The Jayhawks - Rainy Day Music Remaster

It's not often you see a remastered CD that is quieter than the original CD. But that's the case with the new reissue of The Jayhawks' 2003 album Rainy Day Music.

Waveform for "Tailspin" from Original CD (2003)

 Waveform for "Tailspin" from Remastered CD (2014)

Kudos to the Jayhawks and remastering engineer Vic Anesini for getting it right this time. The music really does sound much more natural now. The quieter remastering suits the gentle grace of the music better than the louder original mastering.

The album was originally recorded and mixed to analog tape by Ethan Johns and (from what I understand) the upcoming 2 LP reissue will may or may not be cut from analog tape. In the meantime, the new CD sounds really nice, and has 6 bonus cuts.

The vastly underrated Smile and Sound Of Lies have also been reissued on CD with bonus cuts, and will also be subject to 2 LP reissues. Just don't expect the same substantial sonic upgrade as with Rainy Day Music.

Forever In Blue Jeans

Michael Tomasky at The Guardian asks his readers to "Name us a song or two that all "right-thinking people" would dismiss as sentimental but that you love. And be bold and unapologetic!"

I'll start off with Neil Diamond's "Forever In Blue Jeans" a top 20 hit from 1979, seen here performed in concert for a CBS special in 2009. I could list you hundreds of reasons why all "right thinking people" should not only dismiss this bit of sentimental drivel, but should actively hate it. Instead, I'll limit myself to eight very compelling reasons:

1) This is not a track by the (relatively) cool, early, "Jewish Elvis" Neil Diamond. Nor is it by the Rick Rubin rehabilitated Neil Diamond either. No, this is the by the full-on, rhinestone-jumpsuit-wearing, 70s schlockmeister, Neil Diamond.

2) The fact that the track appears on the You Don't Bring Me Flowers LP should be enough for anyone with even a modicum of "taste" in music to write the song off without even hearing it.

3) The song was used to advertise actual blue jeans. By the Gap.

4) It's been performed on American Idol (by a white guy with dreadlocks no less).

5) It was produced by Bob Gaudio (of The Four Seasons, who is largely to blame for foisting the reactionary Jersey Boys on an unsuspecting world).

6) It features one of those awful disco-synth string arrangements that were already passe by 1979.

7) Oh my God. Look at those middle-aged white people in Diamond's audience try to dance. They probably paid over $500 a head and got all dressed up to sing along to a song about...

8) Most damning of all, this song belongs to the hideous musical sub-genre that features fabulously wealthy people singing about how great it is to be poor. Like John Lennon asking us to "imagine no possessions," Diamond's own life is so far from the simple, happy existence he celebrates in the song, it's laughable.

"Money talks,
But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk,
And long as I can have you here with me,
I'd much rather be,
Forever in blue jeans"

Look Neil, if money is so bad (or at the very least inessential to happiness) I'd be happy to take some of your many millions off your hands for you. Seriously.

I could probably make a relatively compelling argument that songs like this are foisted on us by the entertainment industry to keep the resentment of society's "have-nots" from boiling over into something like a revolution (or at the very least a less regressive tax code). After all, if Hollywood movies, hit pop songs and tabloids teach us nothing else, it's that the rich are never as happy as us simple folk. So maybe I shouldn't even bother to notice that the top 5% in the United States own something like 60% of the country's wealth, while the other 95% of us fight it out over what's left over. After all, all that money hasn't made those fancy rich folks happy, so why should I care? I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans. Yeah, right.

And yet, I love this song.

"Honey's sweet,
But it ain't nothing next to baby's treat,"

First of all, it's hard not to love a song that slips lyrics so casually obscene and vulgar into a tune that gets airplay on easy listening stations and CBS television specials. There's just something about that I respect.

I'm not stupid. I know Neil Diamond doesn't remotely live the lyrics to this song. He's an artist. A performer. An entertainer. A showbiz personality. But the fact is, I really can relate to the song's sentiment. I've made certain decisions in my life that have likely minimized the amount of money I earn, but maximized the amount of time I get to spend with my wife and kids. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was listening to this song on my iPod earlier today waiting for my wife and kids, thinking about the role of sentimentality in music. Just as the song ended I spotted my kids running towards me, just genuinely and totally happy to see me. I feel like I've done okay for myself. I really would much rather be forever in blue jeans.

Other sentimental songs I love:

"Giddy Up Go" and "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine
I don't think music gets much more sentimental than Red Sovine's signature trucking songs. Both songs feature spoken-word vocals and it sounds like 'ole Red might choke up at any moment. "Giddy Up Go" tells the story of a trucker who discovers that his long-lost son is also a trucker now. "Teddy Bear" is about how a young paraplegic boy whose truck drivin' father has perished in an accident finally gets his wish to ride in a truck thanks to CB radio and some big hearted truckers. You would be hard pressed to find more blatantly emotionally manipulative music than these two songs, and yet I find them strangely sublime.

"Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro
This makes "worst song ever" lists about as often as any other song I can think of. It's a totally maudlin song about a guy who loses his girl to suicide. It even features a Christmas puppy. And yet it is so totally over-the-top and excessive in its sentimentality that I can't help but love it.

"Little Green Apples" by Roger Miller
Written by Bobby Russell (the same guy who wrote "Honey"). This song actually chokes me up. It's about a guy whose wife is tolerant of his flaws, and if that ain't lovin' him, "God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime." It would be easy to dismiss the song as sexist, except that it is so clear that the protagonist really appreciates everything his wife does for him. It's about feeling like you don't really deserve the love your significant other gives, but being grateful for receiving it anyway. It's another sentiment I can relate to. Also, Roger Miller was a genius.

