| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Jay |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 3:35:18 PM
Mmm...http://www.downtown-records.net/d/albums.htm Oh...listen to Mountainside, just listen to it all and wait for February. |
| 26 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Robin |
Posted - 04/14/2006 : 7:04:23 PM
Thanks for posting this Fluffy.I have read bits of it somewhere it sounds familiar,but it's nice to see it here. I have been listening to reiter In for most of the day. I play my favorite songs then have to listen to it as a whole. It's very personal and beautiful.I still get emotional hearing it, but it really is such a gift. I miss him so much...and am glad that people are positive about this latest and last recording, Peace, Robin |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 04/14/2006 : 4:12:30 PM
Paste Article 11-23-05
Paste Magazine
If he was anything in a 14-year career that saw him release 12 albums, collect piles of critical acclaim and build a cult following that included the likes of Iggy Pop and Bruce Springsteen, singer/songwriter Chris Whitley was restless. “He has always been interested in doing something that is interesting to him, and different,” says the singer’s devoted friend and one-man label Brandon Kessler, chief of Messenger Records. “Each record is different, if not the polar opposite of the previous. He’s an artist. He really had no choice in life but to create music and art. That was the only thing he was capable of doing.”
Whitley died Sunday, succumbing to lung cancer at a friend’s home in Houston. He was 45. His diagnosis just weeks earlier put the brakes on an uncompromising career, a wholly individual trip that found the Texas-bred Whitley evolve from slide bluesman to an avant, forever poetic soulman of sorts who could segue into Prince’s “Erotic City” mid-song just as easily as he could in genuinely spellbinding fashion summon the ghosts of the Mississippi Delta, with a slide over his finger, and his boot stomping the stage. To be sure, it could be quite jaw slackening.
“I remember when we were cutting ‘Narcotic Prayer,’ and Chris was doing the solo that ended the song,” recalls Danny Kadar, engineer of three Whitley albums, and producer of the 2002 anthology Long Way Around. “I was sitting there with the chief engineer, and when he finished the solo, nobody wanted to press the talkback button, because no one wanted to break the silence, the mood and the vibe. Nobody wanted to talk to him. It was just kind of, like, ‘What do you say?’ And of course Chris thought we thought it sucked. He walked into the control room and said, ‘Ah, that was just some dumbass shit I was playing.’” “Chris was able to tap into emotions that go deep, that people even if they could do it, they rarely would,” Kadar says. “And he did it regularly whether it was a rage thing or a love thing. Everything was as completely deep as it could be.”
It’s a comment echoed by noted producer Daniel Lanois Tuesday: “The deep soul he was gifted with is the soul that challenged his life journey. I will forever remember his beauty.”
Born in Houston on Aug. 31, 1960, Whitley as a child moved around, picking up guitar while moving from Houston to Dallas and then to Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont, Connecticut and eventually to New York’s Greenwich Village. It was in New York that he met Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Ron Sexsmith), who in turn helped him score a deal with Columbia for Living With the Law, a beautifully cinematic collection of songs both rural and urban. With gritty stories of drug runners and hookers, motorcycles and bordertowns, Living With the Law was widely praised (and even scored him an opening slot on a Tom Petty tour), but its follow-ups didn’t translate commercially, and after two additional major-label discs under the Sony banner failed to even appease sales goals, he began a long indie tenure interrupted briefly by the programming and scratch-laden Rocket House, his 2001 one-off for ATO Records, the RCA-affiliated label co-founded by Dave Matthews.
On the eve of the album’s release, Matthews told Billboard, “Chris is an example of one of those things that appalls me about the record industry—and, unfortunately, it is an industry. That is, how could a talent like his go relatively unnoticed? So few singers have their own personality, and Chris is his own man to the bone. Honestly, I feel more passion for his music than I do for my own. My music I’m critical of. But I have a fervent, religious devotion to the magic that Chris makes.”
