The Pratt Songs Best of 2008

It's time for another list. In 2008, I posted a total of 84 reviews of CDs and/or LPs that are available from Baltimore's library, the Enoch Pratt Free Library. In no particular order, here are 10 of those 84 albums that have stuck with me.

• Various Artists: Mountain Music of Kentucky -- I've listened to some difficult music this year, and I think it's fair to say that no CD presented me with more challenges and rewards than this one. This is about as naked as music can possibly be. And by naked, I don't mean supermodel naked, I mean naked the way most of us look without any clothes: completely flawed, yet absolutely beautiful.


• Kings of Leon: Aha Shake Heartbreak -- Of every rock album I heard for the first time this year, nothing won my heart the way Aha Shake Heartbreak did. This album possesses nearly everything that makes rock music wonderful.


• Lord Invader: Calypso in New York -- This record completely changed my mind about calypso, and began a year-long journey into an incredibly compelling style of music. Anybody who truly loves hip-hop should give this a listen, because the parallels between hip-hop and calypso are fascinating.


• Harry Belafonte: Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall -- I love it when I'm forced to change my opinion on an artist, and this record forced me to change my opinion about Harry Belafonte. I'd previously dismissed the man as a musical and social lightweight, a provider of fluff for the masses. In truth, the man was incredibly courageous, both musically and socially. No, his calypso doesn't move me the way Lord Invader's does, but Belafonte is truly a heavyweight.


• Various Artists: Nicky Siano's Legendary "The Gallery" The Original New York Disco 1973-1977 -- About 10 years ago, I learned about the differences between original underground disco and the corporate swill that was spoon fed to the masses throughout the '70s. It wasn't until I stumbled onto this gem at the EPFL, however, that I discovered Nicky Siano. This is a fantastic CD that captures the original spirit of disco.


• Moby: Play -- This CD proves that musical genres are meaningless, and maybe we should spend more time categorizing our music as either "good" or "not so good."


• Fela Kuti: The Underground Spiritual Game -- An intriguingly simple summary of Fela's incredibly complex music.


• Lead Belly: Keep Your Hands Off Her (a.k.a. Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs) -- It shouldn't have taken me nearly 40 years to find Lead Belly, but I'm thankful I finally got around to listening to him. No single artist commanded more of my attention this year than Lead Belly. This collection is a concise and interesting introduction to a great musician.


• Mclusky: The Difference Between You and Me Is that I'm Not on Fire -- I played this CD expecting bad emo. Instead, I got one of the most energetic and exciting albums I heard all year.


• Horace Andy: Dance Hall Style -- Dance Hall Style was not only my favorite of the half-dozen reggae albums I reviewed this year, but it's become one of my very favorite reggae albums, period.

There were three albums I reviewed in 2008 that have been on my personal "favorite albums" list for years: U2 Pop, The Postal Service Give Up, and Death Cab for Cutie Plans. Since these albums weren't new to me in 2008, they weren't really candidates for this list. All three, however, are very strong albums that deserve a listen. Particularly the U2 record: it was largely dismissed by critics and fans alike, but the last three tracks on Pop are as good as anything the band ever wrote.

Finally, an honorable mention goes to Goldfrapp Seventh Tree. It's a very dull album, but "A&E" is one of the best songs I heard in 2008.

Thanks for reading. If real life doesn't consume too much of my time and energy, I look forward to hearing and reviewing another 80 or 90 CDs from the EPFL this year!

Various Artists: Mountain Music of Kentucky

(Note: This is a 1996 Smithsonian Folkways CD re-issue of a 1959 album that documented John Cohen's travels through eastern Kentucky. John Cohen, a musicologist and member of the New Lost City Ramblers, rewrote the liner notes and added more than an hour of music that was not included on the original Folkways release.)

There's a Buddhist concept called the beginner's mind. It basically suggests we approach every moment of our lives as if that moment has never happened before. Which, of course, it hasn't, but we carry our experiences, opinions, and preconceptions with us into each new moment. After we've seen 10,000 sparrows, we tend to miss the wonder, awe, and beauty of sparrow #10,001.

A beginner's mind is incredibly helpful when listening to Mountain Music of Kentucky. If you read a couple of quotes from the liner notes, you might understand why.

