Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Michael Hurley- "Kindest" Dude Alive?

We love us some Michael Hurley around our house. My 2 year old son Amos always points to Armchair Boogie, when he sees it lying around, and squeals "YESH!" (meaning, "play it. play it now!"). Lately, he seems to prefer side 2- or as we call it; "blue bird"- over side 1- which is, of course, "red bird". As Hurley has been gradually rediscovered over these past few years, Armchair Boogie has been the classic album most people have become acquainted with. This is likely due to the public's relative familiarity with his excellent songs from that record: The Werewolf, Sweedeeedee and Troubled Waters, which were all versioned on Cat Power's appropriately titled Covers Record back in 2000. Here's her positively mournful version of Sweedeedee. We're fairly partial to Be Kind to Me and Jocko's Lament, as well. I'm here to tell you, though: There's a whole lot more to classic Michael Hurley than that one album. Do yourself a favor and check out Long Journey, Hi-Fi Snock Uptown and Snockgrass. *BTW, I hear tell that Mississippi Records has plans to rerelease Hi-Fi Snock on vinyl sometime in the nearish future. I've been totally loving their recent Hurley rarities collection, Parsnip Snips. Good stuff.

Here's on song apiece, from those three albums I've been hyping:
"O My Stars" from Snockgrass (wrong album art - from hifi snock- displayed on this video clip)

"Portland Water" from Long Journey


Mediafire Download Links:
Michael Hurley: Hi-Fi Snock Uptown
Michael Hurley- Long Journey
Michael Hurley- Snockgrass

2 comments:

erin said...

thank you nick! this actually solved a mixtape/cd mystery for me (I'm worried I'm worried). I'm enjoying this so very much. hope all is well on the other coast!

nicholab said...

erin, just fyi- o my stars is actually from snockgrass- which i just edited in to to this bit and posted today. in my hurry zipping and uploading, i originally confused the two "snock" albums in my library. its right now!