TOMORROW ON OUTQ: BEN HARPER, RAPHAEL SAADIQ, ROME, BOOKER T, BLIND BOYS

Longtime readers of No Expiration know that on Wednesday mornings at 9 am ET, I go on SiriusXM OutQ's Morning Jolt with Larry Flick to talk about music. Sometimes I have a theme: tomorrow the theme is cool new music.  I know, that's a bit vague.

First off is the new Ben Harper album, Give 'Till It's Gone. I wrote about that the other day: I like it a lot, and I prefer it to his last album with Relentless7 (R7 is the backing band on this one, and they are credited with co-writing songs, but for some reason the album is being referred to as a "solo album").  Ringo Starr and Jackson Browne both guest on the album... Ben is slowly entering the classic rock echelon of artists, and rightfully so.

I am digging Raphael Saadiq's new album, Stone Rollin'.  He is such a talented musician, and I give him a lot of credit for doing an album like this.  There's almost no imaginable context where this could be a hit in 2011.  Shame on us: it deserves to be a hit. He kind of splits the difference between classic Motown and classic Chess here, with maybe a bit of Stax thrown in. He plays most of the instruments, and there are very few guest stars on the album, and I have a feeling that this is going to be a hard one to sell.  So do your part as a music fan and go BUY it.

Rome is a very cool project that I just wrote about: it features producer Danger Mouse and Italian film composer Danielle Luppi paying tribute to spaghetti western scores. Jack White (him again, uh oh) and Norah Jones are the featured singers on the album. It's a score to a film that hasn't been made yet.

Booker T Jones just released his second solo album in a row (I guess he doesn't want to make records with The MG's again?). On his last album, Potato Hole, he used The Drive-By Truckers plus Neil Young as his backing band, and the album was all instrumental (which is fitting, because his Hammond organ playing is so lyrical). This time, on The Road To Memphis, he uses The Roots and Questlove co-produces.  There are a couple of cool guest singers, including Sharon Jones, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and even Booker T himself.

Finally, Take The High Road, the new album by The Blind Boys Of Alabama. It has a bunch of country collaborations on it (including one with Willie Nelson) and the album was produced by Jamey Johnson. It's a good album!

Hey, if you're a reader and haven't gotten to hear me on the radio (and if you want to), why not get a free online subscription trial, at www.siriusxm.com/freetrial .

BEST OF THE '00s: BEN HARPER

Longtime readers of No Expiration know that I am a HUGE fan of Ben Harper. If you're new, you know that I veer towards more "vintage" artists. So let me throw down right here and now and say that Ben is one of the greatest artists of all time, in my opinion. A lot of today's artists who are a "big deal" wouldn't be as big of a deal if they surfaced in the '60s or '70s.  I'll say here that Ben would have been even bigger had he come up in those eras.

I have to admit, I've always been rooting for him. When I read about people seeing Bruce Springsteen at the Stone Pony or Bob Marley on his first U.S. tour, I wondered if I'd ever get to see a talent of that caliber before the general public got wise. In 1994, I was an intern at CMJ magazine, and I found an interesting-looking promo CD. I just liked the way it looked! It was four songs from Ben's classic debut, Welcome To The Cruel World, and it had "Don't Take That Attitude To Your Grave" and "Mama's Got A Girlfriend Now" and a two others. I was sold.  I bought the full CD and then went to see Ben perform at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, opening for Alejandro Escovedo. I was blown away by Ben's set (Alejandro was great too). I became evangelical, buying extra copies of his CD and giving it to anyone who I thought had good taste in music. But that was the '90s, lets talk about the '00s.

Ben kicked off the decade with some great covers: The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" from the I Am Sam soundtrack, and The Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" -- both backed by the legendary Funk Brothers -- for the documentary film Standing In The Shadows Of Motown. What other contemporary artist would have the stones to even attempt those songs? He paid the highest tribute to the originals by being respectful while bringing his own persona to the song.

But Ben is no covers artist. In 2003 he returned with a classic album of his own, Diamonds On The Inside which featured one of his best songs, "With My Own Two Songs," a song that I believe people will be singing in a hundred years from now and beyond. The album was a culmination of everything he'd done at that point: reggae, blues, soul, rock and roll and even metal (if you don't believe me, go 15 seconds into "So High So Low").

The following year, he released the amazing collaboration with gospel legends The Blind Boys Of Alabma, There Will Be A Light, maybe my favorite or second favorite album of the decade. Such an amazing collaboration, I'm not a good enough writer to put this one into words. I'll say this: I've seen a lot of concerts in my life. I've seen a lot of Ben Harper concerts in my life. But Ben with the Blind Boys at the Apollo Theater in Harlem is one of the greatest performances I have ever seen.