"These 1959 recordings present the vigorous music of Kentucky mountain people. They sang and played banjos with a terrific energy that is almost unheard of now. They learned their music in a setting totally different from our contemporary life, in an era before people got their experiences from TV or their music from Nashville, when people plowed with mules, canned beans and tomatoes from their gardens, and reclined on front porches with slatted wooden swings attached to rafters by metal chains. Their musical memories provide us with a glimpse of a pattern which had endured for centuries."

"Back then the musicians were less concerned with audience reception, recording criteria, or stylistic finesse. They sang with an energy that came directly from them. Their voices didn't have to be measured against the standards of the entertainment industry..."

I've listened to a few dozen Smithsonian Folkways releases in the past year, and I've even fallen in love with a few of them. This one was more difficult to get through than any of the others. But the rewards it holds are incredible!

If you're brave enough to find your beginner's mind and forget everything you know about music, you just might find a humanity within this CD that is as deep and beautiful as anything you've ever heard.

Music:
These are field recordings that were made with primitive recording equipment in living rooms and front porches. For lack of a better comparison, listening to Mountain Music of Kentucky is like reading a novel written on tattered scraps of paper that were found in the closet of an old house. This is music created by real people in the places where they lived their lives. Subtle nuances like the bird chirping in the background of "Fair Miss in the Garden" are just one of the countless things that help make this music so special. Yes, this is a difficult album, but its difficulties are a vital part of its perfection.

Packaging:
The booklet deserves a five library card rating for the photos alone. Every one of Cohen's pictures tells a story, and every story is fascinating. But while a picture may be worth a thousand words, a picture cannot substitute for a thousand words. So Cohen's words are here to flesh out the story. When you put the pictures and words together, you end up with a wonderful story. The historical aspect of the notes is great, but my favorite part is Cohen's recollections of the brief time he spent with each of the performers. His words bring even more life to a very lively set of recordings.

An interesting element of Cohen's notes is that, by revisiting these recordings 35 years after they were made, he acknowledges some of the ways he's grown and changed. He writes about why he chose certain songs for the original release, and why he feels he was wrong to overlook other recordings that only saw the light of day on the '96 reissue. It's interesting to see growth and humility in a man who is obviously extremely intelligent and passionate about music.

Listen if you like: Merle Travis, Jean Ritchie, Alan Lomax, Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Pete Seeger. Listen if you like outsider art. Especially listen if you like the idea of normal people sitting around and playing music together.

If it were food, it'd be: home made from scratch

Lord Invader: Calypso in New York

I thought I hated calypso. I've heard Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" and The Beach Boys' "Sloop John B." and John Denver's "Calypso," and I don't like any of them.

But now that I've heard Lord Invader (aka Rupert Grant), I realize that disliking calypso because of those songs would be like disliking rock because of "Yakety Yak."

Lord Invader was amazing. His music was powerful and political, literate and lyrical. His music was funny and sexy and spiritual and violent and sad and proud and... and it was alive.

All of this, and every song is a story. Some are fun and silly, others are dark and troubling, but they all make for fascinating listening.

There are a lot of similarities between Lord Invader and the best hip-hop from the past 25 years. First of all, there's the same sense of oneupmanship. The album is filled with Lord Invader's boasts of superiority: In "Ten Thousand to Bar Me One," Invader equates singing to stick-fighting, and he tells his rivals, "Duke of Iron must surrender, Houdini it is fire and slaughter ... tomorrow is blood in the gutter, I mean to commit manslaughter." It's violent imagery, and it's a powerful metaphor for his musical superiority.

Big egos and boasting cannot make a vital album, though, as any hip-hop fan can tell you. There has to be some substance. At various moments throughout Calypso in New York, Lord Invader is political, spiritual, social, commercial, sexual, comical, and even humble (Invader loses singing battles in "Sly Mongoose" and "My Intention is War," while "My Experience on the Reperbahn" portrays his surprise at a German whore with some unexpected... uh... parts).

Music:
The music on Calypso in New York is definitely calypso. There are lots of steel drums and Caribbean rhythms, but don't let that scare you away. This is much closer to early reggae and ska than it is to the whitewashed, sterile garbage that has been presented to American audiences for the past 50 years. Most of the music sounds festive and joyous on the surface, but a good amount of the subject matter is very serious. There are only a few songs on the disc that leave me completely cold, and they are grossly outweighed by the tracks that are filled with passion and fire.

