The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer!----Part 17--Mark Eitzel!!

The Best Way to Spread is Christmas Cheer is Singing Loud For All To Hear!

Mark Eitzel--Xmas Lights Spin

American Music Club--Atwater Afternoon___A stick to your ribs satisfying__Tour Cd

Ship of Lost Souls

I was so glad I managed to pick Atwater Afternoon, the Nashville leaning limited edition disc by American Music Club when it was released back in 2008. Over the years the band has put records like this out to help finance tours--they would sell them at their shows. Fortunately I was able to pick this up a few years ago on their website. It's a somewhat stripped down collection of songs, including covers and alternate versions of songs from their studio albums. The last 3 songs are from a rougher either live in concert or live in the studio versions of songs, and they don't really fit the rest of the material so well. One of the highlights is the exquisite version of All My Love, which is a truly beautiful song.



I also enjoyed the covers--the band seems very relaxed and loose here. Eitzel has had prior success with a cover album, Music for Courage and Confidence, (American Music Club also did a nice cover of Goodbye to Love on the If I Were A Carpenter tribute) and he succeeds again here. I particularly dug the old nugget I'm Your Puppet, performed in the past by about a million other singers. They also perform the Kris Kristofferson 70's megahit, For The Good Times. The band honky tonks it up agreeably with Bill Anderson's City Lights, which reminds me of AMC Gary's Song. Another highlight is the harrowing story-song Long, Long Walk. "I'm not butter for any man's knife." What a lyricist!



Vudi contributes a song here, the uptempo rocker Little Joy, and Steve Didelot's excellent Insider's Guide to Life is also here. But you have Eitzel crooning the beautiful Who You Are, and his alternate version of All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco, which ought to be the City's new anthem. Sorry, Tony...




In any event, while Atwater Afternoon is not American Music Club's greatest moment, it's still pretty damn enjoyable. As I've said ad nauseum, Eitzel is one of the best songwriters of our generation, so go out and find out what the fuss is all about. You won't be disappointed. Get out and support the arts.

Sad news--Mark Eitzel Heart Attack in May---Get well soon!!

A Real Showman Knows How

Such sad news about Mark Eitzel, American Music Club vocalist and America's greatest songwriter. Apparently he had a heart attack in May, but I just found out about it tonight. One of my all time favorite artists and again another of the under appreciated people I post about here. Wishing him nothing but goods things, and a rapid complete recovery.

I can't help but think about hearing him perform Patriot's Heart on a Cd that accompanied the Magazine Comes With A Smile. So amazingly devastating in person. It encapsulated perfectly the mood of the time under the rotten Bush years, and he did it in a manner sure to enrage any stuffy conservative ideologue. It's one of the great political songs of our era.



I recall standing in Pier Platter's Records in Hoboken, holding a copy of his Songs of Love Live, eyeing the price tag, and wondering whether I should spend the $20. I reluctantly coughed up the cash and was a better man for it. Just the man with an acoustic guitar, tearing himself apart. Like Kurt Cobain, the performance seems like much more personal and intense, perhaps a little too real!!! I only wish I could have got my paws on some of his limited edition discs that were produced to fund tours. I have some acoustic demos discs from Everclear and Mercury that were sold for a while, but I mean Lovers Leap USA, and Superhitsinternational.





I do think that Mark, and American Music Club will get the accolades they deserve someday and a wider audience appreciation, hopefully a lot sooner than word got out on Nick Drake. I wouldn't be surprised if someday someone put together an album of jazz interpretations of his greatest ballads. Or maybe even a Frito's commercial if it meant he got paid. His music is referred to as Sadcore sometimes, but I think the term is a bit of a slap. Like saying "C'mon Mark, sing something peppy for us!". Because, when I listen to my I-Pod on shuffle, sometimes one of his songs would come up by surprise, and I would be completely bowled over by intensity of the lyrics, the dark yet human emotions expressed. And there is a lot of depth, much wisdom to be gleaned there. Usually I would listen to the song two or three times, because often they sound different or I notice something new about them.





So this news is very sad for me and I'm surprised there wasn't more attention paid to this in the press. When I say things about music, we all understand that this is just one person's opinions being expressed, but I feel very strongly about where Mark Eitzel stands in the pantheon of contemporary songwriters. Do yourself a favor and get acquainted with his solo and band recordings. In some ways I feel as though has music has made me a better person in some intangible way.