I would imagine that that album must have been pretty difficult to follow up. The next album was 2006's double album Both Sides Of The Gun, which was sort of half a solo album and half with his incredible backing band, The Innocent Criminals, who I should have mentioned already. This album was even more diverse than Diamonds, and as usual, showed no compromise to the commercial music market (and that said, most of his music is totally accessible, as long as you don't require being pandered to). There are so many great songs to talk about here, but I'll go with "Better Way," another one that will be sung in an century, long after we are gone.

I'll pause here for a second to give props to his record label. I don't know if he has a good relationship with them, but it shocks me that a record label has stuck with a non-hit-single artist like Ben for so long. Maybe they hold him to a different standard than the rest of their roster, and they should.

In 2007, he returned with his second best album of the decade, Lifeline. This one was recorded with The Innocent Criminals right after a tour, and would be their last album for a while. It was a great one to say goodbye with.

This year, he made the really daring move of changing bands - on the Lifeline tour he got big enough to sell out two nights in a row at Radio City Music Hall. His label and management must have been thinking "finally!" So what does he do? Puts The Innocent Criminals on hiatus and gets together with a harder rocking combo, Relentless7 and starts playing bars. He knows what he's doing. I love both bands -- and I'm sure he does also. I'm sure he'll play with the Criminals in the future, just as Bruce doesn't always work with E Street and Neil Young doesn't always rock with Crazy Horse.

This post is getting a bit long, and I haven't even gone into his collaborations with Jack Johnson (who he helped to put on the map), Willie Nelson, Toots Hibbert, Stephen Marley, Bonnie Raitt, and Eddie Vedder. So I'll wrap it up here -- if you are looking to get into Ben, comment here and I'll get back to you, or just post a "beginner's guide to Ben Harper."


More Best Of The '00s: Bob Dylan
Willie Nelson
Aimee Mann
Jeff Tweedy
David Johansen
Levon Helm
The Beatles
Jim James
U2
Steve Earle

THE GRAMMYS PRE-BROADCAST

When I used to cover the Grammys for VH1, I was lucky enough to cover the pre-telecast awards. I would be in our special press room, watching on closed circuit TV. I know that sitting through three hours of awards given to non-celebrities for music genres like classical and world music doesn't sound like fun, and it definitely isn't totally thrilling, but some parts are great. I got to interview the Blind Boys Of Alabama, and Lord of the Rings score composter Howard Shore, and Steve Earle, for instance. People who would never really make the telecast. A lot of the people who get their awards during the pre-tel, it really means a lot to them: they aren't just celebs on the award show circuit. These are often people who really have to think if it is worth it to pay for a fairly expensive trip to L.A. to maybe win an award in a non-televised award show where they may get two or three minutes to give a public thank you.

This year I watched the "pre-tel" on the Grammy's finally improving web site, and there were some great moments. George Carlin's daughter accepted his fifth career Grammy for Best Comedy Album for It's Bad For Ya. Dweezeil Zappa had a moving speech to a nearly empty house when his group Zappa Plays Zappa won Best Rock Instrumental for thier version of "Peaches en Regalia," which his father Frank Zappa wrote for him when he was born, 40 years ago. This category was a bone of contention between my wife and I: I wanted Metallica to win for "Suicide & Redemption," and she wanted Nine Inch Nails for "34 Ghosts I-IV." But I was glad that Dweezil won, it meant more to him. Apparently, someone who co-wrote a song for Lil Wayne died, and someone accepted for him and that was sad too.

Other cool awards: The Blind Boys winning thier fifth career Grammy, Weezer winning for their "Pork and Beans" video, Peter Gabriel winning for the Wall-E song "Down To Earth," B.B. King winning his 15th for his great album One Kind Favor, Alicia Keys winning her 12th for "Superwoman," Al Green winning his 10th and 11th for songs from Lay It Down, Duffy won one, Rick Rubin won Producer of the Year, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss won their first two of hopefully many tonight (they won one last year also). Other than the Blind Boys, none of these people were there though. In fact, the only big names there were Carrie Underwood and Robert Trujilio of Metallica (who won Best Metal Performance for "My Apocolypse").

Other cool awards: Juno took best soundtrack, They Might Be Giants won for a children's record, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers won long-form video for Running Down A Dream, Pete Seeger won in the folk category for At 89.

Some lame upsets: John Mayer's "Gravity" beat Bruce Springsteen's "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" for Best Male Rock Vocal (I don't really think of Mayer as a rock singer), the Kings Of Leon beat AC/DC in a rock category, and country singer Jamey Johnson didn't win anything. But on to the main show! Good luck to everyone... but especially Robert Plant & Alison Krauss.