New Morrissey Album Out Next Week

Yep, just a few years after his big comeback record, You Are the Quarry, Morrissey returns with another interestingly-titled album next week--Ringleader of the Tormentors.

I LOVE the cover photo and design, by the way. The new album is already generating a huge buzz. Here's what Music Today has to say about it.

Morrissey’s new opus, RINGLEADER OF THE TORMENTORS, is a savagely alive record and not just the next musical step from 2003’s YOU ARE THE QUARRY. In many ways it is a new sonic beginning.

From the opening track “I Will See You In Far Off Places” which utilizes sounds that will surely make the most ardent Morrissey fan stop in their tracks through the pomp and circumstance of first single“You Have Killed Me” and culminating with the final refrain of the epic “At Last I Am Born,” RINGLEADER OF THE TORMENTORS not only takes the best aspects of the most classic Morrissey recordings but infuses them with the influence that only a production from legendary producer Tony Visconti can create.

Add to the mix the beautiful string arrangements from Ennio Morricone and RINGLEADER OF THE TORMENTORS is simply a recording that is unique for even Morrissey and unparalleled by anyone else.

Track Listing:
I Will See You In Far Off Places
Dear God, Please Help Me
You Have Killed Me
The Youngest Was the Most Loved
In the Future When All’s Well
The Father Who Must Be Killed
Life is a Pigsty
I’ll Never Be Anybody’s Hero Now
On The Streets I Ran
To Me You Are a Work of Art
I Just Want to See the Boy Happy
At Last I Am Born

** I have to admit, I've heard the lead-off single, "You Have Killed Me," and it's...OK. It didn't grab me nearly as quickly as did "Irish Blood, English Heart" from Quarry. But if this new record's as good as they're saying it is, perhaps the first single is the least compelling of the album's tracks. I'll let you know next week.

Oh, and if you want to pre-order Ringleader of the Tormentors at a low price, click on the Music Today link above. You can also opt for a special T-shirt.

Singers Can Only Get Older

Happy Birthday, Howard Jones!

I think it's safe for me to say that HoJo was one of my favorite solo artists of the 1980s. And today he turns 55 years old.

I was a huge fan of his first album Human's Lib, and its follow-up, Dream Into Action. I saw him in concert with Culture Club and the Human League in 1998 (a big 80s reunion tour) and he was really good. His performance on the Live Aid DVD reveals he had a mullet that put all other mullets to shame. He looks much more calm these days.

My favorite Howard Jones songs:
1. New Song
2. What is Love?
3. Things Can Only Get Better
4. Everlasting Love
5. No One is to Blame

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On This Day: Andy Warhol Dies

On this day in 1987, Andy Warhol, pop artist and producer, died after a gall bladder operation. The founder of the Pop Art movement, Warhol produced and managed The Velvet Underground, designed the 1967 Velvet Underground And Nico 'peeled banana' album cover and The Rolling Stones controversial (but super fawkin' cool) Sticky Fingers album cover.

Bit of trivia for ya RE: the Sticky Fingers cover. Whose crotch was it? Why, Joe Dallesandro's, of course. Dallessandro starred in such sexy Warhol films as Flesh and Trash--and he's the shirtless guy on the cover of the Smiths' first album.

R.I.P., Andy.

A New Look at New Order

When New Order's latest album, Waiting for the Siren's Call, came out last spring, I thought it was OK. I listened to it; it was typical New Order and pleasant enough. Then I picked up New Order Item, the two-DVD collection that's a retrospective of their work, released late in 2005 (thanks for the birthday gift certificate, Bill!).

I realized while watching it that New Order is, and has been, damned good. So I listened to Siren's Call again---and again. It's a terrific, solid album that deserves a serious listen. I picked up a copy of the double-album on vinyl (after having downloaded it initially), and I think it sounds great any way you listen to it. Standout tracks: "Dracula's Castle," "Hey Now What You Doing" (the first song that really grabbed me on the album), and "Krafty." I like it loads more than 2002's Get Ready.

