(Modern Acoustic Blues) Dion - Son of Skip James - 2007, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

When Dion DiMucci, one of the early great rock & roll stars, knocked out Bronx in Blue in 2005, it caused a rumbling stir among critics, if no one else. To be honest, no one expected much -- not even Dion, who hadn't made music for the masses since 1968 with his last big hit, "Abraham, Martin and John." He nailed down a few hip records in the early '70s and has made plenty since, but American audiences don't get to hear them for all the usual reasons. If the biz wasn't itself, his turn of the century classic, Déjà Nu, would have sold a million or two. Bronx in Blue was a killer blues record. Yeah, a blues record. It was on this tiny little label with inadequate distribution, and whatever...you know the story. But if you were lucky enough to hear that disc, you could hear the same Dion who issued those hip blues records for Columbia in the mid-'60s, produced by Tom Wilson. The years melted away and Dion's unique take on the blues via the street corners, record shops, and alleyways of the Bronx came pouring through the speakers like some message from another world. For anyone cynical enough to think it improper for Dion to title this record Son of Skip James, quit reading right now; you won't get it at all. DiMucci played the Newport festivals and was as deeply under the sway of James, John Hurt, Fred McDowell, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Muddy Waters as Dylan, the Band, Fred Neil, John Fahey, Tom Rush, and the like. And he could sing that music with the same open, unselfconscious freedom and abandon as the masters. Dion knew the blues, and a trip through his autobiography would convince almost anyone.

Which brings listeners to this hip set, released on Verve Forecast. Dion being back with a major has done the opposite of what would be expected. This isn't some nostalgia record. It's a tightrope walker. If anything, with the stakes increased, it's made him more raw, immediate, and utterly full of life, spunk, grit, and truth than ever; he's as hungry for the meaning in the music and as cockily self-assured as "the Wanderer" who laid "Ruby Baby" down nearly 50 years ago. DiMucci's voice is a thing of wonder; he has lost none of his vitality and none of his range, and his control over it is simply amazing. He also plays a pretty mean guitar. He didn't need any big-name producer or all-star band, either. Dion produced Son of Skip James himself, plays acoustic guitar and harmonica, and sings his rear off. Rick Krive accompanies him on piano on a few tracks, and Bob Guertin is on percussion and Hammond B-3 on others. That's it. The program consists of a number of classic blues tunes and some that should be considered that way. For starters, it opens with a killer reading of Chuck Berry's "Nadine"; in it you can hear unmistakably that -- in a great singer's voice -- what separates the blues from rock & roll is invisible. Dion's covers of Willie Dixon's "My Babe" and "Hoochie Coochie Man," Junior Wells' "Hoodoo Man Blues," Sleepy John Estes' "Drop Down Mama," Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" and "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day," and yeah, Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman" are deeply personal, swaggering, and the real thing: original. He's not singing these songs because they are classics, but because he hears something in them calling his name. He's had plenty of time to hear those sounds, to take them into himself and now to spit them back out through his own experience. There isn't a note here that's tired, clichéd, or inauthentic.

One piece of evidence that this is the truth is that he's also written a few tunes here that hold water next to these towering monoliths of the American music canon. Check "The Thunderer," a rambling bluesy folk tune with Rhodes piano and spare percussion, where Dion sings about St. Jerome (an early translator of the Bible as a deeply conflicted, sexist, prejudicial, and blessed if contradictory madman -- "God's crotchety scholar"). Dion's conclusion is not unlike those of the bluesmen before him: "...It takes all kinds to make it to heaven...love without truth is just sentimental/Truth without love is sterile...." This isn't Dion preaching the gospel, but affirming the loopy sense of inconsistency that humans walk the earth with, and affirming his belief in a God that not only understands this but celebrates it. He offers a little tale about Dylan performing "Blowin' in the Wind," at the 1997 World Eucharistic Conference, which will strike some as preachy, as will the title track. So, if religion offends you -- particularly Christian religion -- this might put you off a bit, but too bad. The title track spells out a confident smiling conviction that the tough-guy bravado he showed on Saturday night is no act: as he walks to church on Sunday morning he lays it out straight to the guy across the street selling wolf tickets and laughing at him: "I'm a lover not a fighter/But I could kick your ass." Uh-huh. Anybody who would be so audacious as to lay that tune down before the Holy Grail of the blues in Johnson's "Preachin' Blues," followed by "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" and the set-closing "Devil Got My Woman," has got a pair. In other words, Dion's either crazy or he knows something of what he's singing. He knows that the other side of Saturday night is Sunday morning. To be honest, it wouldn't matter if he were singing The Anarchist Cookbook (although it might endear him to a few more politically correct types); he'd still sing like a lonesome midnight angel wailing in front of a burning trash can on some trash-strewn street corner. Just before 2007 slips away, Dion strolls right back in the front door like he's never been gone, with one of the best records of the year under his arm.

