Ian Hunter – Man Overboard, by Ron Swanson

Ed. Note – This is just in from Ron Swanson. As it is extremely rare to hear from Ron during football season via any communicational modality, we can assume the subject here is of extreme importance and the quality of the recording, insurmountably good, since Ron chose to put down the remote and educate us during the abundantly fun and deeply sacred opening of this year’s holy football season. As Linda says in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”

That said, Ron declares:

“I finally got around to ordering Ian Hunter’s 2009 release Man Overboard. It has been way too long since I bought music by an artist I don’t know anything about because I liked a song on the radio, but it’s still nice to have new music that makes me want to listen over and over.

Captain Spaulding can back me up on this. What they call the Rant Band (named for Hunter’s 2001 release, Rant) is awfully good. http://www.myspace.com/ianhunterband They’ve got 3 or 4 guys who can play anything with strings on, but none of them are what you’d call flashy. I love the use of the baritone guitar and on the new one there’s even a song with the bouzouki (James Mastro) as the lead instrument.

Listen to “Arms and Legs” if you get the chance. It just has the sound I love – don’t have to be able to define it, just know that I like it.

East Portland Blog – when you’re looking for tags for various things for the blog, look at the song called “Flowers”. I think the line, “Any man killed is an insult to any faith/Sometimes flowers ain’t enough” is too terribly appropriate for the world today.

On a positive note, it’s starting to be fun to cheer for Northwestern football again.

Be well, my friends.

Ron”

Post Script from East Portland Blog – Here’s Gail Worley‘s 1999 journalistic classic The Golden Age of Rock & Roll: An Interview with Rock Legend, Ian Hunter.