Stuff We Like: Cal Morgan
All right, so I’ll admit to being the mustiest of the It List contributors. When I was a kid I walked to school uphill both ways, one mile over and two miles back. But somehow people are still (re)issuing stuff I like.
Favor!te Album: Naked Willie by Willie Nelson. Back in the 1960s, Willie made an LP’s worth of wistful, soulful, richly chorded, characteristically personal records, beautifully sung, sparsely accompanied, all but two of them perfect. Somehow, in the wisdom of that golden era, they were all separated from their peers, slathered over with poorly judged strings, and sent off like orphans to moulder on various long-deleted albums. This year, Willie brought them together for a family reunion–and despite a lackluster package and laughable title it became my most treasured new album in years. With echoes of everything from Count Basie to Roger Miller to the Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere,” Naked Willie is country music’s missing Rubber Soul.
This year, Billy Bob Thornton toured with Willie to support the album. Click here to hear him talk about it.
Favor!te Verse from Favor!te Album:
I’m a love that you bought for a song
I’m a voice on a green telephone
I’m a day that lasted so long
Close your eyes, I’m a memory
–Willie Nelson, “I’m a Memory,” from Naked Willie
Favor!te Single: “Au Claire de La Lune,” Leon Scott, 1860. Yeah, that’s right, 1860. Twenty years before Edison waxed his first beats, this Frenchman rocked a steampunky little device called a phonautograph and recorded ten seconds of scratchy but audible singing on a piece of paper. So he forgot to invent a way to play it back. What do you want from my life? This thing was recorded before Abe Lincoln entered the White House. Take it away, Leon!
Favor!te Art Book I Can’t Afford: Stephen Heller and Kevin Reagan, Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover (Taschen, 2009). The “record album” was invented in the 1940s, and for one luminous moment the album cover became the exclusive province of a twentysomething graphic visionary named Alex Steinweiss. His designs are landmarks of midcentury color and style, exuberance and elegance. Mr. Steinweiss still lives in Florida, bless him. Stimulate your envy with Taschen’s browse-through function, here.
Favor!te Multi-Platform Magazine: Coilhouse. Only three issues in, and the lovely ladies of the Coilhouse empire have rocked the world each time with their silly symphonies of past and future, gravity and kitsch, beauty and grotesquerie. Through its ultra-glossy pages fly miraculous jeweled birds, brilliant anarchic interviews, and girls that make me blush. Saving grace: My wife likes it as much as I do. And their blog is a constant pleasure. Nadya, Mer, and Zo, we’re waiting on Four and more. Check it out here.
Favor!te Book-Like Object: Correspondences, Ben Greenman (Hotel St. George Press). Yes, it was published in 2008–but word spreads slowly when you’re a delicate, intricately folded, letterpress-printed box that contains seven stories, published in an edition of too few copies. Yes, I liked it so much I almost neglected to read the stories–until I did, and was floored by Greenman’s exquisitely arch romanticomedy. And, yes, I liked them so much that I convinced all concerned to let us republish the stories in an expanded mainstream edition next year, called What He’s Poised to Do. But the original remains one of my favorite publications of this or any year.
Favor!te Performance by an Actress: Maggie Gyllenhall in Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges was just nominated for a Golden Globe, and he deserves it too–but Maggie, for me, was the revelation, all folded shoulders and wounded, hopeful flirtation.
Favor!te Video: Pete Drake, “Forever.” Because apparently David Lynch was making videos for Hee Haw in the 1960s.
Pete Drake – Forever
ATL Al | MySpace Video
