New Old Music

I bought some new old music from Amazon:



Fucking brilliant. I'd heard it a couple times as Music AM at Borders--J357 used to play it time and again. Mick Ronson rules--at points on this album he sounds like Tonni Iommi. I was thinking the other day about buying whatever album has Bowie's "Andy Warhol" track--I used to have it on 45 and taught myself the riff on guitar in like '85.

Hadn't heard



in probably 20 years. "Why Does it Hurt When I Pee?" "Catholic Slut" and "Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt"--these tracks not only hold up, I like them better now than I did as a teen. I appreciate the instrumentation much more as well (mostly because I'm not pulling a four-foot bong while listening anymore).

Sometimes the production on "new" bluegrass recordings can sound too clean, too sharp. That's the case with



and



but I still like them both a great deal. Both artists are very pure singers, both have assembled kick-ass bands whose members aren't afraid to ramp up already fast classics to new crazy tempos. Dolly even turns a turgid and painfully bad old Billy Joel ballad into a can o' banjo whoop-ass. For some reason I don't like really crisp and clear playing on bluegrass recordings--there should be slip-ups and twangs and toppy recordings; the sound on each of these discs is woefully impeccable. But I still catch myself saying goddam at some of the soloing here.