Whitley spent the bulk of his post-Sony years releasing albums through Kessler’s New York-based indie, Messenger Records, and acclimating to his smaller, while nevertheless acclaimed role in the music business. “What I came to terms with by making some small indie records and meeting other people who work in that way is that, hey, if a record doesn’t do blockbuster numbers, then that’s OK,” Whitley told Billboard in 2001, while discussing Rocket House. “Even if ATO doesn’t want me anymore, I could move to Santa Fe, make little records, advertise them on a website. I could even get a job and give the records away. I feel more comfortable with my place in the culture now and the fact that I don’t have to fear the cool police or this cult of youth.”
And over the past two years that indie tenure only seemed to be heating up, as Whitley enjoyed an especially prolific period in which he released four discs in three years. In July, Messenger issued Soft Dangerous Shores, of which veteran New York scribe Bradley Bambarger noted: “[Whitley] continues his quest to express the ‘universal blues,’ the song of love and death that Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix knew but so may have, in his way, André Breton.”
Over the years, Whitley grew a cult following that includes the likes of Springsteen, John Mayer, Iggy Pop, Beth Orton and Keith Richards, as he experimented with digital sounds and alternative rock that teetered on the psychedelic. Yet it was always rooted in the blues. “The blues sound different in different places,” he told Bambarger last year. “But on a lonely, rainy night—whether you’re in New Orleans or New York, Dresden, Germany, or Ghent, Belgium—they feel the same.”
Lyrically, his songs were highly literate. Emotionally they were almost always sexy. “I have no time for records that aren’t erotically charged,” he said . “And I hear the erotic in a lot of things other people might not. To me, Iggy, Bowie, Monk, Satie, Little Walter, Bob Marley, John Lennon, the Flaming Lips are all erotic.”
“Chris was talented beyond words, and had the ability to make one guitar, one mic, and one boot sound fuller than a whole band,” recalls Ken Helie, who served as Whitley tour manager from 1997 to 2002. “[Revered bluesman] Robert Jr. Lockwood once told me that Chris played 'like three men,' and that is just about a perfect way to describe it… I feel so strongly in my heart that just as artists like Robert Johnson or Nick Drake found new fame years after their passing, there will come a day in the future where the whole world will know the music of Chris Whitley. And I'll be proud to tell anyone who asks how truly amazing he was, and that he was my friend.”
Having returned to the states in July 2004 after years spent living in Germany, Whitley spent his final days at a friend’s home in his Houston. He died Sunday in the arms of his girlfriend, Susann Buerger. “He passed in absolute and total peace,” Chris’ guitarist brother Daniel posted on chriswhitley.com Tuesday. “I hope you all will mourn my brother’s death, but more important, celebrate his life, as Chris was all about life and living. I started the celebration by cranking up Dirt Floor in his honor... crying still.”
-Wes Orshoski
|
| Fluffy |
Posted - 04/14/2006 : 4:10:44 PM
SUPERSONIC EPK
Instrumentation
The Bastard Club
Chris Whitley: lead vox, guitars
Heiko Schramm: bass gtr, backing vox
Brian Geltner: drums, vibes, acoustic gtr, backing vox
Tim Beattie: harmonica, lap steel, backing vox
Kenny Siegal: baritone, electric and acoustic gtr, backing vox
Sean Balin: violin
Gwen Snyder: vox and tambourine
Susann Bürger: spoken word
Biography
Chris Whitley was a Texas-based singer-songwriter who initially began his career as a bluesy roots-rocker, but as his career progressed, he moved deeper into rock & roll and alternative rock. Though Whitley's albums usually received postiive reviews, they rarely sold, and his tendency to rework his sound prevented him from developing a sizable cult following among singer-songwriter fans.
As a child, Whitley moved frequently through the Southeast, eventually moving with his mother to Mexico when his parents divorced when he was 11; they later settled in a log cabin in Vermont. At the age of 15, he began playing guitar, inspired by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix, eventually learning how to play slide guitar. He quit high school a year before graduation, moving to New York City, where he busked on the streets. One of his performances was witnessed by a listener who ran a travel agency, and decided that Whitley would be a success in Belgium and offered to send him to Europe. With nothing to lose, Whitley accepted the offer.
