Me'n Mrs. G picked up a coupla albums yesterday at Joby's Music. We mostly get our music by mail order, but it's nice once in a while to patronize a local place when we're after something mainstream enough that they're likely to have it in stock. The joint bills itself as "the largest music store in town". If I find another one in our town of 14,000, I'll let ya know if that's true! It's not real big, but the staff there has eclectic enough musical taste that you never know what you'll find. The 'staff' yesterday was Nancy, whom we've known for twenty years. We had a nice chat as well.
First album is "The Road To Escondido" by J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton. I was tryin' ta genre-ize it and couldn't, but Clapton's website did it just fine:
After years of admiring each others musical masterworks and Clapton covers of Cale songs such as "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton have teamed up for the first time to create an original album together, The Road To Escondido. The 14 track CD was produced and recorded by the duo in August 2005 in California. The resulting music defies being labeled into any one category, but instead finds influence across the spectrum of blues, rock, country and folk.
The best I could come up with is these guys are Ace singer-songwriter guitar-pickin' old farts.
This album's good enough that I'd even recommend it to Fixer. High praise, I think.
Update: Read this review:
Some critics have opined that when you combine two "laid back" artists like Cale and Clapton you get an hour of laid back music that lacks sufficient fire or energy, and that might be true to ears that haven't spent quality time in dives where a left hook carries more weight than a college diploma. Something strange happens to musicians who work honky tonks. From up on stage, what takes place on the floor is the ultimate spectator sport. After you've seen more than Dante could imagine, some self-imposed distance is the only thing that keeps you from taking a step down that road to escondido.
He ain't talkin' about the town neither.
Oh, yeah - I've been to Escondido. Nice enough place, I guess. Click it if you're curious.
The other album is "All American Bluegrass Girl" by Rhonda Vincent. Ms. Vincent is probably the hottest female bluegrass act goin' right now. Another 30-year overnight success. She's got a heckuva set o' pipes, great musicians, and she's drop-dead gorgeous. Mrs. G thinks the getup she's wearin' on the album cover makes her look trashy, but I kinda like it. Click the album title link and you'll see. You can listen to a little bit of it there as well. It's not traditional bluegrass, but as up to the minute as Bluegrass is gonna get.
We've been meaning to get these two albums for months, but music is timeless so what's the hurry? I'm glad we finally did.
Just as an afterthought, Mrs. G has picked out a gadget for her birthday that plays LP records and transfers them to MP3 format. I assume it puts them in Windows Media Player and I can extract them to her little music-player thingie later. Anybody got any thoughts on this?
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