My all-time favorite New Order songs:

1. Bizarre Love Triangle
2. Fine Time
3. Subculture
4. Perfect Kiss
5. Temptation
6. Shell Shock

It was a Black Cadillac that drove you away....

“My father had demons... But the mark of his greatness as a human being and father is that he never inflicted his demons on others. He never took anything out on anyone. His problems were his own and you never felt that he tried to make them yours.”
Rosanne Cash


When my dad died in early 1998, I had at that point been writing and performing my own music for three years. Although he never heard me play, except the time I brought my guitar to his bedside at the nursing home, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to write a song to his memory. I couldn't. It's been eight years since he's gone, and I still can't.

That's why Rosanne Cash's stunning new album Black Cadillac is so moving to me. Cash was able to take not only the death of her father, but also the deaths of her mother and her stepmother, and turn her emotions into a collection of heartfelt, mature songs that never once become maudlin, self-pitying or anything but genuine expressions of love.

Take the title track, for example. It's a rolling, rocking, hard-edged song that starts out with an eerie recording of Rosanne as a baby (you hear Johnny saying, "Rosanne....say 'come on'") and ends with a trumpet sample similar to "Ring of Fire." It's about as perfect as a song gets, really. My favorite line: "It was a black sky of rain/none of it fell...one of us gets to go to heaven, one gets to stay here in hell." The song ends and, instead of feeling sorry for her, you feel somehow uplifted.

Ditto for the track "Radio Operator," that talks about Cash's father's experience listening for Russian spy transmissions during the Cold War. It's a rocking little tune with a very catchy chorus. Ditto for "Burn Down this Town," in which Cash talks about her rebellious teenage years to a bluesy backing track. On "World Without Sound," Cash delivers a scathing criticism of organized religion, prompted by her and her mother's disillusionment in the Catholic Church. Again, a rockabilly tune that swings along with a killer horn section.

This isn't feel-sorry-for-yourself music by any means. Even the two most touching ballads, "I Was Watching You," a song that left me weeping upon first listen; and "Good Intent," which takes Cash's personal history all the way back to the ship that brought her ancestors to America, don't depress the listener. Instead, like every track on this album, you listen. You listen to what she says; you listen to yourself as you react. And, if you're like me, you think about your own family relationships and wonder if you're really listening to your parents, your siblings, your children.

Black Cadillac is a mature work, for a mature listener. It's written by a woman, not a young girl. It's written by a person who has experienced great loss in a short period of time and has the poetry, the wit, the smarts and the grace to share it with us in a way that makes us think.

Now maybe I'll try again to write a song for Dad.

Best Rosanne Cash Albums:

1. Black Cadillac (2006)
2. Rules of Travel (2002)
3. 10 Song Demo (1997)

Pretty in Pink: A Watershed Album

OK, let's rewind 20 years to when John Hughes movies were about the coolest thing going. Hot off the success of The Breakfast Club, Hughes launched the latest Molly Ringwald vehicle Pretty in Pink in the spring of 1986. I saw the film; it was pleasant enough (and I loved me some Miss Molly) but I don't remember much of it, honestly--although Jon Cryer and Annie Potts stole the show, kind of like the Jack and Karen of Pretty in Pink.

What did stick with me was the music. OMD's number-one hit "If You Leave" was only one of some really really good songs on the soundtrack. Just by listening to this album, I discovered the following artists who would go on to...well, change the way I felt about music. And how many albums have done that?

Here's a list of the artists I discovered just from listening to Pretty in Pink:

The Smiths
New Order
Suzanne Vega
Echo and the Bunnymen

Now I had heard the Psychedelic Furs (I'd only heard "The Ghost in You" at that point), but their title track really hooked me.

So if you're looking for a soundtrack to everything that was cool about 1986, I suggest you pick up this album (and the Pet Shop Boys' Please). That should school you in all you need to know about what was hip 20 years ago.