Once in Belgium, Whitley recorded a series of albums that flip-flopped between blues, rock and funk. The records made him a minor success in Belgium, but he decided to return to New York anyway in 1990. He happened to meet producer Daniel Lanois later that year. Impressed by Whitley's songs, Lanois helped set up a deal with Columbia Records for the songwriter, and produced his first album. Released in the spring of 1991, Whitley's U.S. debut Living with the Law was an atmospheric set of blues and folk-rock that received glowing reviews and earned him a slot opening for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.
Though Living with the Law seemed to position Chris Whitley for a breakthrough into a cult audience, he waited four years to deliver his second record, Din of Ecstasy. An attempt to connect with the hard-edged mainstream alternative-rock audience that developed in the years following the release of Living with the Law, the grunge-flavored Din of Ecstasy -- which was released on Columbia's recently developed "alternative" subsidiary, WORK -- received mixed reviews and alienated his roots-rock audience without winning him new fans. Two years later, Whitley released Terra Incognita, which combined elements of his first two records. Dirt Floor followed on the Messenger in 1998, restoring Whitley to a level of critical acclaim that rivaled his early work. Live at Martyrs' followed in the spring of 2000, and just a few months later, the spare studio effort Perfect Day appeared on the Valley imprint. Rocket House (2001) expanded on more soulful grooves, and boasted eclectic collaborations with Bruce Hornsby, Blondie Chaplin, and Dave Matthews. It was also his first for Matthews' own imprint, ATO Records. A year later, Long Way Around: An Anthology 1991-2001 compiled his years at Columbia. The stark, naked, and compelling Hotel Vast Horizon appeared in 2003 and was followed by two, mail-order only albums, Weed and War Crime Blues. The two casual albums were interim offerings between Hotel Vast Horizon and his next studio outing, 2005's Soft Dangerous Shores. Whitley toured for much of 2005, but by mid-October, he was forced to cancel his remaining dates due to complications from lung cancer. He died in his home on November 20, 2005.
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Courtesy All Music Guide (www.allmusic.com)
Website
http://www.chriswhitley.com
Discography
Reiter In - 2006
Soft Dangerous Shores - 2005
War Crime Blues - 2004
Weed - 2004
Hotel Vast Horizon - 2003
Rocket House - 2001
Perfect Day - 2000
Live at Martyr's - 2000
Dirt Floor - 1998
Terra Incognita - 1997
Din of Ecstasy - 1995
Living with the law -1991
http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.asp?epk_id=64999 |
| KevinLesko |
Posted - 04/14/2006 : 4:08:20 PM
Dan Whitley just posted this VERY EXCITING news over on the CW board:
quote:
Yes, an extremely tasteful full length feature documentary DVD is being put together by well known photographer/artist and fan Jon Mayor who actually started a documentary on Chris months before my brother passed away so his hart was in the right place from the beginning. Chris's passing only fueled John's passion to make this the absolute best it can possibly be. It will be undoubtedly the best of its kind to date, its a great idea to tell the story of my brother and it will benefit my niece Trixie. There is tons of amazing footage and sweat going into this, I have a feeling it will be the kind of documentary that wins awards.
|
| rubylith |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 10:39:38 PM
oh man, that is pretty deep. Thanks for posting that, I had no clue, what do you think he would have wanted?
I wish there could be more... |
| Jay |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 3:47:33 PM
Thanks for sending me those earlier, Kevin. It really is sad. |
| KevinLesko |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 3:25:23 PM
Thanks for posting that CNN clip, that's awesome. I was lucky enough to have pre-ordered the European import version before they were told that they couldn't ship to the U.S. for legal reasons, and here is a part of the liner notes featured on the inside... very sad.
Chris Whitley 1960-2005
When making this album, Chris had the idea of a series of “Bastard Club” albums. An idea of getting together with other musicians for just a few days and catching the spirit of the moment, the pure energy of the music, spontaneous and natural. And that is exactly what’s happening on this wonderful album.