One thing that is especially notable is the richness of the lyrics. "My Intention Is War" is a (presumably improvised) lyrical battle between Lord Invader and Mighty Dictator. Invader busts out with lines like, "Dictator, you insolent boobie, delirious mule, audacious slum monger you're out of rule ... you gabilous squabbler illiterate ape, now you are in a terrible scrape." At the end of the song, after Invader has lost (which I don't understand, because his opening verse is awesome), Dictator offers a gracious, "Now Invader, you too are really great, and my statement no one can adjudicate, put your hand in mine, let our friendship remain sublime." This is great stuff, both musically and lyrically.

Packaging:
It's pretty much a given that anything from Smithsonian Folkways will have fantastic liner notes, and this is no exception. Prior to checking this out from EPFL, I knew nothing about calypso. Now, I know the names of a handful of the genre's greatest artists, I have a high-level understanding of its history, and I've got a half-dozen CDs on order from Ebay. There are only two flaws in the packaging that I can spot: 1) Not enough photos, and 2) The song title "Auf Wiedersehen" is misspelled, but that may be how the song is copyrighted, so I think I can forgive them for the typo. Anyway, the song more than makes up for the typo with the line "Hear them jivin' meine lieber, das ist screamer, which mean that I'm a good love-maker."

Listen if you like: reggae, hip-hop, or folk music. It's a must-hear if you like steel drums.

If it were food, it'd be: A plate of curry chicken, a bowl of callaloo, some plantains, and a few sugar cookies. And a rum and Pepsi-Cola of course.

Various Artists: That's Why We're Marching - World War II and the American Folk Song Movement

Good compilation albums tell a story. It's not a story that can be told by any single song on the compilation, but a story that recognizes each song as a vital part of something larger. Good compilation albums find a big truth within the voices of small songs.

That's Why We're Marching finds the big truth within 25 small songs. The individual songs might be about political hypocrisy, racial inequality, unions, war, or Fascism, but the big picture is about love. Each of these songs is about a powerful love for the poor people and the tortured people and the neglected people and the black people and the Russian people and the Jewish people and the people who worked in factories and the people who joined unions and the people who bought war bonds and the people who enlisted and the people who fought and the people who buried their children and the people who sacrificed their own lives in order to help save the lives of strangers who were being slaughtered on the other side of some mighty big oceans. These are songs of love for all of those people and countless others.

The songs on That's Why We're Marching might be about politics and race and war and fighting and dying and working. The album, though, is simply a collection of great love songs.

Music:
I can't imagine how this collection of songs could be any better. Everything on here is good, even the stuff that's kind of tough to get through. What might be the best song on the album isn't even a song, it's a story by Jimmy Longhi about being with Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston on a ship that was under attack. When the story ends and "When the Yanks Go Marching In" begins, it is a joyous musical moment that literally gave me a chill.

Packaging:
Like virtually everything from Smithsonian Folkways, the booklet in That's Why We're Marching is superb. It's 28 pages long, with two columns of small print on each page. There's an extraordinary amount of detail, even by Smithsonian Folkways standards, and it's fascinating to read. There are a couple of minor typos and factual mistakes, though, and for a CD that acts as a historical document, errors like that can bring its credibility into question. In the EPFL's version, there is a hand-written correction on the first page of the booklet, which means that someone checked out the CD and cared enough to fix a mistake. That's the kind of thing that can only happen with CDs from the library, and that's the kind of thing that makes the EPFL so wonderful.

Listen if you like: folk artists like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly; folk revivalists like Billy Bragg and Wilco; protest songs; love.

If it were food, it'd be: the kind of homemade stew that simmers on the stove all day long and contains pretty much everything that's leftover in the fridge and the pantry, and it tastes like all of those things but it tastes like something more... perhaps it tastes just a little bit like love.

Woody Guthrie: Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs with Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, Bess Hawes

In honor of Lead Belly's birthday, I'm devoting this week's posts on Pratt Songs to his music. Today's review is a vinyl copy of Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs.... (You can get the same recording on CD from Smithsonian Folkways.) Last Tuesday's post was a review of the only Lead Belly recording in the EPFL catalog, a vinyl copy of Keep Your Hands Off Her. Hopefully, the good people over at Pratt will order some Lead Belly CDs soon!

Lead Belly only plays on one song on this album, but it's a great example of why he was so awesome. His rough voice on "We Shall Be Free" stands out in stark contrast against the other singers. All of the musicians are warm, but there's a rich earthiness in Lead Belly's voice that the other musicians don't possess. That quality makes this song shine in a way that nothing else on the album does.

