Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Ray Price
Night Life
(Columbia, 1963)
Country legend turns down the lights. Suspect characters emerge on the horizon...
"Hi neighbours. It's sundown at our house as we make this new Columbia album for you. So sit back, kick off your shoes and relax... just a little bit". And so begins Ray Price's Night Life - an album that bridges the gap between the string-heavy Nashville Sound and the lonesome country-blues of Price's one-time roommate Hank Williams. In 1953, Price formed the Cherokee Cowboys, whose alumni included one Willie Hugh Nelson. It was Nelson (or as he's referred to here, "a boy from down in Texas way") who gave Price the sumptuously swinging title track - a song that, with Buddy Emmons' mesmerizing pedal steel, quickly animates the pair of young canoodlers on the front cover of the LP. A neon-lit string of broken-hearted ballads follow. Best of all are Price's Elvis-esque croons during Let Me Talk To You and the honky-tonk farewell of Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women, in which our hedonistic guide is "tired of roaming around... tired of painting the town" - a quick shift from Sittin' And Thinkin's incarcerated bad-boy who got "loaded last night on a bottle of gin" and proceeded to have "a fight with my best girlfriend". Booze-fuelled violence and a sore-headed, early morning search for redemption are the tenants of Price's after-hours world where people go to "bury a broken dream and watch an old love die". These days, whenever I hear this album, I'm always reminded of Ellen Barkin introducing a episode of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour: "It's night time in the big city... a woman watches her neighbour through binoculars," purrs Birkin before delivering the clincher, "...a cat knocks over a lamp".
Ross Bennett
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 22/07/2009
Further Listening
Elvis Presley – From Elvis In Memphis (RCA, 1969)
Loretta Lynn – Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) (Decca, 1967)
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