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Wilko johnson going back home review7/31/2023 ![]() ![]() After all, record collecting is serious business. That the private eye in the book, Harry Stoner, would stumble upon a corpse or two while unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of some rare Living Stereo platters made perfect sense to me. Mark introduced me to Jonathan Valin, whose 1993 detective novel The Music Lovers depicts the battles between record hawks at library sales. That’s where I met fellow record hawk Mark Lehman, who preceded me as music editor of TAS. Record collecting was still in my blood when, starting in the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Public Library book sale suddenly had an Elysian Fields quantity of LPs from people who’d switched to CDs. To figure out what was going on, I realized that I needed to build a record collection-and as anyone who’s visited me since high school can testify, I succeeded. I had no idea who most of the artists were, because radio played only a fraction of what was current. Staring at all the colorful covers was both tantalizing and frustrating. This will take some explaining, but I can connect the dots between pawing through LPs at a headshop called Elysian Fields in Des Moines, Iowa, as a seventh grader, and becoming the Music Editor for The Absolute Sound.Īt that starting point-around 1970/71-Elysian Fields had more LPs than any other store in Des Moines. That’s the impression I get, anyway, when Daltrey comes in after a mean guitar break on “Sneaking Suspicion,” singing with an extreme sense of urgency, as if a particularly raunchy solo reminded him how it feels to give it your all. Roger Daltrey sounds more inspired than he has in some time, and you get a sense that, due to the tight recording schedule, the newly-created band was discovering itself while the tapes were rolling. Featuring a lineup that includes members of Johnson’s regular touring band, Going Back Home is both tight and dirty, Johnson’s choppy rhythms, quick staccato jabs, and scrappy solos constantly creating friction. Down by the Jetty sounded fresh at the time, and like other music Johnson has since written it held up, partly due to its lean, edgy, pub-rock sound, but also because Johnson’s lyrics tell a story people could relate to (and raise a pint to if they caught him live). In no way did the tight recording schedule harm the album-in fact, it enhanced the live-in-the-studio energy that’s characterized Johnson’s music since the first Dr Feelgood album came out in 1975. ![]() Johnson might not die this week, he might not die for another year, but he's already created one of Rock & Roll's finest epitaphs in preparation for his inevitable farewell.Due to Wilko Johnson’s late-stage terminal cancer, the clock was ticking when Going Back Home was recorded. Underpinning it all is Daltrey, shouting and screaming like he did on Who's Next and making a far more concerned effort than ever highly impressive considering he's at the ripe old age of 70. Track after track, the mans plowing style of RnB rarely lets up- when it does, it delivers, namely on the careful "Turned 21" and Bob Dylan cover "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window". ![]() Feelgood standards, with "Ice on the Motorway" and "Some Kind of Hero" crunching along with Johnson's signature jagged guitar tone harshening the blow. With Daltrey in tow, Johnson delivers wondering and non-embittered takes on former Dr. Whether this has renewed him with a sense of vigor, urgency or lust for life remains to be seen, but if Going Back Home is anything to go by it implies he's already dealt with the fact that he's not going to be alive soon and that he doesn't care about it either. Wilko Johnson is a man who's death is imminent already surpassing his life expectancy for his terminal cancer, every day is but another blessing for the former Dr. The only thing certain in life is death, and for some it's more of a pressing concern than others. ![]()
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