That's not to say the other 13 tracks are bad. I've been in awe of Sonny Terry's harmonica playing since I first heard On My Journey: Paul Robeson's Independent Recordings. Cisco Houston's fine playing is all over the album, but his voice is mostly relegated to a supporting role. Bess Hawes has a lovely backup voice, and she is yet another of the many Smithsonian Folkways artists whose music I need to explore. Unfortunately, most of Woody Guthrie's performances here don't really grab me. The notable exceptions are "Hard Travelin'," "The Rising Sun Blues," and "Nine Hundred Miles," the latter of which has some great fiddle playing by Guthrie.

Music:
Take my rating lightly on this one, because my goal was to hear Lead Belly, not Woody Guthrie. With that said, I'm not entirely sure why this album is considered to be such a classic. Apparently, Guthrie and his friends recorded these songs in Moses Asch's studio in New York during the '40s, but Asch didn't release them on his Folkways label until 1962. That doesn't surprise me, because these sound like the kinds of songs that would sit on the shelf at the record label for a decade or two before getting released. The album is worth hearing, but it's not as inspired as some of Guthrie's other recordings.

And frankly, I wish there were more collaborations between Guthrie and Lead Belly. Their voices are completely different, yet they complement each other beautifully. There's a playful energy on "We Shall Be Free" that isn't on any of the other songs. I would've been really irritated if I'd bought this album based on the title, and then discovered that a more accurate name would've been Woody Guthrie sings Folk Song with Leadbelly.

Packaging:
Like many covers, the EPFL has gutted and repackaged this one. I normally kind of resent their efforts, but the fact that this album has remained in circulation for over 30 years proves they're doing something right. There's something wonderful about seeing the scrawls and stamps on the sleeve: "Spots, Side 1, Feb 20 1974, Officially Noted. Scratches, Both Sides, Officially Noted, Feb 24 1975." The original pocket for a check-out card is still stuck onto the sleeve, and some lazy clerk put a sticker with due dates right on the front cover about 10 years ago.

As for the actual packaging, the cover is a shadowy black & white photo that beautifully captures a certain aspect of Guthrie's music. An insert that came with the original album is taped to the back of the EPFL package, and it contains lyrics, an introduction by Pete Seeger, and sheet music for every song. Sheet music was an important source of entertainment for families before TV and the Internet, and it's easy to overlook the fact that Folkways Records adamantly encouraged their listeners to actively participate with the music instead of passively listening to it.

Listen if you like: Any of the artists on the album, classic folk music, Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue albums.

If it were food, it'd be: A stew, the kind that contains lots of random stuff that was leftover in the fridge. Every once in a while you get one bite with the perfect mix of ingredients, but for the most part, it has a bit too much of this and not quite enough of that.

Lead Belly: Keep Your Hands Off Her

In honor of Lead Belly's birthday, I'm devoting this week's posts on Pratt Songs to his music. Today, I reviewed the only Lead Belly recording in the EPFL catalog, a vinyl copy of Keep Your Hands Off Her. (You can buy the same songs on a CD titled Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs from Smithsonian Folkways.) On Friday, I'll review a vinyl copy of Woody Guthrie Sings Folksongs, which includes one song with Lead Belly. Hopefully, the good people over at Pratt will order some Lead Belly CDs soon!

I've known Lead Belly's name for years, but I never bothered to listen to his music. It didn't matter that nearly every great rock band -- from Led Zeppelin to Nirvana -- has praised Huddie Ledbetter (aka Lead Belly), I just never cared enough to listen. But then I checked out Classic Railroad Songs from Smithsonian Folkways from the EPFL. When I heard his recording of "Linin' Track," I was floored.

Lead Belly was amazing. I don't even know how to describe his voice, other than by saying it was real. It's not trained, it's not refined, and it's not pretty. It's hard and flawed, and it's completely compelling. Apparently, Lead Belly held audiences captive when he performed. When you hear his voice, it's easy to understand why; something about the man was magnetic.

Music:
There are probably better introductions to Lead Belly, but to my ears, Keep Your Hands Off Her is a perfect place to start. The a capella "Good-Good-Good (Talking, Preaching)" is one of the most delightful portrayals of heaven that I've ever heard, and "Linin' Track" proves there's far more to good rhythm than playing in perfect time to a metronome. "Corn Bread Rough" demonstrates his skill on the accordion, and if it doesn't make you want to get up and dance, you might want to check your pulse. "Stewball" and "The Blood Done Sign My Name (Ain't You Glad)" have been stuck in my brain with a tenacity that is usually reserved for cheesy pop songs like Hanson's "MMMBop."

