Crone emerges from tape vaults as towering champion

Pardon the clutter of posts on the KDHX blog aggregator, but I endeavor to live blog Thomas Crone's "Silver Tray" KDHX show today, so it's all insider play anyway.

This is part two of a local rock retrospective, since Doug Morgan of "The Record Sto'" yields the playlist and mic to Crone on Thanksgiving Thursday afternoon.

I hung on most every note yesterday afternoon amid a bustling, happy holiday party. Crone just killed it. It was like he had to make a local rock only show hard and cool enough to go up on Doug Morgan's archive, which is highly smart and elevated company.

I wrote to Crone told him he was like the veteran local palooka, as a rock curator, who just stayed on his hamfisted feet so long he gradually became manifest as the towering champion.

His best first cut rocked harder than my first best cut would have. He picked bands I had missed (The Red Squares) and cuts ("Ray's Shoes") by bands I do get (Lydia's Trumpet) that rock harder than their cuts I cling to. The bands he liked that once seemed too trendy or mainstream (Three Merry Widows) now sound luminescsent and timeless.

There is a great public service here, too, in the strong presence of obscenely talented bands that didn't find the right audience at the right time. This is the Athens scene or Louisville scene that didn't officially happen here, except it did happen here and nobody noticed. It's not too late to notice Aviation Club, Cub Zero, Dirt Cousin, Painkillers, Bunnygrunt ... Bent ... Bill Boll: Crone noticed.

Above all, and incredibly, nothing here needed a preface or begged an apology. If you like rock music, you would cherish this show, and if you don't cherish this show, there are some large gaps in your appreciation of rock music over the last few decades.

I'll spread this note and this playlist with this live link to the archive, up two weeks on KDHX after Thanksgiving - and surely transferable to a music blog thereafter, with permissions that would be gettable and followthrough that would be followthroughable.

Happy Sweet Sixteen to Silver Tray, now underway.

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Photo from the Crone Flickr, hereafter the Croneckr.