One the best things about buying CDs nowadays is that your can hear some cuts before you buy them. My local Barnes & Noble has listening stations setup with headphones. You take the CD you are interested in to the station, scan the barcode, and pieces of most of the tracks are made available to listen.

In the past month, I have gotten the following CDs, and if you get a chance, I recommend you have a listen.

Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
Mindi Abair - Come As You Are
Pat Metheny Group - The Way Up
Gavin DeGraw - Chariot
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance

curtis, I spent about an hour and a half at Borders going over the listening stations. Had a deal going--buy 3, get the 4th one free. Funny, I went in there not wanting to spend money. Oh well, 4 cds later. . .
Picked up Rachael Yamagata a month ago after reading a good review about it. Pretty much a blind purchase (or is it deaf?), but turned out to be a good cd. Haven't had a chance to get the Jack Johnson cd. I'm afraid my list of cds to get is growing out of hand.

I've got the Gavin Degraw and Jack Johnson. Both worthwhile pickups. I will checkout the others. Thanks for the post. I always feel kind of guilty because I listen at Barnes and Noble for a few hours and then end up buying the cd's somewhere else for $5 cheaper.

Barnes & Noble is across the street from my office....so it is just too easy!

I picked up Rachael Yamagata's 'Happenstance' a couple of days ago, nice music. I have XM radio in my vehicle and whenever a good tune comes on I'll save it in memory, write it down and take my list whenever I go music shopping. Sometimes I get burned though, recently I picked up Eric Sardinas 'Black Pearls' and don't really care too terribly much for it, a little too much in your face with the vocals for me. But as usual, in the MegaChanger it goes anyway.

Oh btw, just curious if any of you folks listen to John Hiatt? 'A&M Years', 'Tiki Bar' and 'Beneith this Gruff Exterior' are all good, actually I like just about anything from him.

I'm a recent John Hiatt fan, I've only got two CDs (Tiki Bar, Corssing Muddy Waters), but I've seen him live (with Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely) twice.

i like Jack Johnson but his new cd seems like the same cd just diferent lyrics then the last. anyone agree or disagree?
Jake

In reply to:

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Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and Joe Ely

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great song writers..

i have seen lyle and guy clark live, but not joe ely. i actually sing a couple of their songs, well i used to. probably forgot them by now.

guy clark is just 'the man' on stage. so calm, cool, and oblivious to whats happening around him. he could be playing to a packed auditorium, and to him, he could just as easily be playing in a rocking chair on the front porch.

bigjohn

That's him to a 't', bigjohn. Now I know you aren't lying.

my 2 favorite guy clark songs are 'stuff that works' and 'texas 1948'.

the '1948' song is a train song. talkin bout when he was a kid and the first silver bullet, non-steam train came thru town. he can sing it so well, he will make you think that YOU were there!

EDIT- BTW, i have been lying about everything up to this point!!

bigjohn

Your description is dead-on. With one exception, the few times I've seen Guy Clark have always been at larger venues, and the performer is often so far away you don't get a sense of the person. I finally got a chance to see him play a small bar here in town, and I was more than a little surprised to discover how freakin' tall he is. He just towered over everyone in the room.

I have that Joh Hiatt Muddy Waters Cd - courtesy of a friend. I like it quite a bit.
Not crazy about Jack Johnson anymore. Ditto the previous impression about the 2nd disc.

I bought a couple of cd's recently that I'd had on cassette ages ago, and never got tired of listening to. Know I remember why...great stuff.

Van Halen - Van Halen
Van Halen - Diver Down

The remastered cd's really sound good.

Now I've got to go out and buy the rest of them...Van Halen II, Women & Children First, Fair Warning, and 1984. (I'm not a huge fan of Van Hagar, though they did do a few good tunes post DLR)

i have been listening to 'Fair Warning' in my truck for the last few days. this is definitely the least commercialized of their earlier albums. i dont think any of the tracks on this cd got much radio play, if any at all. but it doesnt take away from the fact that it is a great album. all the songs are dark and dirty, and have sort of a drunken bar band sound to them. its a lot different from their 'catchy', radio friendly stuff that you find on Diver Down'. eddie has some great solos on it(of course), and the intro to the song 'one foot out the door' will give any good stereo a workout. lots of low bass tones, and a great mid-range guitar riff throughout.

FWIW- i still think 'atomic punk' off the first album is probably their best song ever.. its fast, wild, and DLR never screamed so good. the song is so aggressive, and so different from the rest of the songs on that whole album. worth owning for that song alone!!

bigjohn

I just bought "The Essential Tallis Scholars", a 2 disc compilation of their best work, mostly for the recording of Allegri's Miserere -- the formerly "top secret" choral piece that was deemed too good for commoner's ears by the Vatican.

The entire disc is filled with fantastic Renaissance choral music.

Aaaaahhh, it's Spring... when a young man's heart thinks of love....

And a middle-aged guy such as myself thinks of tunes. I don't know what it is, but every spring I start craving new music and I usually pick up a good sale from BMG and order 10-15 discs. Yes, I'm still a member after about 15 years. It's cool, after a few years you don't have to send the card back anymore (you don't get selections automatically sent).

I've done a few "2 per-year for life" promos so every year I get 4 CDs at N/C, and I just take advantage of those "buy one at normal price and buy as many as you want after that for $1.99 each. S&H is still a silly price of something like $4 per disc, but the bottom line is that I pay $6 or so for a bunch of discs...(including SACDs which are the same price BTW).

Aaaaahhh, Spring is in the air... time to leaf through the flyer and the websiite...!

IMHO (Jeez, I never thought I'd end up using these Net abbreviations...) Fair Warning is hands down the best album they ever put out. Grossly underrated, and I'm glad to see that other folks like it, too.

I too love Fair Warning, but it is indeed the least known/listened to of all the DLR Days VH stuff.

I got a Best Buy run coming up this week to pickup "Sideways" on DVD (btw...if you've not seen it, it's GREAT!), I'll likely pick up Fair Warning while I'm there as well.

Got it now. Indeed Fair Warning is most excellent. "Unchained" gets a decent amount of airplay here in LA.

I think this is one of the few DLR VH albums in which all the songs are originals. They did a lot of covers on many of their other albums.

I did a quick search and couldn't find anyone recommending the artist Feist. She's an amazing (fairly new) canadian vocalist. It's well recorded and we all know how good female vocalists make axioms purr.