You know what they say- out of site out of mind. Over the last week or so I do believe they may be right.
Recently, I decided to take the CDs I like out of storage and put them on shelves in my room. Yes I know I can play them all on my iPod or I can stream them on Spotify, but there is something about seeing and holding an album or CD that feels good and right.
I have a five disc CD player and over the last month I have been randomly picking five CDs putting them in the changer and listening to them. And I’ve enjoyed a lot of music I haven’t heard for a while.
Right now I have around nine or ten shelves with CDs on them. So today I decided to randomly generate a number from one to ten using an on-line random number generator. I then picked an album off of the corresponding shelf. I did that twice and then had the two albums playing while I read and did some other stuff.
The two albums were Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 1989 release In Step and Something I Saw or Thought I Saw. When that album was released in 2001 it was Bill’s first album of new songs in five years. I haven’t listened to either album in long long time, particularly the Stevie Ray album!
In Step – Stevie Ray Vaughan
In Step was Stevie Ray’s fourth and final studio album. It reached number 33 in the United States in 1989. It was one of his most critically and commercially successful releases.
The first three tracks on In Step are: “The House is Rockin”, “Ctossfire” and “Tightrope”. They also were the three tracks most often played on the radio. “Crossfire” was his only number-one hit.
After the release of In Step, he became one of the world’s most highly demanded blues performers, and he headlined Madison Squaret Garden in 1989 and the Beale Street Music Festival in 1990.
In 1990, he also recorded a collaboration album with his brother, Jimmie Vaughan, called Family Style And on August 27,1990 Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash. Like many before him he left us way too soon. He was only 35 years old.
Something I Saw or Thought I Saw – Bill Morrissey
The. second album was Something I Saw or Thought I Saw by Bill Morrissey. When Bill released the album in 2001, it was his first release with new material in five years.
First and Foremost Bill was a storyteller. Each song is a little snippet of life with interesting characters. William Ruhlman at AllMusic writes the following about Something I Saw or Thought I Saw….
The main subject of the album is romantic dissolution. Annotator Ted Drozdowski notes that the songwriter has been through a second divorce, which is no surprise after you listen to “Twenty Third Street” (which seems to be another in the line of songs set in New York’s Chelsea Hotel), “Just Before We Lost the War,” “Moving Day,” “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” and “Fix Your Hair the Way You Used to Do.”
These songs are filled with Morrissey’s always acute observations, yet the album’s two most impressive compositions are on other topics. “Harry’s Last Call” is about the dwindling of a longtime friendship between a man who has settled down and another who is still on the road. Though it is told from the point of view of the former, you can’t help thinking that the songwriter himself may be closer to the latter.
And “Traveling by Cab” is about a middle-aged trucker who stops in a young person’s bar and watches a highly theatrical rock & roll band that he condemns. Read More
Final Thoughts about Bill Morrissey
Something I Saw I Thought I Saw is probably my favorite album by Bill Morrissey. With the first of his albums I bought Inside a close second.
Bill, like Stevie Ray, has left us. Bill passed away in July of 2011 four months shy of his 60th birthday. I was born in October of 1951 and Bill was born in November. I am fortunate to be able to still listen to his music. However, I just was he was still around to write me some new story songs.
“Birches” isn’t from Something I Saw or Thought I Saw, but it is a favorite of many of Bill’s fans (me included). It also displays his incredible story telling ability.