MORRISTOWN HIT BY A PETE YORN ROCK STORM

https://youtu.be/zRy9SvPEvd8?si=Ju9Ca9vMgt_W27Vp

About time I wrote about some music from the 21st century I thought, I have been stuck in a time warp stretching from the late 70`s to the early 90`s lately, and I didn`t want all

the Gen Y`er`s who read my blog to think I`m a total fuddy duddy straightjacket who never got over Duran Duran and Wham breaking up. 

I actually love listening to `Wake.Me Up Before You Go Go` and the decadent video clip to`Girls On Film` was nearly as good as seeing Kim Bassinger in the nude 30 years ago. 

I never did pay a lot of attention to what they were singing, I wonder why that is. Anyhow, alternative music is a broad church, and sometimes here and there, you will find a gem amongst all the other

jargon which gets categorised under the alternative rock banner.

In 2003, an obscure alternative roots rocker who is barely known outside the state of New Jersey, by the name of Pete Yorn, released a live 2 CD album appropriately titled `Live From New Jersey`.

I only bought this album about a week ago actually, I took a punt and decided to buy a pig in a bag, but I`m really glad I did. 

`Live From New Jersey` is a brilliant live album, Pete Yorn is most definitely underrated. I had never heard of him be-

fore, the only reason i bought the album was because the back of the CD cover listed all the instruments and members of Yorn`s band and what they played on the album.

I liked the look of a live album which had piano and harmonica included in an alternative rock setting. I am not
sure if Pete Yorn knows it himself, but judging by what sound he articulates on this album anyway, he takes so much after Powderfinger.

Maybe Bernard Fanning and the boys don't know it either, but they sound a lot like a
Pete York live concert. You can definitely hear some of the old Crazy Horse licks on Yorn's guitar, not to mention a bit of influence from arguably the very first alter-

native rockers of them all, The Pixies. 

The opening tune on CD 1 is a blues cover called `I Feel Good Again, which is followed by whatI would consider to be the best song of all,`Pass Me By`. 

`Carlos (Dont Let It Go To Your Head)` is

my second pick, while the slightly more sophisticated and glossy `Turn of the Century` sees Pete Yorn slow down a
bit with his guitar heroics. 

`Closet` rocks outs frenetically as good as any Crazy Horse performance, while the ballad`Just Another`proves that Pete Yorn is more of an Eddie Vedder than a Kurt Cobain. 

CD 2 is a little less impressive, but it still is far from a disappointment. Pete Yorn wrote a tribute song in the late 90`s to Jeff Buckley, who died way before his time. 

That song, `Bandstand in the Sky` is a bit
jazzed up for the occasion for this live performance, I can't say I have listened to the studio version and can make the

comparison, but the live version is uptempo and anything but depressing. 

York chucks in a rendition of `Suspicious

Minds`, the old Mark James song made immortal by the king of rock`n`roll, but credit here should go to the piano player Joe Kennedy more than Pete Yorn, he mightn`t be the crispest piano player around but his chords laden performance over the whole album is the perfect fit for Pete Yorn`s unconventional time signatures. 

Not quite as up and down as John Lee Hooker but it certainly wasn`t a Def Leppard concert he was playing in. 

The songs `For Nancy (`Cos It Already Is)`, Burrito` and Pete Yorn`s self anointed favourite `June` completes a classic rock

treble act. 

Pete Yorn mightn`t be as slick as Chris Cornell in the vocal stakes, and he might not be able to wrestle a guitar as ferociously as Neil Young or Kurt Cobain, but this performance anyway at the Community Theatre in Morristown, New Jersey on the 29th October in. 2003 deserves the accolades which I am almost certain it never received. Up their with any early 90`s grunge.