A couple of posts back I mentioned how I didn't have a Definitive Album for Summer of 2010 yet, and had been relying on an iPod playlist to fill that void. I'm happy to say this has changed.
Big Head Todd and the Monsters: "Live at the Fillmore." So, so cool.
BHTM have been a band embedded deeply in my library for some time now. If you've listened to adult contemporary radio in the past 15 years you've heard a couple of their songs: "Bittersweet" and "Broken-Hearted Savior" were the two big hits they had right out of the gate before they kind of shook off the idea of following music industry rules and focused on making the kind of music they wanted to. I can remember playing my cassette of the "Strategem" album while working in my classroom after school, way back before I even taught the grade I've been at now for fourteen years. The band is made up of four guys, three of whom have played together through high school and college. There is actually a Todd in the band - Todd Park Mohr, the guy who sings, does most of the songwriting, and plays guitar. Probably why he gets separate billing in the band name, though I don't think his head is unusually large, at least not physically. (David Letterman might disagree; I watched his show one night to see BHTM play at the end, and Dave had a running joke all night that was based around variations of the phrase "Look at the size of that guy's head!!") If Todd does have a big head for the reasons that people would normally attach to that label (and I'm not saying he does; in fact available evidence points to the contrary), then he's earned it. Because the dude knows how to play a guitar. He's got a deep tone you can feel vibrate in your chest. He plays with such little effort it's almost an afterthought. His style, while being refreshingly old-school and basic, has such a thick DNA to the sound it could be easily picked out from any other number of guitar heroes out there. His singing is slurred just enough to show he's singing more about emotion then idea, and his voice sounds like it's been damaged by whiskey and cigarettes in the best ways possible. The music ranges anywhere from bar-band rockers to almost traditional blues to tender ballads bordering on alt-country, and more often than not a combination of those elements in varying degrees. A lot of the songs are written as stories, but not in such an obvious manner they only have one interpretation.
"Live at the Fillmore" is what we old folks used to call a double album, a live set so long that it would take 2 CDs to handle all the music. It includes a few of my favorite songs from the band, but what I appreciate the most about it is how the live versions breathe so much vitality into songs from earlier in their career that came across as kind of lifeless before. The whole album, everything from the playing to the stage banter to the audience reaction, has such a casual feel it sounds like they're just hanging out and playing in someone's backyard, if that backyard could hold 4,000 people. Which would be perfect. Imagine yourself at someone's house, enjoying a summer cookout with a crowd of your friends. Someone puts on a CD that provides perfect background music for the good times your having; music that doesn't grab you by the face and demand your attention, but subtly reels you in until you start wondering, "Who is that? They are good." This would be the album you were listening to.
One of the reasons I downloaded this was because I was already getting the new album they released this summer, "Rocksteady," (also great). I also saw in the newspaper that they will be playing a one-hour set opening for the BoDeans (...eh...) at the state fair this year.
Anybody want to go see them? I'm in. Seriously We wouldn't even need to stay for the BoDeans....
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