Tales of the Salty Bag

Townes Van Zandt made and played beautiful music. At some point in the fall of 2009 I was reading an interview (I thought it was Paul Pendley of RCR, but I can't find the interview so I could be wrong) and the person being interviewed brought up Townes Van Zandt's Live at the Old Quarter album. I liked the way he described it so I went to CD Plus to see if it was there, and low and behold they had it (I know it was September 2009 because it was right before I drove to Calgary to pick up my things to move back to MB). Live at the Old Quarter is a double album (1h32m) and the perfect way to get into Townes' music, it's a stripped down version of his (sometimes melancholic, sometimes cheeky) folk/blues/country songs (just him and a guitar) that allowed his playing, voice, and poetic lyrics to shine. Townes made beautiful music that drilled straight into your soul, beautiful absolutely engaging stories. The live setting also showcased his sense of humor, I can't help bu...

It's almost impossible to answer what album you would want if you were trapped on an island. When I've contemplated it, one of my scenarios is that I take comps and soundtracks because it would give me a broad spectrum of music on a few albums. Two of my desert island albums are soundtracks; This is England , and Can't Hardly Wait . These soundtracks are at the top of my list for 2 reasons; 1 - they both have killer music, 2 - the movies are stellar. If you haven't seen This is England; it's set in, as you might have guessed, England, in 1983. It follows a group of ska/punk skinheads and the the National Front trying to pull said punks/skins into their fascist political agenda. Being set in '83 UK and following a group of skins, the soundtrack is full of Jamaican ( Toots & The Mytals have 3 songs [and this is actually the first time I was introduced to Toots music]) and 2tone ska , with some soul , new wave (this is how I found about Strawberry Switchblad...