Erik's Random 10

As a way to have some kind of a point to these random 10 posts, I thought I'd start saying a brief word about the first song to come up each week.

The Flatlanders, made up of Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, put out one of the greatest albums in the history of country music back in 1972. They were all just kids out of Lubbock, but the love for the music was amazing. Oddly, the album was pretty incomplete. They got completely screwed by the company and only Gilmore would sign his name to the contract, thus none of Ely or Hancock's songs made it on the album. Even with these problems, the album is brilliant, including one of the weirdest songs ever written, "Bhagavan Decreed," with the classic beginning, "Brains cannot defeat me when I'm stoned, little darlin."

The band was never really a band though and the three singers went their separate ways. Ely hit it big first, in the late 70s, when he and the Clash famously opened for each, Ely opening in England, the Clash in Texas. Gilmore and Hancock became much better known in the 1980s and early 1990s. Toward the end of the 90s, they got back together for 2 albums. The song listed below, "Wheels of Fortune," came off the second album by the same name, released in 2004. The love for the music is still there, but something is missing from these two recent Flatlanders albums. The songs are mostly pretty good, but I think these three musicians are now very different and there really isn't any feeling of these guys as a band. "Wheels of Fortune" features the amazing voice of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and is actually an older song which was recorded on the Gilmore/Hancock tour of Australia album from the early 90s. It's a very solid song and one of the best tracks on Wheels of Fortune.

1. The Flatlanders, Wheels of Fortune
2. Buddy Tabor, My Bruised World
3. Pink Floyd, In The Flesh
4. Bongwater, Mr. and Mrs. Hell
5. Richard Thompson, Beat the Retreat
6. Angelo Badalamenti, Laura Palmer's Theme
7. Death Cab for Cutie, Lightness
8. Dizzy Gillespie, Minor Walk
9. Rikki, Ikunnya Kana-Yoisura
10. Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music, Part 2