It's worth noting that the EPFL's copy of this record sounds fine on speakers, but it's virtually unlistenable on headphones due to some kind of imbalance between the left and right channels. The $15 you'd spend on buying this CD from Smithsonian Folkways is absolutely worthwhile, though, and I highly recommend it.

Packaging:
I like this cover art a lot. It's a painting of a woman provocatively posed in a red dress, and it makes me want to listen to the album and see exactly who she is and why I need to keep my hands off her. Otherwise, the package is disappointing. There's no gatefold, and the inner sleeve is plain. There's a Woody Guthrie excerpt on the back, titled "Leadbelly is a hard name," that's interesting, but is far too short to provide any meaningful information. The cover of the CD release is just a black & white photo of Lead Belly. It's a good photo, but the late '50s / early '60s design of the vinyl release is more interesting to me. The CD includes the same essay by Guthrie.

Listen if you like: music that is memorable and catchy, performed by musicians who sing in a straightforward and honest way. But also, listen if you like bands who were directly influenced by Lead Belly, like Nirvana or Zeppelin.

If it were food, it'd be: flapjacks in heaven

Harry Smith: Anthology of American Folk Music

How in the world am I supposed to summarize six amazing CDs in one blog post?

Pretty much everything that has happened in American music is here in one form or another. If you're a musician or a history buff or an anthropologist, or if you simply love music, you should check this out from the EPFL. (Make sure you get the booklet from behind the desk, too.)

Checking it out won't be enough, though. I've already renewed it once, and I've barely scratched the surface. Don't check it out unless you've got 80 bucks to spare, because there's a good chance you'll end up wanting to buy it. And really, this is something that no serious music collection should be without.

It's amazing. Really. Trust me on this one.

Music:
The music on here has, directly or indirectly, influenced pretty much every modern musician. If Harry Smith hadn't put together this collection of mostly forgotten recordings and released it in 1955, pop music as we know it today would not exist. Period. That's how important this is. James Brown and Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash and Tom Waits and Beck and pretty much everyone else would have all become bankers or shopkeepers or haberdashers or something.

Packaging:
Harry Smith's original notes summarized each song with a single sentence, which resulted in garish headlines like "Wife's Logic Fails to Explain Strange Bedfellow to Drunkard." The notes that accompany this 1997 CD reissue aren't quite as much fun, but they are as thick as a book and fascinating to read. Best of all, they list recent versions of each song in a number of genres, so you can really dig in and learn about every piece of music on here. Again, this isn't something that can be digested in the three weeks that the EPFL gives you. Don't check this out if you're not willing to take the risk that you'll want to buy it.

Listen if you like: music and/or people

If it were food, it'd be: Water. The source of all food, and all life.

The Pratt Songs Best of 2007

It's time for a list. My favorite CDs from the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in no particular order. I only started this site in June, so I picked ten albums that stand out against the 50-something I've reviewed so far.

Of course, it's not that tough to figure out what I like and don't like, but being a bona fide music dork, I'm a sucker for a nice list.

• Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet -- Out of everything I've heard from the library's collection, I don't think there's any other album that I come back to more than this one. As I said in my original review, it's a tough listen that won't sit well with most people, but if you open up and give it a chance, you might be pleasantly surprised.


• Classic Railroad Songs from Smithsonian Folkways -- There is a wealth of incredible music and history waiting out there, and I've just begun to discover it. This, like most albums from Smithsonian Folkways, is a must-hear for anyone who deeply cares about music.


• Blackalicious: The Craft -- It's a great album, in every sense of the word. I've been listening to it since 2005, and I'm still not tired of it.


• Josh Ritter: Hello Starling -- This little blog is actually teaching me to listen to music in a new way. Sure, a clever bassline that snakes through some self-loathing Britpop gem still gets my heart all a'flutter, but I notice simple songs with brilliant lyrics more than I used to. And lyrically, Josh Ritter is about as good as gets for this year's crop of EPFL checkouts.


• Teitur: Stay Under the Stars -- I only gave this one a 3 out of 5, but the first song and his cover of "Great Balls of Fire" refuse to leave my mind. He found something dark and lonely in "Great Balls of Fire," something that most of us never knew was there.


