Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo OT: Music Recommendations please

I'm going to steer you toward some acoustic stuff I've been digging lately, plus one rock band that I think is excellent.

Colin Hay (former singer from Men At Work, great acoustic stuff. Get "Going Somewhere")

Iron & Wine (simply beautiful. Get "Our Endless Numbered Days" -- and I hear the latest "Woman King" is also great)

Terence Martin (mellow, good songwriting. Get "Sleeper")

The Damnwells (really good "rock is not dead yet" stuff)

I've been really enjoying listening to Nick Drake lately. Everything on the album "Pink Moon" is great even if he did get way overplayed when they started putting his songs in VW adds.

Peter
Thanks. I really liked what I heard of the Collin Hay stuff.
Do you also have the "Topanger" cd, and do you like it?
Of all the clips I listened too, I enjoyed the ones off that album the most, but I dont want to buy it based on just those 2 clips.

Take a look at Clair Marlo's CDs (Let It Go and Behaviour Self). Beautiful voice. Kind of an upbeat, animated Norah Jones.

Wow!
Lots of new names to me! I've been in a bit of a new music slump of late, and am looking forward to digging into some of the names here I have not heard.
Ditto Bigjohn on the Los Lonely Boys. The new live disc is great! And if you dig the TexMex kind of thing, check out The Blazers. East L.A. Sort of like a younger Los Lobos.
Some oldies but goodies that were not mentioned;
David Bromberg - can be hard to find, many are out of print. Helluva blues guitarist (and bluegrass picker for that matter) for an old fat jewish guy from NY! (and that is HIS description of himself!)And he puts together incredible bands.
Uncle Tupelo- new remasters are magnificent. They helped create Alt-Country, and nobody has yet to do it better.
David Grisman- incredible range of music, and a fanatic in the studio. Everything on his Acoustic Disc lable sounds beautiful. Incredible on the Axioms.
Bill Frisell- again, wildly ranging styles, but the recordings on Nonesuch are sonicly (sp?) remarkable.
Ben Vaughn- a laugh a minute, and not a bad player. How can you not like a guy who once recorded an entire album inside a '59 Rambler?
The new Elvis Costello is very much worth hearing.
Same for the new Neil Finn stuff.
Dave Alvin - get the live stuff! An American Treasure.
Chris Gaffney - bet Bigjohn knows this guy.
Rick Shea- a player in Dave Alvin's band- great songwriter.
Steve Earle- this guy just slits his wrists and bleeds onto the recording boards.
Ryan Adams- gotten pretty popular, but his Whiskeytown stuff is even better than the solo stuff.
Kelly Joe Phelps- GREAT Acoustic guitar player.
And a couple of years ago I started a search for some new young kids that were playing jazz on the same level as some of the old masters, and I came up with a some guys that can really smoke it;
Joshua Redman (sax)
Christian McBride (bass)
Rodney Jones (guitar)
Brad Mehldau (acoustic piano)
Robert Jospe' (drums)
Soul & Funk & Blues Kind of stuff
Soulive
James Taylor Quartet (no, not THAT James Taylor!)Message from the Godfather is amazing.
North Mississippi Allstars
Robert Randolph Family Band - This kid is frightening! If you believe in reincarnation, then Jimi is definitly BACK!
The Word- Robert Randolph & a couple of the guys from Martin Medeski & Wood
Derek Trucks- This guy may be Butch Trucks' nephew, but he has Duane's Blood coursing through his veins!
Rick Holstrom
Mike Henderson & The Bluebloods
And, if you have any interest in the Jam Band kind of thing, (admittidly not for everyone!) for my money SCI is the cream of the crop. Their playing is astounding, range is ridiculous (they can go from hard core bluegrass to super-sized electric Funk to Beatles to Paul Simon's Graceland kind of stuff faster than you can say Boo!) I spent 10 years hanging with the tapers in the 10th row of Dead shows, and for my money, these guys have it all over the Dead as far as musicianship and professionalism. You could see the Dead 10 straight nights and in those 10 nights they might have never gotten as tight as these kids are 3 minutes into their first song of the night. (But, oh when the Dead were on, they were ON! I've been playing some of the old Pig Pen driven stuff of late and getting a pretty big grin out of that! Wish I had been around THEN!)And, as with the Dead, only bother with the live SCI stuff...
Anyway, that is my take on some new/old music. Kind of long, sorry...
I was wondering when a thread like this was going to get started.
Now I can't wait to go out and start looking up some of the stuff above that I've not heard of.

there is also a guy named monte montgomery
S**T! I had a couple of this guy's CD's and they were damn good! I think an old girlfriend took off with them.
Oh Yeah, now I remember exactly where they went.
Godd Riddance to her, gotta replace those discs.
Caught him up in NYC a couple of times 4 or 5 years ago. Blew the roof off of the place!

Seabear
These are some of my favorite type posts also.
Stick around and you'll see one about every 3 months or so.
I say every 3 months or so because that is about how often I see my music budget for the month totally blown.

JR, I can't help you with any "new music", but here's some stuff that's been gorgeous for about a 100 years and always will be: Brahms ; Gershwin ; Holst ; Rachmaninoff ; Respighi ; Rimsky-Korsakov ; more Rimsky .

seabear- yea, monte is much better live than in recordings.. you just cant capture his energy on a recording, but his live sets are some of the best i have ever seen. that guy can make a 6-string acoustic sound like a 12-string electric. just amazing fret work.

i noticed a lot of the guys on your list are story tellers.. if you are a big fan of that 'genre', then i got 2 names for you.

todd snider- this guy is from seattle, but now resides in texas. he is a master story teller, and has the ability to incorporate humor in his songs, without it being too 'gitchy'. i highly recommend him.

adam carroll- he is mainly a texas artist, but this guy is like 2nd coming of bob dylan. he plays solo, just him, the guitsr, and his harmonica. very talented guy, and writes songs that just make you think of home. you can buy his music here. i suggest the 'screen door' cd.. its my favorite.

that site is dedicated to mainly texas music artists.. another great band is 'cross canadian ragweed'. i didnt like their most recent album very much, but the 'purple' album is great.

bigjohn

John:
You always know the local artists!

I'm crashing at YOUR place when I'm in Texas!