"The Most Beautiful Girl" by Charlie Rich
Everybody's supposed to hate the sappy "Countrypolitan" sound of the 70s, but I've always loved this song. And as you can see I have a soft spot for sappy country music.

"Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney and Wings
I understand why a lot of people hate McCartney, I really do. Still, I find this answer to his critics pretty convincing. That throbbing Macca bassline helps.

"A Tiny Broken Heart" by The Louvin Brothers
It's about a little boy who gets his heart broken because his his playmate's parents are too poor to stay in town. Frankly, The Louvin Brothers could have harmonized to the phone book and I would find it incredibly moving.

"Now Is Better Than Before" by Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Jonathan Richman has created his own unique musical and artistic aesthetic by refusing to be afraid of being corny and sentimental, and by rejecting even the slightest hint of "coolness" or cynicism. He is one of the bravest artists I can think of. I find this to be one of his most moving songs.

More:

"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" by Willie Nelson

"Just An Old Fashioned Love Song" by Three Dog Night

"What A Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke

"A Good Year For The Roses" by George Jones

"Then Came You" by The Spinners with Dionne Warwick

"A Place In The Sun" by Stevie Wonder

"You Are Everything" by The Stylistics

"Beeswing" by Richard Thompson

"All The Right Reasons" by The Jayhawks

I could go on...these are just some of the first ones to pop into my head. What sappy, sentimental songs do you love?

The Jayhawks (aka The Bunkhouse Album) Finally Reissued

Lost Highway recently reissued the Jayhawks long-lost, self-titled debut on CD, LP and as a digital download. This marks the first time the album has been available in any form since its initial release on Bunkhouse Records in 1986 as a 2,000 copy limited-edition LP.

I hadn't heard anything about the reissue, but spotted the LP for a mere $10.99 in the new arrivals bin at my local record shop and picked it up. Honestly, I wasn't overly excited by the find and the record sat in my "to be vacuumed" pile for a week or so after purchase (yes, I even vacuum clean my new LPs). Why wasn't I excited to finally hear this lost-classic that is highly regarded among Jayhawks fans? I guess mostly because I wasn't aware that it was a lost-classic that is highly regarded among Jayhawks fans.

I first became aware of the Jayhawks in 1989 when I was serving as music director of my college radio station and Twin/Tone sent a preview copy of The Blue Earth. It's fair to say I liked the album. I immediately put it into heavy rotation and regularly played a few of the tracks on my own radio program ("Two Angels," "Five Cups Of Coffee," and "The Baltimore Sun" definitely caught my ear at the time). I liked the album enough to buy a copy for myself, but not enough to buy it again when Restless reissued it with bonus tracks several years later. And I didn't like it near as much as the albums the band released later on Rick Rubin's American imprint both with and without Mark Olson.

Despite some excellent songwriting, I found the consistently slow tempos dragged the album down, and some of the songwriting struck me as indistinct and too beholden to the band's obvious Gram Parsons influence. For me, The Blue Earth remains an embryonic version of the kind of music The Jayhawks would do with far more confidence and individuality in later years, and I assumed The Bunkhouse Album--recorded a full three years before the Twin/Tone release--would sound like an even more embryonic version of that. Also, let's face it, when a limited-edition first album by a band that eventually gains a sizable following like the Jayhawks stays out-of-print for nearly a quarter century, it's usually because the band has good reason to leave it collecting cobwebs in the attic. For all these reasons I had relatively low expectations for The Jayhawks. I assumed the album would be a curiosity worth a listen or two and little more.

All of which is to say that I was not prepared for the energy that comes pulsating out of the grooves of The Jayhawks' feisty debut record. Mark Olson's songwriting is already surprisingly sharp; highly tuneful county-tinged rockers like "Falling Star," "Let The Last Night Be The Longest," "People In This Place On Every Side," and "Let The Critics Wonder" quickly found their way into my head and stayed there. There are a few places where Olson succumbs to easy country cliches ("The Liquor Store Came First") and some tracks sound like filler ("Cherry Pie"), but these tracks never slow things down enough to blunt the album's overall impact. Olson and Louris had already found a comfortable way to harmonize, although at this point Olson is clearly the group's leader (a fact reinforced by the cover photo that depicts Olson standing in front of the rest of the band lounging on a porch behind him) with Louris confined to the role of guitar picker and back-up singer. The production is predictably rough, but it never gets in the way of the music either.

What struck me the most however, is the fact that Gary Louris' guitar playing positively rips, and drummer Norm Rogers (later of The Cows) keeps things moving along at the kind of peppy pace that is altogether absent from the more contemplative The Blue Earth. To my ears, The Jayhawks has more in common with an album like The Long Ryders' raucous Native Sons than it does with the overly-mannered Blue Earth, and I regard that as a very good thing. If I had been one of the lucky 2,000 to hear this album when it was released in 1986, I probably would have become a big fan of the Jayhawks sooner than ended up being the case.

I admit that this is still a somewhat embryonic effort, and The Jayhawks would find a better balance between fast and slow tempos on Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass. Also, both Olson and particularly Louris' songwriting would mature in the passage of time, and Rick Rubin at American would spend a lot more money recording their albums than their then manager Charlie Pine could muster at Bunkhouse Records (a label he founded specifically to release this album). Nevertheless, The Jayhawks (aka The Bunkhouse Album) is a very promising debut album from a great band that can also proudly stand on its own merits twenty-four years after its initial release.

Update: No Depression is running a contest to win a signed copy of the LP and CD. You must be a registered No Depression user and leave a comment listing your five favorite Jayhawks songs in order to enter.