Category: Episodes

648. Buck Owens

~ ernopepper ~ 2 Comments

(May 2025) Episode 648 is BUCK OWENS. His music is perfect. I don’t mean it’s my favorite or meets some objective universal measure of excellence (like J.S. Bach). But to my untrained ear, this is what quality country music sounds like. It’s straightforward, unadorned and rhythmic. That’s the Bakersfield sound he’s famous for. He rolled through the 60s with album after quality album. But his career and reputation changed after he started hosting Hee Haw; that’s the only way I knew him from my youth – as a corn-pone TV presenter rather than a productive musical artist.

Favorite album: I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail

Favorite song: Under Your Spell Again

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Buck ’Em! The Music Of Buck Owens (1955-1967) is a good anthology for the casual fan.

647. Captain Beyond

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Episode 647 is CAPTAIN BEYOND, a B-list supergroup from the mid-70s (with former Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly and Johnny Winter members). It’s a weird mix of heavy, prog rock, space and yacht rock, and thus a lesser-known archetype of the period. Their first of three albums has the heaviest sound, and thus the best.

Favorite album: Captain Beyond

Favorite song Mesmerization Eclipse

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Probably only relevant for 1970s rock completists

646. Violet Mindfield

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(April 2025) Episode 646 is the VIOLET MINDFIELD, a contemporary Southern California-based retro-psychedelic band. While their stated intention is to recreate 60s psychedelic and garage band sounds, what I hear is a call back to acts of previous retro generations, such as Olivia Tremor Control and Oh Sees. There’s a fine line between reverent homage and derivative mimicry, which they straddle. Their most recent album, California Burning, appears to be original songs based on classic 60s riffs (not unlike what the Rutles did).

Favorite album: The Forgotten Streetlamps of Time

Favorite song: Autonomous Overdrive

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It’s an interesting listen if you like 60s psychedelic and garage music.

644. Lightnin’ Hopkins

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(April 2025) Episode 644 is LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS, Texas bluesman with a career that spanned from the 1920s to 1980s. Despite all the changes in the blues genre over that time, Hopkins remained consistent and loyal to his sound: just his guitar (acoustic or electric) and his earthy voice. I enjoy this style of stripped-down blues, but after dozens of albums, it can get repetitive.

Favorite album: Strums the Blues

Favorite song: Devil Is Watching You

Favorite instrumental song: Hopkins’ Sky Hop (inspiration for Stevie Ray Vaughn’s ‘Rude Mood’)

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: I prefer the early recording compilations from the 1940s-50s, but the consistency in his output means you can jump in most anywhere.

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643. Ruth Crawford Seeger

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(April 2025) Episode 643 is RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER, following the recent episode on her stepson, Pete Seeger. Composing in the 1920s-30s, she and her colleagues became known as “ultramodernist,” heavy on dissonance. When the Seeger family moved to Washinton DC to work with the Library of Congress on folk collections, she published her “American Folk Songs for Children” which became widely used. Her oeuvre is not large, but it is rather interesting.

Favorite piece: Suite for Wind Quintet

Favorite vocal piece: Three Chants

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Start with her String Quartet (1931), her most famous work.

642. Sepultura

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(April 2025) Episode 642 is SEPULTURA, vaulting to the top tier of my favorite metal bands. In a genre that demands a high level of orthodoxy to the metal formula, Sepultura separates themselves: they create music within the metal idiom. Beyond their skillful navigation within subgenres (speed/thrash, death, groove, prog), they bring in novel elements like drumming rhythms from their native Brazil, notably on the albums Chaos A.D. and Roots when they reached their creative peak. But it’s not a mere meld, it makes part of a whole. Each album has its own personality; they’ll try something new and then circle back to hit you in the face with power thrash.

Favorite album: Roots

Favorite song: Lookaway

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Highly recommend. Chaos A.D. and Roots are their most inventive, but there’s really not a bad album in the lot.

641. Jason Isbell

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(April 2025) Episode 641 is JASON ISBELL. I had conceived this episode within the “country” genre, but quickly realized Isbell performs in that big space variously called Americana, southern rock, root-rock, alt-country. It might conclude signing in a Southern twang (he’s from northern Alabama) is a reflexive signifier. Whatever the label, Isbell is a gifted songwriter for melody and turn of a phrase, and he has gained wide fame because of it. I tend to prefer his solo recordings to the ones with his band, the 400 Unit, especially his most recent, all-acoustic release, Foxes in the Snow.

Favorite album: Foxes in the Snow

Favorite song: Miles*

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Something More than Free, Reunions, Weathervanes, Foxes in the Snow

* not characteristic of most his work, but the opening riff’s homage to Down By the River got me.

640. Pete Seeger

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(April 2025) Episode 640 of the “opus project” is PETE SEEGER along with his early groups the ALMANAC SINGERS and THE WEAVERS. It’s hard to overstate Seeger’s importance in the popularization and dissemination of folk music and musicians, and for helping make folk a medium for social and political causes like peace and the environment. He co-founded the topic-heavy Almanac Singers (which included Woody Guthrie) in the 1940s, but even after changing groups and downplaying the political messaging, Seeger and the Weavers still couldn’t escape political persecution. His solo career was as varied as it was long (he recorded into his 90s). He directed musical attention to children, both in performance and on record. He also made instructional records for banjo and guitar; the album ‘12-String Guitar as Played by Leadbelly’ is a gem of musicology. Not blessed with a strong voice, I am not likely to put on his songs for a casual listening experience. But because of his contribution to music and history, and the fact that he wrote so many songs that have become standards, it is well to know his work. (For me it’s impossible to listen to the Weavers without thinking of their being mockumentary-ized in A Mighty Wind.)

Favorite album: Broadside Ballads, Vol. 2

Favorite song: Which Side Are You On?

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: His ‘American Favorite Ballads’ series on the Folkways label, released in five volumes from 1957-62, is a good collection. And try that Leadbelly homage album.

639. Peter and Gordon

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(March 2025) Episode 639 is PETER AND GORDON. Very like Chad & Jeremy from a couple episodes ago: a UK duo featuring Everly-ish vocals in the early British Invasion. What Peter and Gordon had going for them is proximity to the Beatles, socially and musically; Paul wrote their early hits and dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher. They offered fine, middle-of-the-road 60s pop, but struggled to keep up with trends. Peter and Gordon didn’t go as far as Chad & Jeremy’s full-bore attempt at tudor psychedelia, just venturing into baroque pop. Both duos were done by decade’s end. Peter became a long-time producer.

Favourite album: In London for Tea

Favourite song: A World Without Love

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The Ultimate Peter & Gordon (compilation)

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638. The Gap Band

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(March 2025) Episode 638 is THE GAP BAND. They reached their commercial peak in the early 80s with fun synth-bass funk hits like “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” Their first two mid-70s albums on small labels were typical funk of that period (my preference). But their major label start in 1979 gave a run of albums that closely approximates the Earth, Wind & Fire formula of complex funk and ballads (that’s a good thing). By the mid-80s and 90s they adopted the synth-driven idiom of the time, which is not my kind of soul/funk. Even at their peak, though, they could be repetitious – “Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me),” “Early in the Morning,” “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Party Train” are basically the same song.

Favorite album: The Gap Band (1977)

Favorite song: Knuckle Head Funkin’

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: A greatest hits will suffice (although be prepared for repetition), although I direct deeper divers to the first two small label albums