Ricky Fitzpatrick's song "Ballad of Billy the Kid" is a 3 minute class in songwriting.

A compelling story filled with unexpected references, internal rhymes, interesting characters...not to mention his beautiful voice. His single acoustic guitar is the perfect backdrop for this tragic and beautiful story. A couple of four-letter words, but nothing that doesn't fit appropriately into the song as a whole.

Ricky's comment on the mystery of the song has always been "Never judge a man til you've walked a mile in his shoes".

I am a fan and always will be. I suggest checking Ricky out while he's still available as a "local" artist at www.rickyfitzpatrick.com.

In order to fully examine the minds of torment and depression, one would need to be familiar with Nick Drake's 'Black Eyed Dog.' With his transcendant ability to translate his demons into song, Nick Drake accounts a supernatural phantasm chasing him through the darkness of his own neurosis. 'Black eyed dog he claws at my door' - sung in his upper register, with the use of heavey falcetto, sounds like he is straining to survive a nightmare. His performance, despite the sparse production of acoustic guitar and vocal, is expansive. Use of harmonics and finger roll on this song proves the mastery of his instrument, as an amateur guitarist I am baffled by the sound he can create. The singular pulse of the guitar string rings-out with a delicate harmonic while the layering of other voices continue subtly underneath. And the result is the tragic embrace of his own psychological deterioration; a horror unlike the Macabre style of the French, it stands as its own haunting style, that of 'Drakesque.'

As we know his depression did finally catch up to him, and as a revisionist I would say that Nick knew it would all along, sooner or later. One would only need to hear this song and some of the pieces are put into place.

Close Up And Reak is a lovely album but this is my favourite track. It's a bittersweet tale of a person's (possibly Jane's), gradual loss in humankind. The song opens with a wailing violin which then introduces a soft, acoustic blanket of intsrumentation topped with Jane's wistful vocals.

If anyone ever wondered why Francoise Hardy never did an album as good as La Question this woman might well be the answer. For it was Tuca that was responsible for, well as i have figured out at least, the songs, production and string arrangements on that particular album. Tuca only made three albums herself, all of which is flawed, but at her best shows her influence on the la question album. With a voice somewhere between nara leao and joyce her songs really did come onto her own on her last album Dracula i love you. The title track is a haunting ballad that almost sounds if Kate Bush had been born in Brazil. Well, nearly i must add because i had so high expectations after the la question album so i was a bit disappointed when i heard her albums. But you could only imagine what great music Tuca could have done. This track at least shows her enormous potential and a sense of atmosphere that i haven´t heard from any other brazilian artist. Tuca tragically died in 1978 after trying losing weight to fast. Does anyone know more about her?

A strange instrumental which borrows the melody from the first line or two of "Strangers In The Night" and repeats it obsessively without really getting past the "wond'ring in the night" part. The intense, driving arrangement along with the incomplete melody give this track a creepy, tragic feeling which I find really enthralling.


This is from an odd bootleg-ish compilation with no real track information given. The first volume of this series was okay but sounded like it was mastered directly from the audio track of old adult films. The sound quality and selection on this volume is much better. My best guess is that these are sound library recordings that may or may not have actually appeared in adult films. Anyone know the real artist or source of this track?

This is one of these sensationally sensual, wonderful instrumental tracks only the italians could pull off in late sixties/early seventies. This is the title theme to "La morte cammina con i tacchi alti/Death walks on High Heels", one of the numerous gialli (thriller movies with that special italian touch) to come out of italy in heavy doses from the late sixties up to the mid seventies. Wonderful scores have been one of the constitutive elements of these films and while the scores that Ennio Morricone did for these movies (e.g. "L'ucello dalle piume di cristallo/Bird with the crystal plumage, "Cosa avete fatto a Solange/What have they done to Solange", Una lucertola con la pelle di donna/Lizard on a womans skin" or "Le foto proibite di una signora per bene/ Forbidden fotos of a lady above suspicion") have been long released, a lot of excellent music is still locked up in the vaults of CAM, Cinevox and other italian soundtrack labels. Thanks to the hard work of the guys at DigitMovies a lot of these scores now successively get a proper, remastered release (often for the first time ever), music otherwise would have been lost in oblivion forever. Stelvio Cipriani may not be remotely as well known as Morricone (who, naturally, overshines just every other italian composer), but he was very prolific in the heyday of italian cinema, scoring an equally wide range of different genres from westerns to gialli and from romantic movies to italain police (so called "poliziotteschi") and crime movies. This title track of "La morte cammina con i tacchi alti" doesn't have to hide behind the best of themes Morricone did, in fact the orchestration does sound very Morricone itself with an uptempo-ish bossa nova beat, lush strings, wonderful harpsicord and a female voice carrying the main melody with a bitterweet tone. The voice is delivered by Nora Orlandi, one of the very few female soundtrack composers and she could easily be mixed up with Edda Dell'Orso here. Wonderful stuff, recommended for anyone who enjoys the "Mondo Morricone" comps.

I intensely adore this song. It's delicately executed, yet the lyrics are so bold that it's somewhat jarring.

Also, I think Jill Sobule is tragically underrated. She's astonishingly talented, intelligent and humorous. I say, listen to her work, you won't regret it.

This is a song about a tragic break-up. Keane seem to be masters at the tear-jerker that rocks. It starts with piano, bass, & drums, and guitar comes in for the climax. But my favorite thing about it is the singing. Keane's singer at times has an improbaby high voice, yet you know it's a guy. They're like Queen in the vocals, but they sort of out-Queen Queen with the highness. That's part of their appeal for me. Anyway the song goes from annoyance to anger to grief in a rocking climax.

Ah yes.... You know him alright, the tragic lounge singer from "The Valley Of The Dolls"! And the schmaltz is transmitted directly into this version of the top 10 smash with deft precision! This track absolutely kicks ass, and is worth the 25 cents you'll probably have to pay for this work of art! The rest of the record is pretty hum-drum,nothing to sniff at though,especially for fans of swingin' supper-club jazz. Fans of the movie will dig it as well,if not just for the cover,which looks like a still from the film with him in a tuxedo,gripping the microphone with a devilish sneer!

After years of thinking (quite selfishly) how tragic it was that Jeff Buckley only gave us two beautiful albums plus a few bits and pieces, I started to think that even though his old man died young as well, he released 9 albums and that there was almost certainly an untapped resource just asking for the tapping. I've only got a couple so far (Goodbye and Hello, and Greetings from LA) but the similarities with Jeff are amazing. They both have this sort of (and I'm sure I'm not the first to use this term in reference to the Buckleys) 'sad beauty' about the melody and changes which just never fails to give me a lift. This song is a prime example of that.

This entire album is beautiful and fascinating. I seem to be a sucker for rather melancholic, afflicted, and intoxicating sounds, so here I go again. The first half of this song is slow and haunting, I don't understand Portuguese, but the tone sounds like a filmic remembrance of tragically lost love, with yearning lyrics paired to beautiful piano-led orchestration . In the middle of the song there is a break of dark, doomy strings, followed by the second half, which is a quicker tempoed revisit of the first half, taking the form of a psychic climax.

This is another one of those latin songs that was translated to English for the benefit of those that never heard of Roberto Carlos or his original version of this very popular song (Detalhes). It is a beautiful yet tragic love song. I prefer the original, although this version's orchestration and vocals are very similar to the original.