Sadly, Chris passed away before Reiter In was released.
What was meant to be the first of several albums based on a common artistic concept turned out to be his musical goodbye letter to his friends and many fans all over this world. But his light will shine on, and whenever you are listening to this record, there is a good chance Chris will be there too.
There is also a 2 page poem of sorts on the inside by Heiko, but a bit lengthy for me to transcribe right now.
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| rubylith |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 3:09:41 PM
Hopeful ROlling Waves probably will want to...that guy is fukcing DVD nuts.....hahah anyway...I totally forgot to make the VHS an mpeg.....I can do that unless you can with your better quality dvd (and time of course)....hehe
awesome dude, I cryed when I watched Scrapyard the nighthe died. |
| Jay |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 3:06:56 PM
Just thought I'd let everyone know. I've got Scrapyard on DVD, plus a GREAT solo show on DVD...the quality isn't pro, but for a guy like me who's never seen him in person, it's a godsend. It's from '99, and he's on fire all night long. It's got my favorites, including Home is Where you Get Across, Days of Obligation, and New Machine.
If anyone's up for a trade or B+P, I'd be glad to hook you up.
Kingfi1822@gmail.com |
| Robin |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 2:14:54 PM
That's really sweet thanks for sharing that. Peace, Robin |
| rubylith |
Posted - 04/13/2006 : 07:30:14 AM
http://www.redparlor.com/cnn_high.htm
CHeck it out, real brief, but still kinda cool....the guy goes "he had a really great caree....body of work behind him"...im like ugh...
In one way I wish everyone could hear his music, but in another way I think it is more special to the few that did know his music.
In time though I'm sure he will go down as one of the "greatest".
I had a dream last night that he was playing at this club, which used to be my friends house, nonetheless, he was playing this strange guitar, tuned it up a few times, and played. I couldn't comprehend it was a dream so I was wondering how is he alive, was everything untrue? Was he ALIVE? Sadly, of course it was a dream, but it felt really good, as if I actually saw him again.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you.
"So hard to get warm now, so easy to get burned." |
| Robin |
Posted - 04/08/2006 : 1:57:42 PM
showing up at shows an being respectful, listening and sharing the music (Art)that moves you and affects you life, is probably the best compliment you can give any artist. I know Chris would be appreciative of the kind words spoken here. I'm happy to hear that this last release is being enjoyed so much.It kicks ass! that's my review... Peace, Robin |
| rubylith |
Posted - 04/07/2006 : 12:00:32 AM
I just got the album today after a long and stressful nightmare...this is what I think.
The magic that radiates from Whitley's music captures my spirit and sends me soaring. All I have to say, once again, for the 12th time, thank you Mr. Whitley. Your music breaks all boundaries, and demolishes all walls. You are an innovator, and a distant friend.. The best and worst times of my short existence revolves around your intense energy, and because of that I am who I am today. You are a bluesman and a hero, a lyricist who defies all laws against the practical rhetoric spewed across the controlled airwaves. You Mr. Chris Whitley, have changed my life forever, if only I could reward you like you have I.