Hang in there Mark. And thanks for all the great music.

A Happiness Like We'll Never Know--American Music Club and Everclear

Don't Worry About The Magic Kingdom

In my opinion, Mark Eitzel is America's Gay Bob Dylan. It sounds a little silly--whatever his personal preferences, the salient thing is that he is flat-out one of the greatest songwriters of our era. His best songs are timeless. And while there is very little new under the musical sun, genres and sub genres of classifications are continually being coined. American Music Club and singer Mark Eitzel are the progenitors and leading lights of "Sadcore". And a lot of his songs are pretty miserable, though often beautiful. I always used to notice in reviews how critics remarked that on a particular album or song Eitzel "seems happier". Hopefully so, but I just hope that he keeps producing music of quality and I'm not too concerned about what he does specifically--happy, sad, more cowbell. Apparently he is in a better place today than he once was,and that is good news. People tend to glorify the self-destructive behavior of artists, but history demonstrates that it does not make a very good long term career plan. However, I must admit that I consider the dark intensely tortured Everclear from 1991 to be the high water mark of all his albums, with band or as a solo artist.

While there is no shortage of memorable songs in his lengthy career, the combination of great songs with the exceptional sound quality on Everclear make it stand out above the others. Why Won't You Stay? is such a great song,  a sad sleepy late night echo chamber croon, Eitzel reinvented as Roy Orbison. The instrumentation on this album is almost more an environment than accompaniment as much sonic textures as arrangements. Eitzel's weary vocals on Miracle on 8th Street come dreamily from the deepest depths of human despair. He sounds like he could be singing from inside an isolation tank.

Themes of loss, loneliness,abandonment and disenfranchisement abound throughout the record. Sympathetic character portraits of people down on their luck or who have lost their way. People who need help and keep making the same bad mistakes but just can't be reached. The Dead Part Of You is an open blister of a song about baggage and emotional distress. The outwardly jaunty Crabwalk is a character study done in Honky Tonk country glory. What The Pillar Of Salt Held Up is one of Eitzel's very best songs, a poignant ballad full of vivid imagery. It is spellbinding evocative poetry set to music.

Probably if there is one cheerful song on the album, it is Royal Cafe, with its upbeat Banjo driven melody belieing the typically downbeat lyrics. A pretty good driving song in fact. Ex-Girlfriend is another desperate howl. The backing music on the song sounds more like a soundtrack--it's amazing what textures Vudi manages to wrench out of his guitar. Also kudos to the multi-instrumentalists Dan Pearson and Bruce Kaphan who make this entire album sound so intensely moody and texturally interesting. And in some ways Mark Eitzel comes across as a crazed lounge singer on some of these songs sometimes crooning at other times shouting. Sick of Food is just a song driven so low, like a person just so down that they don't feel anything, that basic human requirements are even too much. But then the songs bridge crescendos to a emotional explosion of frustration. The album finally ends with almost hopeful tune Jesus' Hands, which stylistically sounds like a song that could have been written during the Great Depression.

So What Do I Do With My Time?

One head scratcher regarding the album involves the single that came out to support the album. As unlikely as it might seem for an album of this type, they put out the ep "Rise" to support the full length. It is more uptempo, almost like a Springsteen song, perhaps stylistically the best choice for a single, but by far not the best song on the album. It reminds me of an inferior version of the rollicking Somewhere from their prior album California. What is even more surprising is the exclusion of the awesome Chanel #5 from Everclear. It is another Eitzel tour de force.There is a harrowingly raw version of the song done on his live solo album, Songs of Love. "All over town people lookin' for their little piece of goodnight." The ep adds a good conventional country song, The Right Thing, and ends with an acoustic dirge version of Crabwalk that I don't particularly care for. But the two middle songs make it a worthwhile ep.

There are a lot of other good points of departure for American Music Club work like California, United Kingdom, Engine, or the post-Everclear albums. Mark Eitzel has put out good solo albums like West, 60 Watt Silver Lining, his live Songs of Love. It's not a bet idea to check out their web site on occasion as they sell limited addition recordings unavailable in shops or conventional on-line stores. I know that sometimes his music seems pretty depressing but take the time to listen to the lyrics--they are about as good as you can find by songwriter today. And Everclear was one of the best albums of the 90's, whose complete sum is greater than its parts, fitting together like an unintentional concept album.