I am certain MoB will drop its “Best of 2010″ list in due time, but I thought I might get a jump on the proceedings and highlight three of the top box sets of the year. You have likely heard all about Springsteen’s The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story, the reissue of the Stones’ albums on 180-gram vinyl, among others, but here are three that might have slipped through the cracks. All would make top notch holiday gifts (click on the title for purchasing info). – By Jeff Kollath

Syl Johnson – Complete Mythology -Numero

 
If you don’t know Syl Johnson, it’s okay. Really. But, your life would be better if you got to know him. We all know James, Otis, Marvin, Curtis, and more, but for every one of them, there is a James Carr, a William Bell, and a Syl Johnson. An artist for Twinight and Hi Records, Johnson never reached the heights he deserved, but has been a superstar in deep soul circles for decades. Johnson came to prominence with his sides for Chicago-based Twinight, where he recorded some of his most poignant songs, “Is It Because I’m Black” and “Concrete Reservation.” Johnson’s songs pushed the envelope, taking a stand against injustice he saw in his adopted hometown. After moving to Hi in Memphis, Johnson had his greatest success but seemed to be unable to get out of Al Green’s shadow. Thankfully, Chicago’s Numero Group has given us “Complete Mythology,” a six-album, four-CD set of Johnson’s best sides. Like the rest of their obscure soul, folk, and world music compilations, this set is a remarkable achievement and revelation. The skill, care, and respect put into this set is worthy of praise.

Next Stop Is Vietnam – The War On Record, 1961-2008

 
For many, the music of the Vietnam Era is all about protest music – Hendrix’s ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ Country Joe’s ‘Fixin to Die Rag,’ and CCR’s ‘Fortunate Son.’ Beyond that, though, a cottage industry sprang up during the war years for songs that yes, spoke out against the war, but also championed the cause, championed the men who fought, and mainly, spoke out against hippies, radical college professors, draft dodgers, and dope smokers. Released by Germany’s Bear Family Records, this 13-disc montrosity was put together by retired University of Maryland Professor Hugo Keesing, who for a short time taught Psychology classes to GIs in South Vietnam and was later a DJ on Armed Forces Radio in Turkey. Keesing, who has collected over 4,000 songs about the war, narrowed his selection down to just 330. That’s right, just 330. Starting with some of the earliest songs about the war – when America’s aims were unclear and the war was shrouded in mystery – and ending with songs by or about veterans dealing with their wartime experience, the set is incredibly balanced, with each side getting equal say. Standout tracks include “The Ballad of the Yellow Beret,” an anti-protestor song written by a young Bob Seger, Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” “People Lets Stop the War,” the best Grand Funk Railroad song you have ever heard (yes, such a thing exists), and “Kathy’s Letter,” an absolutely bizarre spoken word recording by 6-year old Little Kathy Hoffman, imploring President Nixon to keep fighting the good fight. With a retail north of $200, it’s pretty steep, and some of the songs are hard to get through, but it’s an incredibly informative and rich resource.

Delaney & Bonnie – On Tour With Record (Deluxe Edition)

Oh, Rhino Handmade, how you tax my wallet. The boutique label has issued some incredible things in the past couple years – reissue of Cher’s “3614 Jackson Highway,” the complete Wilson Pickett on Atlantic Records, unreleased Tony Joe White, live Stooges, and so much more – but this is really the tops. Mississippian Delaney Bramlett influenced many musicians, from Duane Allman to George Harrison, but none moreso than Eric Clapton. D&B opened for Blind Faith in 1969, and after the supegroup fell apart, Clapton joined the band. In later interviews, Clapton credited Bramlett for giving him the confidence to sing and lead his own band, which he later did, forming Derek and the Dominoes with D&B’s rhythm section. This set builds off of the stellar live album of the same name, but includes four complete shows from their early 1970 tour of England. The shows are dripping with intensity and incendiary guitars and horns (courtesy Keith Richards’ drinking buddy and good friend, Bobby Keys), paying homage to Bramlett’s southern roots, early American rock and roll, and providing a glimpse into Clapton’s future. Again, if four discs are too many, check out the single disc live album, or if you want to dig, try and a find a bootleg of a D&B  show from July 22, 1971 with King Curtis, Duane Allman, and Gregg Allman guesting.

