(Written for the old site.) SST in the eighties was home for every punk-rocker in USA. And they aslo grew their special breed of longhair punkers who drew their influences not only from early punk, but also from hard rock and psychedelia. One of the most notable bands of that breed were the Screaming Trees. Three chubby guys and a babe magnet Mark Lanegan gave us a little bit of fresh air when they in late eighties made great three albums for SST. That part of their career is also wonderfully compiled on Anthology: SST Years.
But then came 1991, Nirvana and grunge… Of course, Screaming Trees were a perfect grunge band already and CBS signed them and they really hit it big with Sweet Oblivion in 1992. Paradoxically, Sweet Oblivion was lyrically their weakest album up to date. Moreover, Lanegan started his deep exploration on more traditional forms like country and blues and decided to start a parallel career as a solo artist.
Actually, in 1990. came out firt Lanegan’s album entitled The Winding Street, but his career really started to overshadow Screaming Trees when he came up with Whiskey for the Holy Ghost in 1994. That was a delicious album full of bluesy bar atmosphere.
Like after a big hungover, his album I’ll Take Care of You came out in 1999. Here we find Lanegan performing his favorite standards like Little Sadie. You can find there many cool songwriters, Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Bobby Blue Blend and Buck Owens. The nicest surprize is a wonderful bluesy cover of Carry Home, which was originally done by a death punk band The Gun Club.
Just now, Lanegan came up with a new album, and a new hairdo and he’s more than welcome. Album is entiled Field Songs, and represents Mark in a new light. It all looks like Lanegan got influenced by gypsy music, and there’s much of that nomadic feel in his new songs. However, the list of guest musicians is quite interesting… Except for his old buddy Mike Johnson (ex Dinosaur JR), also Duffy (ex Guns’n’Roses) delivers some quite impressive drum attacks, Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden also shows she can play some serious guitar. Duffy is also now a part of Mark’s new touring band, so god help us… Anyway, great low key records and a nice bluesy break in usually jolly good atmosphere of The Little Lighthouse.
In this episode, we heard one song from the new album by Chuck Prophet where he covers Waylons Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams song by song. It’s a very interesting project in which Prophet not only celebrates Waylon’s songwriting talent, but also twists musical genres and brings out surprising arrangements in each and every song. We quickly flip through the Manchild 3, graphic novel by Brian Walsby and hear songs by his band Double Negative and from the Melvins CD that comes free with Brian’s new book. We also have a brand new album out of Cleveland area, Introducing… by Living Stereo. Today’s show is dedicated to Jim Jones, Cleveland musician who was responsible for the mid-eighties sound of Pere Ubu. Jones died on February 25 in his home after a cardiac failure.
The new Little Lighthouse (Flashlite) announces a brand new cd for Scott Reynolds, former vocalist of All. This time Scott is accompanied with members of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips in a new band called The Steaming Beast. We also have a brand new recording from our Utah favorites, The Rubes. Another cool CD for this week is a gorgeous compilation record of Rijeka rock scene, one of the most consistent and most productive rock scenes in 80s Yugoslavia. In this episode, we sample some obvious and some not so obvious choices from that CD.
Today’s Flashlite edition of The Little Lighthouse brings several new albums: brand new Fleshtones rocking like they never did before, new North Mississippi Allstars and new Paul Kelly’s album. Paul will play live in Cleveland on March 1st at the House of Blues, so it’s a great opportunity for me to finally see a guy who wrote some really important albums when I was a teen. We also present a brand new demo of the My Buddy Moose member V(atroslav)! Also, checkout a beautiful Eckman, Race and Brokaw song with some important Baton Rouge toponyms!
The second Flashlite brings you a brand new band from Australia, Mona Lisa Overdrive, new songs by Mad Dukes, James Luther Dickinson and Willy DeVille. Also, checkout our “lecture series” on Blackburn and Snow. Today’s show is dedicated to John Stewart who passed away in January.