music by The Coke Dares
863 Billy Bragg and Wilco – Mermaid Avenue
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One response to “863 Billy Bragg and Wilco – Mermaid Avenue”
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I’ve listened to this album a million times, and when it came up this morning I got a smile on my face because I was about to listen to it again. Mermaid Avenue volumes one and two may have been when alt-country peaked. Maybe not the best alt-country albums of all time (I already claimed that for Car Wheels on a Gravel Road), but the moment when the genre jumped the shark by doing something so crazy and mind-blowing that it could never be topped.
I’m almost loathe to review this album because some things are magic because every part of them is magic and I don’t want to poke at something and make it not work any more. Billy Bragg, Wilco (before Jay Bennett died, so real Wilco), Natalie Merchant, Woody Guthrie. All parts that were great in their own ways and to their own extents, but they came together and for no reason that I can put my finger on created something incredible.
This is one of those “important” albums. Not to the history of music, maybe, but to me and in my life. A tentpole album for me. The Mermaid Avenue albums are two of the ingredients that make me who I am. Not big ingredients like my parents or where I’m from or the people who I’ve spent my life with, but ingredients nonetheless. And I’m glad of that.
Steal from the rich, elect Jesus president, sing beautifully, be kind to animals, join a union, marry your true love, kill fascists. These are words to live by.
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