s releases from eccentric British singer-songwriter and former Athens resident Robyn Hitchcock have been reintroduced to the assembly line. Storefront Hitchcock, from 1998, was the soundtrack to the Jonathan Demme-directed performance film of the same name, which found mad hatter of surrealist Brit-folk Hitchcock performing deep cuts aplenty and letting his tongue run amok with a string of rambling, at times hilarious, song intros and spoken word pieces.

The album's stripped-down setting - Hitchcock solo most times, accompanied intermittently by guitarist Tim Keegan and violin player Deni Bonet - allows the copious hooks and finely etched lyricism of Hitchcock's songs to flourish on tracks like "1974," which includes a sharply penned homage to Sid Barrett, and the waltzing "Let's Go Thundering." Not only are "spleens a-go-go" here, as tossed out during one of the album's most unpredictable spoken interludes, but Hitchcock's distinct, gleefully-warped take on life gone awry is splattered all across the windshield of this thing.

Jewels for Sophia, from 1999, presents Hitchcock for the most part with full band and with his film noir-style songwriting powers intact. The album slipped underneath the radar upon its initial release, often casting off comparisons to 1996's more stable Moss Elixir. Jewels for Sophia is typically schizophrenic Hitchcock, however. If one can overlook its unhinged-but-ambitious scope, the album reveals itself as a rewarding escapade through gems like the subdued, wistfully plucked "You've Got a Sweet Mouth On You Baby," the hilarious and hidden "Don't Talk To Me About Gene Hackman" and the sardonic post-grunge rave up "Viva Sea-Tac." Together, Jewels and Storefront are highly recommended blueprints for aspiring madcaps and surrealist language dissectors everywhere.

Michael Andrews

Bobby Bare

Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies (And More)

RCA Nashville/ Legacy

originally published August 15, 2007

A song about building a mechanical girlfriend, several about tall tale legends like Paul Bunyan and Marie Lavaux, plus a defiant yarn spun by a loser who must win at all costs can all be found on Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies. The album marked the start of a prolific partnership between folk-country troubadour Bare and freewheeling songwriter-author Shel Silverstein.

Originally released in 1973, Lullabys broke the dress code for most Nashville recordings of its time. It was a double album, a rarity in the country music world even today, recorded in front of a real live studio audience of family and rowdy friends. The songs are some of Bare's most quintessential - the wily "Sure Hit Songwriter's Pen," the sentimental "Daddy What If" featuring a young pre-curl Bobby Bare Jr. assisting - as well as some of Silverstein's most endearing and imaginative work.

This And More edition adds an extra disc's worth of Silverstein/ Bare collaborations that document what kind of mischief the pair raised in the years following the album's initial release. The extra disc makes for a complete additional chapter in itself, highlighted by live favorite "Tequila Sheila," "Food Blues" and a couple ("$100,000 in Pennies" and "Back Home In Huntsville Again") from 1975's equally solid pairing Hard Time Hungrys. With this long-out-of-print classic restored and re-upped, one can only hope the blue collar, unemployment line-themed Hungrys won't be far behind.

Michael Andrews

The Dynamics

First Landing

Hacktone

originally published August 15, 2007

First Landing was the first of two releases by obscure R&B vocal middleweight act The Dynamics. Originally released in 1969 - several years after the footprints of soul/ R&B labels like Stax and Motown had already been set in stone - the album comes across as a band attempting to meld the distinct flavors epitomized by those two imprints.

Isaac "Zeke" Harris, George White, Zerben Hicks, Fred Baker, and Samuel Stevenson were, indeed, from Detroit, so the personable Motown touch can definitely be felt on the driving "Dum-de-Dum" and the Smokey & the Miracles-influenced "What Would I Do." The muscular guitar, brass and organ leads that personified Southern-style R&B are spattered across the album as well. First Landing was a well-performed, solid first outing from the all-but-forgotten Dynamics, who would have one more shot, 1973's What a Shame, left in them before laying down their spirited collective groove for good.

Michael Andrews

Johnny Rivers & His L.A. Boogie Band

Last Boogie In Paris - The Complete Concert

Shout Factory

originally published August 15, 2007

Like many live albums of the era, the original track listing of Johnny River's Last Boogie In Paris, from 1974, was shortened considerably to fit onto a single LP. Now restored to 18 tracks (a great improvement on the previous eight), the complete Last Boogie finds blue-eyed soulman Rivers accompanied by a strong, horns-and-all touring band on their final outing together.

The lively stage show capsulizes Rivers' wide-open take on Americana. He lubes the gears with high-energy covers of "Sea Cruise" and "Rockin' Pneumonia & the Boogie Woogie Flu," makes the ladies swoon with the sultry "Summer Rain" and has some serious street corner fun with Johnny Otis' "Willy and the Hand Jive." By the time the album was released, Rivers' hot streak had begun to wane. Though it's far from his most exhilarating live release (the closing, near-11 minute "John lee Hooker '74" is a real energy killer), the revamped Last Boogie In Paris is, nonetheless, a complete and rewarding document of Rivers and his boogie bandmates' last hoorah.

Michael Andrews