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| Hopeful Rolling Waves |
Posted - 04/05/2006 : 5:33:42 PM
This month's has a GREAT interview with RFK Jr. This guy is the man. Check it out. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 04/04/2006 : 3:10:12 PM
shit I totally forgot Im gonna call my brother right now to se if I can borrow that and convert it perhaps tonight or tomorrow. I'll let you know! |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 04/04/2006 : 03:04:59 AM
Review of Reiter In from Starpulse:
One has to wonder if Reiter In is, in fact, the late Chris Whitley's last will and testament in terms of recordings. Done in the first three days of June, 2005 -- he was already ill -- this set was recorded in New York with a host of friends he called "the Bastard Club" on analogue tape. The band is large, the sound is immediate. The feel is loose, raw, dark, rocked-up, and in-your-face. Without trying to sound morbid, the feeling of death and mortality is everywhere. The word "reiter" means "horseman." There were no overdubs. The track selection bears out the mood of the players. The tape bleeds through, and studio dialogue seeps through. The tape winds to a fast stop where the cuts get made and then slip into gear again to start them. Opening with the Stooges classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with a distorted, plodding, raucous, so-loose-it-almost-falls-apart in the beginning as Whitley's electric guitar playing is over the damn edge. The vocals aren't spectacular -- they don't have to be -- but the vibe is. The track is pure sexual darkness in overdrive. That kind of libertine darkness, held close in so many of his own songs, is let out of the bag here and it makes no apologies and takes no prisoners. Restraint is cast to the dustbin, but the tune just sort of ends, falls apart as if the band is completely spent after playing it. It's followed by a too-loose reading of Willie Dixon's "Bring It On Home." Whitley was first and foremost a blues player; though it's true he invented his own kind of rusted American desert blues. Here, he tries to play it straight, and his thin, raspy voice is no match for the drunken slippage of the guitars. "Inn," features Whitley's trademark bottleneck playing on electric, accompanied by harmonica, Sean Balin's violin, Kenny Siegal's acoustic guitar slips in and out, and Whitley moans and groans ever-so-ghostly and speaks through the mix. He says at one point "you just watch me walk away..." as the guitars just float, stab, wind and bend; drums are absent on this one. Delays and distortion boxes can't hide Whitley's spare playing. The cover of the Flaming Lips' "Mountain Side" is just F*in' awesome. It many ways it tops the original with Whitley's screaming electric slide playing tearing up the tune from the inside, it sounds like the voice of the mountain calling out of itself. This track just roars, and Whitley's voice holds authority over the din. "Cut the Cards" is a country tune that feels a lot like Ronnie Lane is playing with Whitley; its lyrics a haunted poem by Pierre Reverdy, its melody written by harmonicat and lap steel player Tim Beattie. But there's more. The other covers include a messed-up thudding, nightmarish rock version of the Passions' "I'm in Love with a German Film Star," with spooky vocals by Whitley and Gwen Snyder. Also here is a freakish, beautifully paranoid, electric guitar blaze-out version of Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric" that turns the tune into something else entirely. Whitley's take on the lyric is so startling it's as if the words had never been heard before; like he uncovers a hidden meaning in them as he stares into the void. But there is no morbidity in them at all. It's life looking through the portal at its other side. But Whitley's own tunes offer the true testament to what's happening. The title track features Sussan Bürger's translated spoken word reading of a German poem by an unknown author. The words speak to death with courage and resignation, acceptance, sorrow, and hope. The guitars simply walk behind her, carrying the weight of humanity into something beyond oblivion: "The rider is the ghost that leads the body/Its longings embody the journey of the soul/through the world/with all its temptations, obstacles, tests, rehearsals and proof of character/and its development toward perfection..." "I Go Evil" is hard, Hendrix-styled funky blues wailing without restraint. It's rage, libido, and fear all channeled into the almighty riff. The shuffling blues of "All the Beauty Taken from You in This Life Remains Forever" is driven choogling by harmonica, National Steel bottleneck, snare and cymbal, fiddle, and who knows what else, offering a bed for Whitley's snarling moan on a journey: stuttering, faltering, falling, and staggering through life to its conclusion. Heiko Schramm's instrumental "Come Home" is where the trip ends. Once more, Whitley's soaring slide rises above the messy rhythm section to find its place in the heavens. It touches earth a time or two, riffing, hard, slinky, tough, erotic, and gritty. But it never stops climbing, singing itself into the sun beyond night like an Icarus who has wings of titanium instead of wax. And then -- it just stops. Over. No tape bleed-through. Nothing. Silence. Too brief; too soon. Fly free old friend. Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
