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Typically Sunday Morning Sessions albums are relaxed.  Calming.  Contemplative, if you like.  But this isn't just any Sunday.  Super Bowl Sunday is not a day for introspection.  Uninvisible will treat you right today.  Let MMW's jazz-funk from outer space get you fired up for the big game.  

Happy Super Bowl all. 

LC's Prediction: Giants 31, Patriots 27.
mp3: Uninvisible (album)
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Broken Social Scene.  Regardless of what came after, BSS's debut effort Feel Good Lost is great, ambient background music for thoughtful...well, whatever.  

You get from this album whatever effort you put into it.  Really a perfectly titled record.  Kick back and enjoy what's left of the quickly diminishing weekend.  

Happy Sunday all. 
mp3: Feel Good Lost (album)
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It's been medically proven that The Band can cure the holiday blues. There are not a lot of albums that I'd call perfect, but Big Pink is one of them.  There's a lot that can be said about this record, but needless conversation isn't what Sunday mornings are all about.  Just listen and let your problems melt away.

Back next week for the pre-Xmas push.  Will Christmas in the Heart be discussed?  Likely.  

Listen to Big Pink in its entirety below.  You're welcome.  Happy Sunday all.
mp3: Music From Big Pink (album)
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Sometimes the blues just need you.  

Muddy Waters is one of those guys...without Muddy...are the blues the blues?  I'm not sure that question can be answered (well, maybe by good ol' Keef). 

Regardless, Sunday morning is a good time to ponder such age-old dilemmas.  That's if you can push last week out of your mind and let next week's potential sit for a few more hours.  Let the excellent "Live at Mr. Kelly's" from 1971 get you in the right frame of mind this morning.  Muddy won't let you down.  We'll find that Sunday in-the-moment clarity together.  Have a listen to the full set below.  

Sometimes you just need the blues.
mp3: Live at Mr. Kelly's (album)
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Anything Neil Young did up until the late 70s is perfect for Sunday morning.  I mean, you really can't go wrong.  This probably won't the last Neil SMS installment, but it should be the first.  Awhile back I read Elton John say that Neil Young sat down in front of a piano late one night and played him After the Gold Rush in its entirety prior to its release.  Once I get that rock and roll time machine up and running, that night will be destination #1.  

It doesn't get any better than Gold Rush.  Have a listen to the full album below (recorded from the original vinyl, don't mind the scratching).  

Happy Sunday all. 


mp3: After the Gold Rush (album) 
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Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard took a break from their working bands awhile back and put this album together in an attempt to soundtrack Jack Kerouac’s book Big Sur.  It’s probably not possible to get this right or wrong (it’s a weird book), but a noble experiment even if you’re not a Kerouac fan.  Gibbard and Farrar’s country-highway take is joyful with some understated desperation mixed in.  I think Jack would've approved.

Don't be scared of Farrar's show at the Belly Up on 11/13.  

Happy Sunday all – full album below.  Stay tuned for next week’s session… 
 
   
mp3: One Fast Move or I’m Gone (Album)
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Happy Valentine’s all.  It’s Sunday, and you know what that means…

Get on the job, plug in, and let Herbie’s absolutely bad-ass 1962 Blue Note debut help you seal the deal with its breezy innovation.  Cool out through the entire album below…


mp3: Takin’ Off (Album)
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Sunday Morning Sessions is Lightweight Contender’s weekly attempt to make everything better in a terribly shitty and offensive world.  You know that cord you use to plug your iPod into your stereo?  Do yourself a favor and plug your laptop in, push play and let your otherwise doomed Sunday take off…

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid is a good Bob Dylan album.  Even by Bob Dylan standards.  That’s saying something.  Pat & Billy carries an underestimated, pretty and dusty sound that Dylan never really had before or after.  The sound and feel is different for Dylan in that this particular album is good - in the purest sense of the word.  Good in the same way that green grass, blue skies and the double play are inestimably good.  Dylan is a character that really can’t be described, but he gave the world a quick peek below his skirt with Pat & Billy.  In other words, it's perfect for Sunday morning. 

Enjoy this one in its entirety below.  Stay tuned for next week’s Sunday Session.


mp3: Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Album)
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Sunday mornings are a strange limbo.  The weekend is over, you’re probably hungover.  You still have the entire day to take advantage of – or to not take advantage of.  Mostly you’re sitting around, enjoying the fact that you’re still far enough away from Monday and the inevitable painful trudge back to the weekly cesspool.  Another way to think about Sunday morning is that it’s a good time to think, a good time to consider what in the fuck you’re doing with your life.  Or to drink Bloody Marys.  Or both. 

This will (hopefully) be a recurring segment – with ideas on who you should be spending your time with on the strangest day of the week.  And, this being the first entry – we’ll start with the record that inspired the idea. 

John Coltrane.  A Love Supreme.  It’s a campy and overdone statement – but A Love Supreme is really less music, more art.  Beautiful.  Intense.  Joyful.  Coltrane’s four-part masterpiece covers the full range of pain and pleasure and comes out the other end.  It’s the sound of a man who’s been through hell and found his own personal version of salvation.  Hell, even the song names read like steps in some lost Christian-Buddhist path to enlightenment – Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm.   

The liner notes have this quote from Coltrane’s wife describing when the album was written…

“It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful.  He walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquility.  So I said, ‘Tell me everything, we didn’t see you really for four or five days.’  …  He said, ‘This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suite.  This is the first time I have everything, everything ready."

I started listening to A Love Supreme on Sunday mornings a long time ago.  There will be other entries to this segment - but this one will be the best.  Enjoy.  Bloody Marys optional.
mp3: Acknowledgement
mp3: Resolution
mp3: Pursuance
mp3: Psalm
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