If there’s a theme this time around, it’s the idea that you can draw lines between all kinds of things, and despite the existence categories like “rock”, “country”, “r&b” or whatever, a lot of interesting stuff happening in the brackish areas where the borders bump up against each other. Each of these records, quite accidentally by the draw, features a bit of genre clashing.

For those keeping score, we’re up to 96. The next edition should take us up to an even 100 records reviewed and commented on.

♦ Various Artists – Kiss My Ass – Classic KISS Regrooved: Several of these tribute records cropped up in the nineties, mostly featuring young up-and-comers covering tunes from iconic classic rock bands. This one largely follows that formula, albeit with a few swerves, such as a classical piano version of “Black Diamond” from Yoshiki of XJapan, a droll acoustic version of “Rock and Roll All Nite” by Toad the Wet Sprocket, and most notably, a surprisingly excellent cover of “Hard Luck Woman” by Garth Brooks (backed by KISS themselves), whose rougher “rock” vocal style is a dead-ringer for Peter Criss, adding credence to the possibly apocryphal story that Brooks really wanted to be a rock guy, but “settled” for country because he didn’t have the right look. The record also has a great track by Extreme, and an interesting cover of “Detroit Rock City” by The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, which probably comes as close as I’m ever going to get to hearing the guitar breakdown from that song performed by mariachi horns, which I’ve always though it absolutely begged for.

♦ Emmylou Harris – Spyboy: I picked this one up from a thrift shop rack a couple of weeks back, and have enjoyed the hell out of it over several listens. It’s a live record named for Harris’s 90s back-up band, and serves as an almost career retrospective, though it comes right at the beginning of Harris’s 90s career resurgence, shifting away from traditional country and toward a folk rock/americana sound. A lot of the record comes from Harris’s early career, including her cover of “Love Hurts” (which she originally did with Gram Parsons), as well as a great version of “My Songbird” from Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. The highlights, though, are tunes from Wrecking Ball, the record the recorded tour supported, including the amazing “Deeper Well”. More than anything else, though, this record is a showcase for the band, who hang together tightly and support Harris’s lilting vocals well. In my experience, a lot of “live” country tends to rock harder than polished Nashville studio versions, though Spyboy tends to play more like a rock power trio than any country band you’re likely to find, replete with agressive bass lines, guitar feedback tricks, and extended solo breaks. It’s a nice, unexpected combination and definitely an enjoyable listening experience.

♦ John Mellencamp – Dance Naked: Mellencamp had already largely fallen from the prominence of his mid-eighties heyday by the time this record came out in 1994, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a decent little rock record. It’s sparse, both in content (nine tracks coming in at less than 30 minutes total play time) and instrumentation (the title track features just a couple of acoustic guitars and drums, with no bass), but it sounds, lacking any other effective descriptor, “like Mellencamp”. The story behind the album is that the record company wasn’t happy with his previous, more experimental record, Human Wheels, so he purposely recorded this radio-friendly, stripped down record over a couple of days in response, just to prove how little effort the kind of thing the record company wanted required. Despite being considered a simple knock-off, it still charted well, and included “Wild Night”, a Van Morrison cover/duet with funk/R&B bassist Me’shell Ndegeocello. In any case, it’s a solid little record that’s an enjoyable listen, but honestly, it feels like it’s over before it really gets started, and little of it, save “Wild Night”, really sticks with you afterward.

♦ Bad Lee White – What Goes Around: This record is a little piece of history, the first EP from the band that would eventually become The Badlees, the band I spent much of the 90s following and listening to in various Central Pennsylvania watering holes and beer gardens. It features future Badlees Jeff Feltenberger (on lead vocals here), Ron Simasek on Drums, and Brett Alexander contributing some guitar. it’s an interesting oddity, not sounding entirely like the band they’d become, but showing hints of the future. “So Long” features a prominent mandolin line and a “roots rock” vibe which would inform the band’s sound later, and “Boomerang” sounds almost R.E.M.-like, with jangly electric guitars and general Athens-eque feel. I’d been searching for a copy of this record for many years, never having been able to get my hands on an original pressing when it was on sale in the late 80s (back when couple of the guys were substitute teachers in my school), and had many fruitless years searching the internet and the tape-trading community trying to track it down. A couple of years back, the band’s manager managed to locate a couple of CD copies somewhere, and put them up for sale on ebay. Of course, I immediately snapped it up. I don’t think this is the original pressing (I think it was originally only available on cassette), as it includes the original four track EP, plus a couple of remixed tracks. However, it’s likely the only chance I’ll have at owning a copy of this collector’s item, so I’ll take it.