BOTH Guitar Player and the April issue of Playboy also reviewed Chris and Reiter In and both gave it high marks. Playboy gave it 4 bunnies. LOL Playboy? you ask, I swear I was reading the review. LOL |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 04/04/2006 : 03:00:34 AM
I do have a copy of the Scrapyard VHS but of course I have no way to convert it. I hope to be able to do that at some point in the future. If someone gets this done I would love a copy. If you don't blink you can actually see me a couple of TIMes on that tape. |
| KevinLesko |
Posted - 03/12/2006 : 8:43:44 PM
Just wondering if anyone has gotten around to converting the Scrapyard VHS to DVD? If not, I think I might be able to with my new PC. I just have no idea how. If no one has, then I promise I'll play around with it. |
| Jay |
Posted - 12/28/2005 : 6:02:06 PM
The new disc is wonderful but I wouldn't start with it. It really showcases Jeff's unreal playing skills, but like you said the price of the import really gets you. There's an album called Cedar Grove which you can find fairly easily in the US, it's the only one that is distributed in the US. I ordered mine from Borders with no problems (sorry, no Virgin Megastore near me!) It's excellent, some of the coolest acoustic tones you'll ever hear. See this guy live if you ever get the chance, he puts on one hell of a show. He tours little bars and such in the US about four or five months out of the year. |
| KevinLesko |
Posted - 12/28/2005 : 11:11:38 AM
I have the VHS, but I'd love to have an MPG or something so I could burn a Video disc of it. If you go over to the Music Trading section of the Chris Whitley board lately they have been posting a plethora of live shows. CHeck out the show from '03 with the Vast Combo, it is a soundboard, and a must have!
Jay, I noticed on that on CW's board you said you were a big Jeff Lang fan. I've been wanting to check some of his stuff out, but it looks like he doesn't have American distribution and spending 30-40 bucks on an import of someone who I'd just like hear is pretty rough. Do you have any suggestions? Is that new cd any good? That looks like a good place to start as it has a live disc as well. |
| Jay |
Posted - 12/28/2005 : 02:06:23 AM
rubylith, i'll shoot my list over soon...in the mean time, check this shit out:
http://www.mortalmusic.com/bbs/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=841 |
| Hopeful Rolling Waves |
Posted - 12/27/2005 : 1:32:58 PM
Dave, that song is called Ball Peen Hammer.
Breath of Shadows from the new disc blows my wad. |
| rubylith |
Posted - 12/26/2005 : 06:55:18 AM
hey jay,
Ill totally convert that to a high quality mpeg, i have 2 brokens VCRs but ill borrow one from my brother to do it, the VHS is his anyway. U dont have to give me anything but if u want to thats cool. do u have a list of stuff? Im friends with HopefulRollingWavs, hes always hooking up awesome shit.
Ill upload it on my server when its done give me a few days.
|
| Jay |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 7:08:47 PM
rubylith, i was going to trade with a dude for the Scrapyard VHS, but i don't know what happened with that, i haven't heard from the guy (luckily i haven't sent him anyhting yet) but if you could convert the VHS to mpeg or DVD or whatever I'd be willing to trade a mass quantity of bootlegs or do whatever it takes as well as being eternally grateful. My email's Kingfi1822@gmail.com The banjo song is called Ballpeen Hammer, by the way...it's a great tune, one of my favorites...have you ever heard him play banjo live? |
| rubylith |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 06:05:07 AM
aweosme dude thanks for finding that.
chris was amazing. i have said it a million times and ill say it a billion more. I would give anything to have that voice, but listening to his music just breaks me down and i dont know, i can rember some of the best times of my life while his music played.
there was a sweet VHS (maybe DVD??) that came out when ROcket House was released it has a bunch of his music videos and interview with him. We watched it the night he died and it was very sad, espcially the song on dirt floor he plays the banjo with i forget the name, but you might want to check it out, If you cant find it i will can convert the VHS to mpeg ot something if you like.
anyway, thanks! |
| KevinLesko |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 8:03:23 PM
It's tough for me to listen to these songs... I pre-ordered the Vinyl, and CD and should get both around Feb, according to Downtown Records. I just wish it wasn't a bittersweet feeling. Din was always my favorite Whitley disc, it's a shame that his return to that sound will come out after his death. Very cool to see a Flaming Lips cover though. |
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