• Marah: 20,000 Streets Under the Sky -- It reminds me of why I started my other blog, and why it's such a shame that I've been neglecting it. It's one of the best albums I've ever heard about city life.


• Brandi Carlile: Brandi Carlile -- I only gave her debut album 3.5 library cards, but I don't know if there's another artist I heard this year who has more potential than Brandi Carlile. I'm excited to watch and listen as her career unfolds.


• My Chemical Romance: The Black Parade -- It's nice when a good but unexceptional band stretches themselves in all the right ways. I don't think anyone who heard MCR's previous albums could have predicted The Black Parade. It's an excellent album that proves these guys are far more talented than any of their peers.


• Mika: Life in Cartoon Motion -- I understand that the album is pop fluff, but it's charming and infectuous pop fluff that's made from some substantial stuff. Mika seems to have a genuine talent and love for music.


• Tanya Donnely: This Hungry Life -- "Little Wing" just might be the best song I heard all year.

Here are a few other year-end lists that you might want to check out:
Rock and Roll Meandering Nonsense
Layla's Classic Rock
Imagine Echoes
Bill and Dave from Rock of Ages

Various Artists: Classic Railroad Songs from Smithsonian Folkways

Classic Railroad Songs understands that, even today, when rail travel is nearly obsolete and we can communicate internationally by clicking a button, trains hold a powerful place in the American conscience. Trains represent freedom and independence and the possibility of an adventure. Trains are the sadness of a lonely whistle in the middle of the night, and the excitement of a passionate kiss on a crowded platform.

Sometimes we forget that humanity didn't begin with cell phones and iPods and TiVo. People in the 19th century were just as captivated by technology, romance, tragedy, humor, joy, sadness, society, politics, and religion as we are today. The music on this collection deals with nearly everything that happens between birth and death, and it manages to do it all in the context of trains.

One thing we share with our ancestors is a fascination with disasters, and this CD is like the 19th century version of a disaster movie. You've got trains crashing into each other, trains going off the tracks, passengers getting mutilated and dying by the dozens, engineers getting mauled when they're supposed to get married... this is some gory stuff. If you remember the train wreck in the movie Unbreakable, well... this CD is like that. Except without Bruce Willis as an immortal superhero.

Of course, this music is about more than just train crashes. There's the awe-struck wonder of amazing machines, the sadness of a child lost at war, the pain of a job that was as likely to kill you as pay you, the class struggle between a wealthy man's daughter and the impoverished men who existed outside her windows, and the humorous look at an engineer who had a wife in every town on the Denver and Rio Grande line.

Humor and joy are a big part of this music. Many of the saddest songs on the CD are accompanied by uplifting music, an acknowledgment that sadness and joy co-exist in life. This art has been neglected by modern artists like Metallica, Taking Back Sunday and Jay-Z, whose songs are almost always a one-dimensional expression of emotion. But the songs on Classic Railroad Songs are not afraid to see the seeds of joy that exist in every moment of pain, and vice versa.

Music: (Last 4-5 tracks of EPFL version won't play)
Like most compilations from Smithsonian Folkways, the music is exceptional. Some of it is very difficult to listen to, especially for those of us who like our music to come from fancy studios where everything is overdubbed and underflubbed and moneygrubbed. But it doesn't matter whether or not this music is difficult, because it's worth hearing. This CD is not just educational (for instance, I never knew that Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Midnight Special" was originally written in Sugarland Prison in Texas, and was recorded by multiple prisoners in the South before Lead Belly's recording became the definitive version), but it is a link to the passions that drove our ancestors -- and drive us. There's not a song on here that should be skipped (which is very frustrating, considering that the EPFL's version of the disc is damaged), and there are several that have as much energy and life as the best music being recorded today.

Packaging:
The design isn't particularly special, but it's effective. The text is easy to read, and it's nice that the designers didn't get caught up in trying to use decorative typefaces or eye-catching layouts. Given the amount of content that's in the booklet, function over form was the right way to go. The text is broken up by photos, but there aren't any captions to describe the context or relevance of the images. Given that the music is about trains and the booklet is a miniature history lesson, it would've been nice to see at least some basic descriptions of each picture.

Listen if you like: Bob Dylan, Josh Ritter, Ani DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs. (They're not on here, but their roots are.) Also, listen if you like freedom, independence, adventures, lonely whistles in the middle of the night, passionate kisses on train platforms, and sitting in stations until it's your turn to get on and ride.

If it were food, it'd be: served in the dining car as the world races past the windows.