Category: 10 Albums

It’s tough to write about writers. You’re inevitably groping for the right words, the ones more beautiful than the others, the ones that make you sound smarter or more literate. This urge is contradictory to the craft of writing, ironically. The best writers are the ones who make it sound as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. I’m only beginning to discover the toil and persistence required to master it, and with each sentence revision I revere them more.

I didn’t know Chris Mattingly was a writer when I met him. We met at a friend’s house over amazing food and cheap wine, which inevitably led us to a discussion of more food — the best we ever had and the best restaurants we’d ever visited. It wasn’t long before the conversation moved to other, well-crafted things like art and literature. Chris loves to talk about books. Sometimes, when describing the greatest of them, the ones that really changed his life, he just gets silent and looks at you, smiling over a loss for words, and just says, “Man.”

I looked him up online after we met, and found the amazing video above. He’s reading at an open mic somewhere. The camerawork is a little jittery, but you can hear the words. It’s a poem about the word, “ain’t,” which begins, “It’s like a hillbilly ohm….” It’s beautiful and lyrical like the best of his poetry, dredging up stories and images from the mud along the banks of the Ohio River where he grew up in kickass Kentucky. His newest collection, Scuffletown, is an exploration of this place. It tells tales of love and loss and drugs and addiction and violence through the simplest of objects and circumstances, but underneath is a rhythm — sometimes staccato and sometimes long and prosaic. You can feel the emotion in the meter as much as the words.

I’m not nearly as well read as he is (a fact I’m trying to remedy), so our conversations would drift to music, where we found a true kinship. We were both reared on the music of the 90’s, which we know wasn’t just the “grunge” era. It was a rich, creative time, and we’ve both revisited the music that didn’t make the radio. It’s amazing the sounds that were drifting out there in the hinterlands, waiting to find the ears attuned to their particular frequency and worldview.

I hope his poetry finds them, too.

Check out his website here.

Listen to him read some of his poems here.

Chris Mattingly: 10 Albums

Seafish Louisville / The Gits: Imagine if Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey was a punk singer and you’re probably getting close to Mia Zapata of The Gits. This live record hurts the whole way through. Straight-ahead, no bullshit punk, but I’m telling you, this woman was pulling stuff up from the bottom of the river with her vocals.

Self-titled / Townes Van Zandt: When I listen to Townes, I never get the feeling that he was trying to write a hard-times type of song. This is the real thing: outside of a little percussion and bass, this is just a guy stripped down. I mean that metaphorically and sonically.

Yes / Morphine: Two-string slide bass, drums, and baritone sax. Singer and frontman Mark Sandman called it “fuck-rock.” All their albums are good, but this one does it all: it’s sultry, rocking, bluesy, funny, poetic, unclassifiable.

Horses / Patti Smith: From the cover of the album to the poetry to the music to the direction of the dynamics of the whole project, this record satisfies the punk and poet in me. Classic with a cover you could frame.

Repeater / Fugazi: This album is not background music. In-your-face, conscious, smart. They go for it on every song, and after 15-years of listening to the album, I’m still with them on every number.

It Is Finished / Nina Simone: Come on, it’s Nina Simone. I love the way she blends traditional folk tunes, blues, jazz, and classical. Who else is going to feature piano and bones in the same song? Her versions of “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” “The Pusher,” and “Mr. Bojangles” are show stoppers. This also has “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter,” which is, in some ways, the best trash-talk I’ve ever heard.

London Calling / The Clash: The rhythms, the conscious lyrics, the voice. So much more than punk. I love how transparent their sound is: you can hear reggae, NYC hip-hop, funk, and rock ‘n roll. I think I can even hear bottles flying.

Badmotorfinger / Soundgarden: In my opinion, the best thing Led Zeppelin ever did was influence Soundgarden. I saw these guys live at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, and they were so loud and so heavy it took me two days to recover. This record is their best: unpredictable time changes, solid rhythms, soaring vocals, pure rock ‘n roll with no real guitar solo through the whole thing.

Double Nickels On the Dime / The Minutemen: This band is hilarious, serious, and completely out-of-sight. Punk rock, no doubt, but Mike Watt’s bass lines are funk. D. Boon’s guitar is scratchy, almost glassy contrast. George Hurley’s drumming is jazzy and surprisingly imaginative for a self-taught. Incredible chemistry. Oh, yeah, short-ass songs.

The Disco Before the Breakdown 7” / Against Me!: These three songs capture the point when Against Me! was leaving the folk-punk family of Plan-it-X Records and moving onto a more electric sound. These guys were the real thing. We listened to them on the way to protests, while building community gardens, cooking soup for Food Not Bombs, and running needle exchange programs. No stage, no smoke machines, no costumes, just a floor full of 500 punks singing every lyric with their fists in the air. Turn it up and you’ll almost feel what it was like to be there before the breakdown.

Good soul music is like a full body high…you know…for those of you familiar with that kind of thing.

When I hear the guitar lick and those drums start to shuffle, I just go all gooey in my guts, my feet start to twitch and my legs start to bounce. And then, I’m just waiting for the voice. You can’t have just any voice in soul music, though. This voice has to blow. It isn’t just a voice that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, it’s a voice that grabs you by the scruff of your neck, stares into your eyes and tells you the story of the pain that created it.

I’d never heard of St. Paul and the Broken Bones until a few weeks ago, when a co-worker of mine came back from Savannah Stopover Festival absolutely geeking out about their performance, several clips of which she used to blow up Instagram. In those 15 second bursts, however, I could hear a soul band full of life, tight as a drum with talent to spare. The real McCoy. I then found a couple of video clips online that settled any doubts. The first, just a live recording in a warehouse, showed me how truly tight the band was, how musical and how organically they played together. It’s only the really good bands that do that.

The second was a live performance of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” by Otis Redding, my favorite Otis song since I first laid ears on it in 1995. You can’t sing it halfway. You have to commit to it, fully. You have to let the story seep into your innards and possess you. You’re trying to keep a woman from leaving, for goodness sake! You gotta PLEAD! Lead singer Paul Janeway pleads. My God, the man pleads, and when the song really takes him, he just falls on his knees, possessed by the mantra, “can’t stop the love, can’t stop the love, can’t stop the love….” It’s beautiful to watch, and forced me to swallow a little harder and wipe my eyes a few times before I hit replay and watched it again.

Janeway’s voice was formed in the church. And, raised on gospel music, it’s no wonder he found that sound that Al Green so masterfully discovered: a wail from the back of the throat, easily shifting to a fading whine when the music falls, rising to an irrepressible howl as the climax builds. He’s a true soul voice, and I imagine he’ll only get better with time, as will the snap-tight rhythm section behind him. It’s a great combination, one I won’t miss it if they decide to visit Savannah again.

Check out their debut album, “Half The City” on Spotify, or buy direct from their store.

St. Paul and the Broken Bones: 10 Albums

• Wu-Tang Clan – Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
• D’Angelo – Voodoo
• Tame Impala – Live Versions
• Al Green – Gets Next to You
• John Fullbright – From the Ground Up
• Super Rare Soul Vol. III
• The Fame Studios Story
• Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger
• Country Funk 1969-1975
• South San Gabriel – Dual Hawks