By Jeff Kollath

As a child of the 1980s, I was heavily influenced by mall culture, from school shopping and playing video games to visiting Santa and searching Topps rak-paks for Jose Canseco and Barry Bonds rookie cards at Thrift Drug or Kay-Bee Toys. In Madison, mall culture is still alive and well, with both malls still standing and relatively stocked with shoppers despite the economy. In other Midwestern cities, though, malls have downsized, closed, or outright demolished. These one-time paeans to commerce and consumerism sprung up in corn fields throughout the 1960s and 70s, as the car culture pushed stores and shoppers to the outskirts of town and the suburbs. By the 1990s and early 2000s, however, dozens closed as their infrastructure and store lineup became dated. This is the environment in which Michigan’s Frontier Ruckus grew up, in the once-thriving Detroit suburbs where fully-employed, well-paid workers from the Big 3 lived, played, and shopped, and whose civic decay inspires a riveting, exciting, and true-to-life brand of folk-rock. What John Cougar Mellencamp was to the rural blight and poverty of the 1980s and Eminem was to Detroit’s urban decay in the 1990s, Frontier Ruckus could be for the suburban decay in the 2000s and beyond. Bright, vivid, and well-written songs about a brand of nostalgia so recent that it usually gets shuffled to the bottom of the deck underneath the idyllic 1950s and the inspiring 1960s, but still holds meaning for those who grew up in its midst.

Wednesday night at the High Noon Saloon, Frontier Ruckus told many stories of this era, focusing on simple pleasures (like the local chain drug store) and abstaining from the anger that is omnipresent in other songs of prosperity’s demise. The sparse stage set-up was a key component to the wonderful sound this band has. David Jones’ banjo and lead singer Matt Milla’s voice/guitar taking up much of the space, but lying in the gaps is the trumpet and singing-saw of Zachary Nichols, adding a dimension reminiscent of Calexico, where the acoustic instruments take center stage but the horns take the sound to the next level. Having seen Horse Feathers at the Memorial Union on Saturday night, Frontier Ruckus was the second band in a week to incorporate the high-and-lonesome hacksaw, treating it much like a pedal or lap steel guitar, providing just enough fill to make an already emotional song even more evocative. The band’s songs serve as a guidebook for their Michigan home, pointing out the seemingly benign sights along I-75 and I-96 (a whole about a dentist’s billboard on I-96, actually) but all having special meaning to the band. The eight-minute “Pontiac, the Nightbrink” is where the band’s true message and talents shine, with not a note or a lyric wasted. At the end of the evening, as the crowd was thinning out, the band cast aside amplification, creating a living room-like warmth in the High Noon, and a connection between this rising Michigan band and their Wisconsin audience whose backgrounds and memories are not that different.

Frontier Ruckus plays the Cactus Club in Milwaukee on Friday night with David Wax Museum and Juniper Tar. Tickets are $10 and on sale now.

Previously: Sad Songs & Waltzes :: Frontier Ruckus
Previously: Frontier Ruckus – House of Blues, Chicago
Previously: Review: Frontier Ruckus :: Deadmalls and Nightfalls

Buy: Buy: Frontier Ruckus – Deadmalls And Nightfalls
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MP3: Frontier Ruckus – “The Upper Room”

By Jeff Kollath

Today, November 10, is the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. One of the largest cargo ships in the Great Lakes fleet, the 729-foot ship packed with iron ore went down near Whitefish Bay, Michigan in a mighty storm – “The Gales of November” – taking with her the 29 crewmen on board. Much has been written about the sinking of the Fitz and to this day there is no solid evidence on what caused the ship to go down.

Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot eulogized the crew and the mighty ship in 1976′s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” adding the song to the massive canon of 20th century disaster songs. The song was a hit, reaching #1 in his native Canada and #2 in the U.S., an incredible accomplishment for a song about death during the hedonistic disco age. For as long as music has been to put to wax or a hard drive, folk, rock, country, and soul artists have told tragic stories through song. Very popular through the first few decades of the 20th century, disaster songs saw a resurgence with teens in the 1950s and 60s. Instead of songs about prison fires, bus accidents, or floods, pop smashes told stories of personal loss, like the Shangri-La’s “The Leader of the Pack” or even Ray Peterson’s schmaltzy hit “Tell Laura I Love Her.”  Later, Bruce Springsteen resurrected the disaster song genre with the incredible “Wreck on the Highway” on The River, which has the same title as, but different lyrics than the Roy Acuff classic you can find on 1972′s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. To hear some of the old time disaster songs, please check out “People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Sonsgs, 1913-1938.”

Founding member of the Get Up Kids and the New Amsterdams, Matt Pryor, will hit Madison for a special house show at the North Mendota Supper Club on Saturday, December 4. Doors will open at 8, with the show starting at 9. Tickets are $15 in advance and are only available via Ducat King. This show is the final of three Midwestern house shows Pryor will play prior to an East Coast solo tour that begins the following weekend.  Pryor will also play in Chicago on December 2. These intimate shows could be last chance to see Pryor solo for some time as the Get Up Kids have a new record coming out in 2011, These Are the Rules, their first since 2004′s Guilt Show.

