Posted on Monday 26 October 2009
I’ve dropped the ball on sharing the greatness of Roman Candle with you earlier. Their 2009 release Oh Tall Tree in the Ear
Below, we’re happy to present 5 records Roman Candle enjoys via Skip Matheny:
John Hartford – Aereo-Plain
A couple years ago I found two mp3′s from this record — “Presbyterian guitar” and “Back in the Goodle Days”, and became obsessed with trying to get a copy of the whole (out of print) record. For several months I couldn’t find it anywhere legal or illegal, until Timshel and I had our kids at the Nashville public library and they had one CD copy in their system. This record has ever since owned an active portion of my brain. John Hartford was a such a clever, instinctual, deceptively-simple songwriter that I think it may be another 30-40 years before people chit chat about how good he was. Having scored a ton of cash from writing “Gentle on My Mind,” he was pretty much free to make whatever music he wanted to make. Unfortunately most people didn’t know what to do with this particular record, then or now (it’s still out of print). Every time I hear this recording of “Steam Powered Aeroplane,” I wish it was played at funerals and weddings.
Fat Boys – Self/Titled
This was the first cassette tape Logan and I ever bought, in a Roses’s in Wilkesboro, NC. I was 7 and Logan was 5, and my mom was kind enough to let us listen to this non-stop for a year in our Datsun hatchback (until we bought another tape). This record used to boggle our minds, with these epic 8 minute raps, introducing us to some of the biggies in life – hip-hop, beatboxing, being in jail with no bail and wishing you had a pizza. To this day it’s probably still in our top 10 records we’ve heard the most (if you consider number of listens straight through). I think it really informed/influenced how we consider rhythms and vocal delivery – I hope so at least.
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Of newer music, this record (apart from Keegan DeWitt + Megafaun), is what we’ve probably listened to the most this year. First heard it on BBC radio 6 months ago, and we were fortunate enough to share a bill with them in New York in Sept. Seeing them do the songs live, really made the whole album get under our brains and sprout like a bunch of mushrooms in the woods.
Oasis – Definitely Maybe
When we were younger, this record and its accompanying b-sides had a profound influence on our band. I had almost forgotten how much so until we watched the 10 year anniversary DVD when it came out. Being in high school in Wilkes county, NC, and hearing “Slide Away” “Cigarettes and Alcohol” “Listen Up,” etc., made us begin to think about *songwriting* as a thing that was much more interesting in the setting of a band (as opposed to somebody lighting an infinity candle and writing about their feelings on an acoustic guitar).
Joni Mitchell – Clouds
Timshel bought this record on vinyl when we were in college at UNC, and it was our first experience of Joni outside of people playing the Blue record in their dorm rooms (which is also a record that gets better every year, no matter how many times I’ve heard it). There’s a couple of solid hippie tunes, but for the most part these songs are out of this world. Lyrically, the level at which she is writing here is often as unmatched as her later records, and she was barely 26.
Hearing some of these songs reminded me of the first time I saw an Alfred Hitchcock movie marathon — Watching all of these movies made in the 50′s / 60′s which were so unquestionably more “modern” than any film I’d seen in my life up to that point. Both were confusing and educational. Alfred Hitchcock and Joni Mitchell probably made us re-think any connection we had presumed between quality of art and chronology.
Buy: Roman Candle – Oh Tall Tree in the Ear
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MP3: Roman Candle – “They Say”
