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Friday 23 July 2021

Hot Rail

 


The Missing Records Haul -  Calexico  -Hot Rail

As I fessed up when I featured Feast of Wire  in my 50 Americana Albums You Should Hear Before You Die series  that although I consider myself a fan I have long owned more burns than physical copies of their albums.
I've now gone a small way to redressing that balance  by replacing my burn of Hot Rail with the real thing. From 2000 on Quarterstick Records it was the third album from the band led by Joey Burns and Jon Convertino the erstwhile rhythm section of Giant Sand. It is the one that precedes the masterpiece that is Feast of Wire

It ticks all the required Calexico boxes. Desert noir, traditional sounding Mexican grooves,mariachi, some crashing percussion and assorted squiggily noises.

Whereas they are great on record I must confess to having been extremely disappointed following the one time I saw them live at Glasgow's Carling Academy. It put me off them for a while but they are gradually sneaking back in there



11 comments:

  1. "I saw them live at Glasgow's Carling Academy"
    Maybe an off-night for them? I saw them in Birmingham ca. 2006, a fantastic concert

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    1. Guess I drew the short straw

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    2. I think I imagined that concert. According to concertarchives.com they did not go to Birmingham any year around 2006. Memory going........fading fast.......

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    3. idea for a series......."Gigs I never went to"

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    4. The Cramps, Glasgow, 1990

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    5. More research has discovered a 2004 concert in Birmingham (the day after a Glasgow concert!!!) I thought I'd seen them.

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    6. I bet I've not been to more gigs than George hasn't been to. Each time I check the archives some blighter has been and removed ALL evidence that any gig ever took place. A friend asked me recently what 'Gaslighting' meant - Oh it's something to do with s/o fucking with your mind I said and this is a perfect example of it. Time I looked into alternate universe theory I reckon.

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  2. I really like Calexico, but it was a long time before I actually got any of their albums. My introduction was mainly the excellent Archive.org, which holds loads of their concerts (25 at last check) dating back to the late 1990s. I've got about half a dozen and found some of the albums a bit flat by comparison. I agree completely about Feast of Wire but have never heard Hot Rail. I have several brilliant live takes of ...Cable Hogue and Crystal Frontier, so it'll be interesting to hear the studio versions. I'm also a big fan of the run of cover art by Victor Gastelum, including this one. Reminds me of Love & Rockets (the comic, not the band). Great post!

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    1. I finally got around to posting my Calexico Live playlist from the mid-2000s on my blog yesterday. I really, really want to see them live in concert now.

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  3. Ballad of Cable Hogue and Crystal Frontier are 2 of my favourite Calexico tracks. I'm never sure though where Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra's Sand (not to mention Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot too) and Giant Sand/OP8/Lisa Germano's version of it ends and where Calexico and Marianne Dissard's version of Ballad of Cable Hogue begins. All very similar - let's just say one inspired the other!!

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