Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

Annie Herring – Search Deep Inside

Benny Hester – Be A Reciever

Garth Hewitt – Love Song For The Earth

Garth Hewitt – A Change In Me

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks (aka Original Recordings)

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks – Striking It Rich

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks – Last Train To Hicksville

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks – Beatin’ The Heat

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks – Greatest Licks

Various – Stiffs Live

Wire – Pink Flag

Shaboozy – Where I’ve Been Isn’t Where I’m Going

Julian Lage – Love Hurts

I tried inserting links to YouTube, it didn’t work so I will try again next week. Until then copy the artist and album and paste it into YouTube.

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

It is generally considered a landmark album, not just for Tom Waits but in the history of popular music. When released, it received high accolades and has maintained that high, aging well over the years. I have one criticism of Rain Dogs; I don’t appreciate it when driving. I have to take the CD out and play it at home to enjoy it. There is too much going on to compete with my attention while driving. Rain Dogs and/or Tom Waits may appeal to only some. But to the some of us who do, it is worth listening to again.

Annie Herring – Search Deep Inside

Benny Hester – Be A Reciever

Garth Hewitt – Love Song For The Earth

Garth Hewitt – A Change In Me

These four albums are from my pastoral years. Annie Herring has a good voice and writes well. Benny Hester is straight-up gospel music. Garth Hewitt is an artist I occasionally drag out for a listen, one album in particular, Scars.

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks, I hadn’t listened to Dan in a long while and so I binged to make up for lost time. The first album of Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks that I bought was Last Train To Hicksville, which is still my favourite.

Stiff Live is an album cut off the board from a concert tour that the Stiff label used to promote some of its talent. The artists on this record are from the British New Wave scene and are some of the artists I frequently listen to. Nick Lowe is a frequent flyer on my turntable, and I still consider Labour of Lust a top-shelf record.

Elvis Costello blew me out of the water when he released My Aim Is True,his debut album, and although some of the lustre has faded, I still enjoy his unique sound, especially on his early albums.

Ian Dury & the Blockheads could easily be brushed aside as a novelty act. Ian Dury contracted polio in his youth, which resulted in the paralysis and withering of his left leg, shoulder and arm. Ian had a unique delivery of lyrics and was a true original. Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57. An obituary in The Guardian called him “one of few true originals of the English music scene.”

Wire – Pink Flag. I didn’t know diddly squat about the band Wire when they popped up in the playlist last week, So, I gave them a listen. They carry a lot of the energy of early punk bands with a fresh but still-punk sound.

Shaboozy – Where I’ve Been Isn’t Where I’m Going The newest craze is for hip-hop and modern pop singers to do a Country and Western album. Beyoncé made headlines when she released two songs with a bit of a C/W flavour. My flavour of country music is grounded in the music of Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash as a few examples, I like the more traditional country sound with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is the music of Sturgil Simpson.

Shaboozy isn’t my cup of tea any more than Beyoncé is, but I listened to them before making that statement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7bQwwqW-Hc

Julian Lage – Love Hurts Julian Lage is an artist who makes chill/jazz music. We can bring the pace down, shake the stiffness out, do some gentle stretching, relax our muscles and call it a day.