Friday, February 4, 2011

Jimmy Webb - Letters (1972)



For a record I am listening to today for the first time while I rip it for you, it strikes a pretty personal chord for me. When I was younger I lived in Texas, some of the best time I ever remember having with my family was in Galveston. I have fond memories of combing the beaches with my brother and father trying to find sharks teeth. I remember the first time I went to NASA with my whole family, and I thought it was super cool because a real life astronaut came out to do a presentation and asked a question to which only my father knew the answer, and in exchange for answering the question he got an authentic patch from the Apollo mission the astronaut was on, as well as a autographed picture of the astronaut. As far as I remember, my dad still has that hanging up in his home office 16 years later. I remember the drive back from Galveston for the first time, we passed through Austin, and my dad made use stop outside of Austin so he could get a picture with the Austin City Limits sign. I kind of miss Texas, but I can't imagine who I would be if I grew up there. I was an actor and football player in the first and second grades, both of them were things I gave up when I moved to Calgary.


Not only do I have extremely fond memories of Galveston, but a couple years back I heard an outtake from Sparklehorse's "Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain" album called "Galveston", and I loved it, to this day I listen to it fairly often, and up until today I had absolutely no idea it was a Jimmy Webb cover, and I wasn't surprised, because also this morning I was listening to a radio interview of Mark Linkous on my way to work where he talked about an album he produced for Nina Perrson, that he thought sounded a lot like Jimmy Webb, so he tried to produce it to still sound like that.

Anyways, before listening to this, I had only ever heard the "Words and Music" album from Jimmy Webb, and I really did love it, but hadn't been able to track down anything else from his solo career until my latest trip to the record store on Tuesday when I found a copy of "Letters". This album also has a alternate version of "Song Seller" which is also on the "Words and Music" album.

While I write this, I'm only three tracks into the album and it's really solid. The "Love Hurts" cover is kind of lame, but the other 2 tracks have been rad. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I have been.

Also, I won $1200 on a slot machine tonight, which was also rad. And I'm a little drunk right now.

Tracklist:
1. Galveston
2. Campo de Encino
3. Love Hurts
4. Simile
5. Hurt Me Well
6. Once In The Morning
7. Catharsis
8. Song Seller
9. When Can Brown Begin
10. Piano

Download: mediafire

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