A few notes about this week's charters...

Bruce Anderson's 'The Inherent Beauty of Hopelessness' arrived in the mail while I was away. No record company listed, hardly any credits and impossible to find online. It's not listed on the MX-80 site or available at iTunes or Amazon. It is, however, as good as anything I've heard this decade. I thought of editing it down into sections for airplay, but in the end just couldn't bring myself to cut anything. It's a long piece (40' 28") so when it comes on, do yourself a favour; stop what you're doing and let it take you over. You'll thank me later.

Stephen Bruton's 'Fading Man' is another sublime work reminiscent of The Band at their very best. I've been a fan of Stephen's since his last album showed up, unsolicited, courtesy ace promo-dude and southern gent, Jeff Cook. Since then, all his solo albums and his Austin 'super' group, The Resentments have been playlisted regularly here.

Black Joe Lewis was an impulse buy one afternoon at the awful Borders in Riverhead. I'd never heard of him but it looked good and it was on Lost Highway. Turns out the album's fantastic, and this is the second of many tracks we're going to feature over the coming weeks.

I've no idea who The Third Degree are and don't really care. I saw this in the 7" new releases section at Sister Ray in Soho (London) and, since we were the first internet station - IN THE WORLD - to play Duffy's 'Mercy', I thought maybe we'd be the first internet station based in the US to play their version of the song. It's pretty good.

I remember Charlie Gillett playing TG Sheppard's 'Trying To Beat The Morning Home' back in the mid 70's on his Honky Tonk radio show and it just might have been the first country single I ever bought. When I heard a friend was working with TG now and that his new album contained duets with the likes of George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Delbert McClinton and others, well...it's a no-brainer, really.

Johnny Throttle is good ol' punk-rock done proper, like it was '75/'76. Drums, bass, guitar, voice. Featuring the irrepressible Afonso (late of The Parkinsons) on 'voice', Tom Phobic and I caught them in a crummy dive just off New Bond Street and we had a blast. I was worried I'm getting too old for this. Apparently I'm not.

Also, while in London, I wanted to meet Rupert Orton, one of the guys behind NoFoSo fave The Jim Jones Revue, so I stumbled into the sticky heat-trap that is the 100 Club during a Bob Log III show to find Rupert was promoting the show for Not The Same Old Blues Crap. Between mixing the sound and collecting the money, he told me that after the JJR establish a foothold in Italy and the Benelux territories (having already made solid impressions in France, Spain, Scandinavia and the UK), there will be a short US tour taking in Boston, NYC, Philly, DC and hopefully a few other places. ALL my friends who've seen the band rate 'em highly, so this is something to look forward to. Meanwhile one-man-band, Bob Log III is hysterical. He drank nearly a bottle's worth of tequila shots during his set, played one song with a girl sitting on each leg and played filthy, raw slide blues to a hugely appreciative audience.

Bob Log III
100 Club, London April 8th '09
photo: ht