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Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008

EAC extraction logfile from 7. April 2008, 11:27

Dion / Son of Skip James

Used drive : DVDRW IDE 16X Adapter: 1 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 12
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\eac\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=EAC FLAC -8" %s

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:33.62 | 0 | 16036
2 | 3:33.62 | 3:12.55 | 16037 | 30491
3 | 6:46.42 | 2:45.60 | 30492 | 42926
4 | 9:32.27 | 4:12.18 | 42927 | 61844
5 | 13:44.45 | 4:00.55 | 61845 | 79899
6 | 17:45.25 | 3:30.60 | 79900 | 95709
7 | 21:16.10 | 3:19.02 | 95710 | 110636
8 | 24:35.12 | 4:34.58 | 110637 | 131244
9 | 29:09.70 | 0:38.30 | 131245 | 134124
10 | 29:48.25 | 3:29.27 | 134125 | 149826
11 | 33:17.52 | 3:34.33 | 149827 | 165909
12 | 36:52.10 | 3:50.05 | 165910 | 183164
13 | 40:42.15 | 2:59.42 | 183165 | 196631

Track 1

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\01 - Nadine.wav

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Track 2

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\02 - My Babe.wav

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Track 3

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\03 - Hoodoo Man Blues.wav

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Track 4

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\04 - Drop Down Mama.wav

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Track 5

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\05 - Hoochie Coochie Man.wav

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Track 6

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\06 - Baby I'm in the Mood.wav

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Track 7

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\07 - I'm a Guitar King.wav

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Track 8

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\08 - The Thunderer.wav

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Track 9

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\09 - Interlude - Spoken Word.wav

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Track 10

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\10 - Son of Skip James.wav

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Track 11

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\11 - Preachin' Blues.wav

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Track 12

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\12 - If I Had Possession (Over Judgement Day).wav

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Track 13

Filename M:\ut dls\Dion - Son of Skip James (2007) [FLAC]\13 - Devil Got My Woman.wav

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None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

No errors occurred

End of status report

REM GENRE Blues
REM DATE 2007
REM DISCID BB0A3D0D
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4"
PERFORMER "Dion"
TITLE "Son of Skip James"
FILE "01 - Nadine.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Nadine"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "My Babe"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:32:32
FILE "02 - My Babe.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Hoodoo Man Blues"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:10:43
FILE "03 - Hoodoo Man Blues.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Drop Down Mama"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 02:43:68
FILE "04 - Drop Down Mama.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Hoochie Coochie Man"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 04:10:43
FILE "05 - Hoochie Coochie Man.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Baby I'm in the Mood"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:59:60
FILE "06 - Baby I'm in the Mood.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "I'm a Guitar King"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:29:10
FILE "07 - I'm a Guitar King.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "The Thunderer"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:17:50
FILE "08 - The Thunderer.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Interlude - Spoken Word"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 04:34:00
FILE "09 - Interlude - Spoken Word.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Son of Skip James"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 00:36:52
FILE "10 - Son of Skip James.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Preachin' Blues"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:29:22
FILE "11 - Preachin' Blues.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "If I Had Possession (Over Judgement Day)"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:32:00
FILE "12 - If I Had Possession (Over Judgement Day).wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 13 AUDIO
TITLE "Devil Got My Woman"
PERFORMER "Dion"
INDEX 00 03:46:67
FILE "13 - Devil Got My Woman.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00

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DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE

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PERFORMER: auCDtect Task Manager, ver. 1.0.3 B1 build 1.0.3.0
Copyright (c) 2008, 2009 y-soft. All rights reserved
http://y-soft.110mb.com

ANALYZER: auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright (c) 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.

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