The Blues steam within The Well is pretty deep.  I’m not saying it’s the definite collection of blues in a longshot, but I feel it is a fair representation of blues music available out there. It includes the likes of John Lee Hooker, Junior Kimbrough, Mississippi John Hurt, R.L. Burnside, Johnny Winter, BB King, Bo Diddley,  Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Scrapper Blackwell, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, Stevie Ray Vaughan, I know I am forgetting scores of them as I write this. All this music and more flooded into my ears during the course of this project and I loved every minute off it. Bands like The Black Keys and John Spencer Blues Explosion that straddle the line between blues and something else entirely. Screamin Jay Hawkins and his theatrics long before any glam bands thought of the idea. Before Alice Cooper.  It’s fun to try to define genres only because It’s fun to blur those definitions. Blues is a part of me.

I do like my music noisy though,  so bands like Faith No More,  nomeansno, Metallica, Swans, and especially Pere Ubu, all artful noisemakers. The Ubu are just crazy.  I think they are purposefully trying to annoy people sometimes. It can be a hard listen sometimes, but make your way through the shrieking and dissonance and it’s all just artful chaos to me. Dig it!

Black Flag, Bad Religion, Social D, X, Ramones, Sex Pistols, NOFX, MXPX, X-Ray Spex, holy shit look at all the X’s! Television, Voidoids, The Clash, Gang Of Four, The Stooges, Wire, Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Replacements, Husker Du, all a huge part of The Well.  Punk-O-Rama compilations were a nice cross section of Epitaph’s roster.  All this punk deliciousness wonderfully poisoned my mind during this project.

Calexico was an amazing find for me. If you told me three years ago that I would be listening to a Mariachi ad digging it I wouldn’t have believed you.  This band is all atmospherics and transcending. They make you feel like you’re living in a spaghetti western.  They take you out into the desert at night. They bring the southwest alive.

Ben Harper was a revelation to me.  I was familiar with his music but I now have an in depth and personal relationship with an extensive part of his catalog. For some reason, my local library had many CDs in their racks so I brought em  all home and ripped em.  It’s my library, my CD’s yes? The library is an excellent source for ripping music that you already own.  I used it to round out jazz and country artists within the well. Willie Nelson, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, all came from my local library. Anyway, Back to Harper, I think its so cool how he has distinct bands with the Innocent Criminals and The Relentless 7, sorta like Neil Young did.  He also introduced me to The Blind Boys of Alabama by doing an amazing album with them.  There Will Be A Light is now one of my favorite albums.

Heavy metal within The Well was represented by the big three of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I really am partial to the earlier work of these bands. Metallica was there, fully represented with their entire catalog.  I do not much like anything after The Black Album and even that is pushing it for me. I do not like any of the Load or Reload Crap but I did pick up Death Magnetic and it seems a return to form. Oakland’s finest Machine Head, who’s 5 or 6 albums I have, I picked up by accident and a happy accident at that.  This is how heavy music should sound.  Very organically aggressive.  I like this band a lot more than I ever thought I would. Deftones, Faith No More, Tool, System Of A Down, all bands that make you question if they are metal or not. New Wave of British Heavy metal Compilations were just amazing to hear all peppered into the flow of The Well.  There is no Slayer in The Well.  I do not like Slayer. There, I said It.

Captain Beefheart has got to be my single favorite discovery.  I began to acquire Beefheart music a few years ago, and now I own virtually everything he released and I have listened to it extensively and am just blown away by it.  It is so weird and obtuse.  To the casual listener it can sound so confusing and  sound just plain wrong.  I dig the method to the madness that you can find buried within the songs. Albums like Troutmask Replica can be a hard listen but the reward is there.  My favorite has got to be Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).  This is just such an amazing document to me.  So bizzare, so concise. Lick My Decals Off, Baby is another great Beefheart album.  His Magic Band has just been amazing over the years.

Tom Waits has been a big part of The Well.  His music is well represented here.  From the whiskey and cigarette soaked songs of his early career, to the more esoteric of his records.  I’ve read that his wife introduced him to Captain Beeffheart’s records before he made the Rain Dogs, Swordfish Trombones, and Black Riders that are a big part of his collection.  I just picked up his new album with my iTunes gift cards, so his portion off The Well continues to grow.

Someone asked me if I was going to do a top ten list or something like that and that seems impossible to me.  I’ve listened to somewhere around 36,600 songs from somewhere around 1,000 different artists.  To be honest, I’ve lost track.  I may post in the future with some more definite numbers, but let’s just say that I listened to a shitload of music in the past two years.  My Uncle recently asked me for some music from The Well so I’ve written up a list for him that is by no means exclusive or all inclusive and really just what came to my mind to burn music that I love and that my uncle might find interesting and new.  I think that this list is as close as you’re going to get to a top ten…

Calexico – Hot Rail, The Black Light

DEVO, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO

The Police Outlandos Amour

Miles Davis – On The Corner

Captain Beefheart – Shiny Beast, Clear Spot

Metallica – And Justice For All

Television – Marquee Moon

Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner

The Replacements – Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash

The Pretenders – The Pretenders

System Of A Down – Toxicity

There’s purposely no blues or country on this list because I feel like my uncle is already familiar with that music.  I think most of this list will be new to him and that’s what’s important to me.

As you may be able to tell, my interest in this project has wavered from time to time, as you can see from some of the sparse and far between posts.  Oh well, get over it.  I did learn a lot over the course of this gig and I’ve build some serious relationships with a lot of artists I had not known before.  There are many albums and artists that I have not mentioned over the course of this project and that is simply because there are literally too many to list. You will find them all in the lists that follow each of these posts.  This next list is the longest yet posted and for now the last.