West Texas Plant – Photo Credit
I’m a pretty big music geek, so I rarely come upon an older album I haven’t heard already that really hits it out of the park for me. Those times you listen to something and it punches a new hole into your idea of what music can be comes slower and slower as you get older–the swiss cheese of how I hear music becomes easier to see through but there’s less left to punch off.
I came across this list of Tom Wait’s favorite albums, many of which are terrific selections that would be near tops on a list I’d make too.
The feeling that I call punching a hole –Waits describes it when listening to the Nessun Dorma aria from the opera Turandot as:
I had never heard it. He asked me if I had ever heard it, and I said no, and he was like, as if I said I’ve never had spaghetti and meatballs – ‘Oh My God, Oh My God!’ – and he grabbed me and he brought me into the jukebox (there was a jukebox in the kitchen) and he put that on and he just kind of left me there. It was like giving a cigar to a five-year old. I turned blue, and I cried.
There were two albums I hadn’t heard on the list–one was an eponymous album by Houndog.
Punched a hole! My adjectives won’t suffice here, so I’ll leave it to Waits again:
Now that’s a good record to listen to when you drive through Texas. … Those guys are so wild, and they’ve gotten so cubist. They’ve become like Picasso. They’ve gone from being purely ethnic and classical, to this strange, indescribable item that they are now. They’re worthwhile to listen to under any circumstances. But the sound he got on Houndog, on the electric violin … the whole record is a dusty road. Dark and burnished and mostly unfurnished. Superb texture and reverb. Lo fi and its highest level. Songs of depth and atmosphere. It ain’t nothin’ but a…
The 7th track “All Fired Up, All Shook Down” just slams. I couldn’t find any legal full song links, but Amazon (and iTunes, if you’re into the DRM) has 30-second samples that give a decent idea.
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