One of the side effects of the ongoing OTB site refresh effort is that I’ve spent quite a bit of time cleaning up things in the backend that no one outside the main posters see (and probably spending too much time cleaning up front end things like menus that few readers ever look at). Among the serendipitous effects of this is seeing not only old posts that I haven’t looked at in years but also revisiting old site concepts. While the old Beltway Traffic Jam is unlikely to see a revival, since it was an artifact of the young days of blogging, I’m going to experiment with a revival of the Late Night OTB music series.
I don’t have the patience for traditional radio anymore and, indeed, I finally gave up even on Sirius/XM because the commercials and inconsistency of programming was aggravating in an age where I expect to simply click “skip” and move on to something I might like better. And I mostly listen to podcasts on my commute these days. So I mostly discover new-to-me music while working out or walking, when I need to turn off the brain from concentrating on the firehose of new information.
A while back, via YouTube (I pay the 10 bucks a month for the Red service, which skips ads and allows downloading music to my phone) I stumbled on this:
I’ve been familiar with Jason Isbell’s work for years and, indeed, the song above is the one that first stuck with me. But I’d previously heard studio versions, both of Isbell as a solo artist and the version he wrote and recorded with the Drive-By Truckers back in 2004:
It’s a great song either way but I much prefer the stripped-down live version. Indeed, the main reason that I pay for the premium YouTube service when there are so many other music services out there is precisely the incredible variety of live cuts they have available.
