* Why I Hate Women by Pere Ubu. Yes, Ubu's back, but this time they've fooled everyone by recording an entire album of Dan Fogelberg covers. They even brought Debbie Boone out of retirement for lead vocals on "Leader of the Band."
Just kidding ... But to find out how I really feel about this album, you're going to have to wait until Friday.
*Bloodied But Unbowed: The Soundtrack . You should already know how I feel about the music here. eMusic and iTunes are the only places where you can find the music from this excellent Bloodshot DVD. This has three live songs from The Waco Brothers, plus a few more from Langford. But I think my perverse favorite here is Sally Timms and Jon Rauhouse doing the cocktail Latino standard "Perfidia."
* Retarder by Unband. I'd never heard of this group until Lexie Shabel sent me an advance DVD of her new movie, We Like to Drink, We Like to Play Rock ‘n’ Roll, which will be shown at this year's Santa Fe Film Festival. The film is a documentary of this band of loveable losers. Musically, the Unband owes a lot to The Replacements and dozens of punk and metal bar bands too numerous to mention. Lots of fun though. Lexie is going to join me on Terrell's Sound World Nov. 26 to talk about the film and the Unband.
* L.A.M.F. - The Lost '77 Tapes by Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers. Johnny we hardly knew ye. This is a cool little high-charged glimpse of stripped-down New York punk rock as performed by one of the founding fathers. I still don't know how the New York Dolls could have a "reunion" without Johnny Thunders.
* (14 songs from) Presidential Campaign Songs, 1789-1996 by Oscar Brand. This 1996 album has songs for nearly all the presidents between Washington and Clinton. (Hey! Where's Chester Arthur?) I mentioned this album in passing in a recent column. I didn't feel like spending nearly half of my 90 downloads this month on one album, (most the songs are less than two minutes) but I wanted a few for my pre-election Terrell's Sound World. I couldn't resist nabbing the songs for Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover ("If He's Good Enough for Lindy") and of course Tricky Dick.
* America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band - Vol. 1 by The Maddox Brothers & Rose. I downloaded more than half tracks from this album at the end of last month. I immediately went and picked up the remaining ones when my downloads "refreshed." One word of caution here: The track marked "New Mule Skinner Blues" actually is "I Want to Live and Love" -- which also appears here as the last track. And at this writing, they still haven't fixed it despite my alerting eMusic to it. Wonderful song, but you don't need to download it twice. (Hey eMusic, you still owe me a track!)
* John Fahey I had five tracks left over, so I decided to go for some good loooong tracks. eMusic has a good selection of Fahey, so I spent the last of my November allotment on "Voice of the Turtle" and "Mark 1:15," (both from America, plus "The Transcendental Waterfall" "What the Sun Said" and "I Saw the Light Shining 'Round and 'Round." I'd already downloaded a 13-minute "Fahey Sampler" years ago, so this will make a nice full CD.
I have deep emotional connections with Fahey. America was released about the time I started college and I remembering listening to these long, mysterious guitar excursions played frequently during the wee hours on KUNM. About this time my brother was getting serious about learning guitar, so everytime I'd go back to Santa Fe, he'd be intensely recreating hypnotic Fahey works. These indeed are immortal sounds.
* Tom Waits' "Road to Peace" and "Long Way Home." eMusic has dribbled out songs from the upcoming waits compilation Orphans, a 56-song, 3-disc affair due for release next week. (I picked up two free ones last month -- "Bottom of the World" and "You Can Never Hold Back Spring.")