Buy: Matt Pryor – “Confidence Man”

[Drive-By Truckers play the Pabst Theater tonight for a special Farm Aid Eve performance]

By Jeff Kollath

While The National received their well-deserved accolades for playing at the Obama rally on campus and near-sold out show at the Orpheum Theater on Tuesday, another band also played two shows in Madison. Flying under the radar was Drive-By Truckers, who snuck into town on Monday afternoon, allowing band members to visit family and friends, and relax on a rare day off on this jam-packed four week tour. For a band as well-received and well-liked as DBT, there was very little buzz about the band’s first trip to Madison since 2007, their show at the Majestic Theater subsumed by The National and Obama, and devastating one-two punch for other goings on if there ever was one.

Taking on two shows in one day is not easy, but DBT front man Patterson Hood proved up to the task, honored to perform a short, but incredibly heartfelt and genuine acoustic show at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Joining Hood were keyboardist Jay Gonzalez (on accordion, no less), and special guest Kelly Hogan, played six songs in “Faces in the Sand,” the museum’s Iraq/Afghanistan exhibit, to a crowd of nearly 100. The crowd spanned from babies to senior citizens, Vietnam Veterans to Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans, and all were moved by the songs and the stories behind them. Much of the show revolved around the memory of Sgt. Mark Maida, a Madison native killed in Iraq in May 2005, and the inspiration for “The Home Front.” Mark’s memory continues to live on through the philanthropy of his family and their willingness to share their story of loss. The power of the event did not pass by Hood and Company as they too had to choke back emotion on several occasions. The show ended with Hood and Hogan’s beautiful harmonies on “Angels & Fuselage,” requested by Chris Maida, a Marine veteran, who, along with his brother, found a special, shared meaning to the song while the mobilized for the war in Iraq. It was clear that as the crowd filed out, they all felt they had seen something special.

The evening show at the Majestic  built upon the afternoon’s proceedings, opening with an intense “That Man I Shot.” Moving through a setlist covering songs from the previous two records, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark and The Big To-Do, the early part of the show culminated in Eddie Hinton’s “Everybody Needs Love” and a sparkling version of “Delta Dawn,” a cover of Tanya Tucker/Helen Reddy’s early 70s homage to an aged, jilted southern belle. Kelly Hogan’s vocals and John Neff’s pedal steel work sparkled as the rest of the band filled in admirably behind this country classic. After Hogan left the stage, Hood introduced “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” which was part of the set at the Veterans Museum. Hood forgot a verse during the early set, but he headed back to the bus, figured it out, and delivered a fantastic version that he again dedicated to his Great Uncle George, a WWII veteran. The remainder of the set was standard Rock Show material, ending with a driving and exceedingly crunchy version of “Hell No, I Ain’t Happy.” Following the usual encore suspects “Marry Me,” “Let There Be Rock,” and “Shut Up and Get on the Plane”, Kelly Hogan again hit the stage to sing backup on “Angels & Fuselage,” another holdover from the afternoon set. Dedicated to Mark and Chris Maida, and “the late, great Otis Redding,” this full band version was a sonic coup de gras, with feedback-drenched guitars and spacy keyboard loops. The band left the stage one-by-one without a word, just a wave goodbye, leaving drummer Brad Morgan by himself, pounding on a giant bass drum and the sound swirled around him.

AFTERNOON SET: The Home Front / That Man I Shot / Old Timer’s Disease / The Sands of Iwo Jima / Ray’s Automatic Weapon / Angels & Fuselage

EVENING SET: That Man I Shot / Three Dimes Down / The Fourth Night of Drinking / Get Downtown / (It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So / This Fucking Job / Birthday Day / Daddy Needs A Drink / A Ghost to Most / Everybody Needs Love / Delta Dawn (with Kelly Hogan) / The Sands of Iwo Jima /  Panties in Your Purse / Santa Fe / Women Without Whiskey / Lookout Mountain / Zip City / Sink Hole / Self-Destructive Zones / Hell No, I Ain’t Happy; ENCORE: Marry Me / Let There Be Rock / Shut Up and Get on the Plane / Angels & Fuselage (with Kelly Hogan)

Download: Drive-By Truckers, September 28, 2010 – Madison
Previously: Drive-By Truckers – 9:30 Club, Washington DC
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Buy: Drive-By Truckers – Big To-Do

On Tuesday, September 28, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison will host Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers for a special acoustic performance in its galleries. Hood has long been a supporter of American soldiers and veterans, having written such songs as “The Sands of Iwo Jima” and “The Home Front,” which was inspired by the 2005 passing of Madison native Sgt. Mark Maida. Sgt. Maida’s personal effects can be seen in “Faces in the Sand,” an exhibit honoring Wisconsin’s men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The concert will start promptly at 3:30 (do not be late – you will miss the show) and is FREE. Space is limited, so arrive early (no advance reservations).

Drive-By Truckers will be performing in the evening on September 28 at the Majestic Theater in Madison. The show starts at 8:30pm with support from Henry Clay People. Purchase your tickets here. The band will also be in Milwaukee at the Pabst Theater on Friday, October 1 for a very special Farm Aid Eve performance.

Buy: Patterson Hood – Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)