Brandon's Buzz

Summer’s most highly anticipated record — at least for the Buzz’s money — arrives in stores this week, and if the first single is any indication, we’re about to drown in a cascade of fabulousness. Read on:

One of the finest female voices in the history of country music, the incredible and endlessly fascinating Tanya Tucker, makes a long-awaited comeback this week with My Turn, her first album in eight years. Turn finds Tucker — who has never sounded better, and that’s saying something! — turning the tables on the music men she has long admired by covering some of their best-known tunes. Among the highlights: a playful take on Charley Pride’s classic “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?” and a slightly mellow version of Merle Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever,” as well as what is quite possibly the best cover of Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me” since Jann Arden’s devastating one twelve years ago.

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Via a horrifyingly eloquent IM Friday afternoon, the beautifully intuitive Sherry Ann — on whom you can always count to keep things in measured perspective — made the following boldly blunt proclamation: “We have arrived at that point in our lives where the people we adored as children are going to start dropping dead. I am NOT ready to deal with that!”

And so it goes.

Like most of the world over 72 hours after the fact, I’m still struggling to comprehend what it means to draw breath in a world that no longer includes Michael Jackson. Having been all of six years old when Thriller broke, I literally can’t remember my life without Michael in it, and I spent the weekend operating in a strange, unrelenting daze. (Even though June 26 was Cliffhanger Friday and more than one soap is blowing and going at full steam heading into summer, and even though I already own the man’s whole video collection on DVD and can literally pull it out and watch it at will, I spent the lion’s share of the morning and afternoon transfixed by MTV, which jettisoned its entire regular schedule in favor of broadcasting and remembering Michael and his incomparable audio/visual oeuvre, a decision I found to be heartbreakingly poignant and perfectly fitting, considering the brilliantly symbiotic relationship the two entities shared in their parallel rises to global prominence: when MTV needed an ambassador with a tad more mainstream pop culture cachet than David Byrne and those fops from Devo to give the network a whiff of genuine relevance, Michael leapt into that role with both feet, and in kind, his constant and ingratiating presence on not only the channel but on the plethora of other video outlets that sprang up in its wake proved to flip the ignition switch on Jackson’s rocketship ride.)

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The Buzz’s record store report celebrates its one-year anniversary this week with some welcome new visits from some of this author’s all-time favorite artists. Can’t think of a better way to mark the occasion.

With painfully earnest vocal work from the terrific Emerson Hart, and with sensationally radio-ready angst-ridden fare like their 1997 crossover debut smash “If You Could Only See,” they seemed a fair bet for megastardom. Problem was, so did all the other bands — Third Eye Blind, Sister Hazel, The Wallflowers, Son Volt — with whom they emerged from the post-grunge haze of the late ’90s, and after three albums and a handful of well-received singles which nonetheless failed to capture the magic of their breakthrough, they called it quits, and this week, you can find the highlights of their discography streamlined into one disc with A Casual Affair: The Best of Tonic. Don’t miss the inexplicably ignored 1999 singles “You Wanted More” and “Mean to Me” to get a sense of the potential these guys certainly owned, and, as with last week’s Wallflowers best-of set, the Best Buy version of Casual comes bundled with a bonus DVD, containing five of Tonic’s music videos.

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“Originally it was like a Neil Young song but it was missing this key word. It used to go, “Look at the stars / look how they shine for you…” and there was this gap. So I was sitting there singing this song, and I looked at the nearest book to me, and it was the Yellow Pages. So, in an alternate universe, this song would be called Playboy.”

— Coldplay’s fearless leader Chris Martin, explaining the origins of his band’s worldwide breakthrough smash “Yellow,” on VH1 Storytellers.

A plethora of greatest hits collections punctuates this week’s (inexcusably tardy) record store report. Take a look:

They always deserved a great deal more commercial success than they managed to achieve, and this week, Jakob Dylan’s acclaimed ’90s band The Wallflowers receive their first career-spanning best-of set with the new 16-track Collected: 1996-2005. Everything you’d expect to be here is, from the band’s terrific breakthrough smashes “6th Avenue Heartache” (which features a heartbreaking, song-making harmony vocal from head Crow Counter Adam Duritz) and “One Headlight” (which, in retrospect, set a bar of triumph they’d never be able to clear again) to great lesser-known later singles like “Sleepwalker” and “When You’re On Top.” (And if you pick this up at Best Buy, you get a bonus DVD of Wallflowers videos.)

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“It can be like a segment in the show: ‘Now we come to the part where you say hello to Sherry Ann!!'”

— my eternally crazy best friend Sherry Ann, humbly suggesting (via IM last night) that I add a regular portion to Brandon’s Buzz Radio wherein I impel my guest to send her a lovely greeting. (Probably not funny to anyone besides me, but I almost fell on the floor, I was laughing so hard at this request. And don’t think I’m not crazy enough to do this!)

She has been my best friend on the planet from the minute we met nearly twenty years (!) ago, and in the time I’ve known her, she has evolved from a smart, precocious teenager into a stunningly beautiful, hilarious, brilliant woman, not to mention a great mother of two terrific boys.

I love you to pieces, Sherry Ann. Happy birthday, my darling. (And don’t you ever forget: no matter how many of these we celebrate, you’ll always be older than me.)

“I want to find good pop music. Help me please.”

— a comment from a poster named Kalebarkab which got stuck in the Buzz’s spam filter this afternoon. Don’t know whether it is indeed spam, since they’re not overtly advertising anything anywhere in their message, but the sentiment is pure serendipity, and my response is simply this: visit this very site everyday, and soak up like a frickin’ sponge every syllable you read, and you’ll be on the road to happiness.

It’s exceedingly quiet out there in musicland this week, which gives you a perfect opportunity to catch up on some great recent records (Dave Matthews Band and Mat Kearney, to name but two) that may have slipped past your consciousness. If you must go record shopping this week, here’s what you’ll find on the new release wall:

Fresh off the brilliant remastering of her 1997 masterwork Blue Roses from the Moons, one of the finest songwriters in the history of music, the spectacular Nanci Griffith, is back this week with The Loving Kind, her nineteenth studio album (and her first of original material since 2005’s sweet Hearts in Mind). Kind finds Griffith delving into some politically charged topics, with a diatribe against Dubya (“Still Life”), an angry rant against capital punishment (“Not Innocent Enough,” a duet with musician John Prine), and, in the lovely title track, a remembrance of the Supreme Court case which made interracial marriage legal in this country. Griffith also takes a moment to pay tribute to her late mentor Townes Van Zandt in the album’s emotional high point,
“Up Against the Rain.”

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