A purer rock and roll album you will not find, my friends. Don't know why it took me this long to buy it. It's got 6 Nick Lowe compositions on it which should have been reason enough. But I think I have to stop now and let my new aquisitions digest in my system for a while. Let them breathe, get their legs about them. I'd hate for one to get lost in the shuffle In , Elton John released a remake of his classic song "Candle In The Wind" with new lyrics that paid homage to Diana, Princess of Wales after her untimely death.
This single sold over 11 million copies in the United States. An incredible figure. So what are the runners up to "Candle In The Wind "? All the songs in the following playlist have sold over 4 million copies as a single in America. Some will surprise you, many will not. Here Without You - 3 Doors Down 3. Apologize - Timbaland 5. Low - Flo Rida Macarena - Los del Rio Ridin' - Chamillionaire Does anyone really care about a new Oasis record anymore?
I previewed some of the tracks, read some of the reviews mixed, but mainly positive but aside from The Shock Of The Lightning the album seems a mile away from their joyous beginnings. Their blatant riff rips and Beatles piracy seemed like a good thing at the time, especially when combined with Liam's Johnny Rotten sneer, but it's old now. Really old. However, they went downhill fast after the bloated mess that was Be Here Now and I lost interest and haven't really regained it. I bought Don't Believe The Truth, and enjoyed it somewhat, but it's not received regular airtime in quite a while.
Nothing they've done since the mid's has stayed with me for more than a month or so. Damn shame, the lads had so much promise That quote got me thinking, and I wonder if we're going to see a massive change in the musical winds over the next couple of years. I'm not naive enough to think that we'll see another burst of creativity like the mid to late 60's, but some truly original ideas would be nice. There have been some great albums released in the past 8 years but a ton of those have only built on the foundations of the past.
I'm a little tired of playing "spot the influences" if I'm to be totally honest here. It's time to stop regurgitating and time to start creating something new. Or is that impossible? I'd like to think that it's possible myself, and with the regime change here in the States it should be a good time for it. I can always dream So here we go with another instalment, this time , a very schitzophrenic year for music Well I finally pulled the trigger and bought Fleet Foxes.
The massive critical hype made me instantly nervous, as I have been burned more than once TV On The Radio's "Return From Cookie Mountain" was touted as "the album of a generation", and I thought it overblown and pretentious by the Pitchforians and their ilk.
Here's what some of the critics had to say about it when it was released in June of this year: From Delusions Of Adequacy : "With their self-titled debut, Fleet Foxes have attained this and have delivered one of the best albums of the year. One which is already shaping up as an album of the year.
Few better will be released in Even some of you reading this have touted the magnificance and significance of this album on your music blogs. I've listened to it only a couple of times and I think I really dig it! A great late night album, for sure, with excellent harmonies and great musicianship. But it's the melodies that keep me interested, something that is sorely lacking with many of today's bands.
Not bubblegum teeny-bopper type melodies, but strong ones that help define the song, give it heft. They are students of music, but good music, and even though their influences betray them somewhat I find solace in the fact that they coul have picked worse. I don't have the history with this album yet to give it a song by song review; they're many great sites that do a much better job at that sort of thing than I.
Is it a great album? I think so, but will it top my "best of list" this year? I don't think so. Excellent albums have a way of sneaking up on you. Stay tuned Wow, a genuine bumwadipod dock! How cool is that? Now I can combine two of my "great escapes" into one. Hmnnn, I wonder what the playlist would consist of? Oh, and as a side note: If you can find it, the Orb's version of Free Bird is a friggin classic! Album art and liner notes. The smell of new music.
Rolling, ahem, cigarettes, ahem, on gatefold sleeves. Scrounging for milk crates, most often behind convenience stores, to store your albums LP's. Organizing your albums alphabetically, chronologically, by genre, whatever. Buying new albums based solely on artwork or band name and, occasionally, finding a real treasure. The experience and excitement of searching for months or years! Trading in old albums you no longer listen to for something new.
Bragging rights on the size and diversity of your collection. Here we are at one of my favorite years for recorded music. Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet re-energized power pop. John Prine recorded and released what many would argue was his best album up to that point. Grunge, house music and the "shoegazer" bands would eventually go the way of the dodo but for a brief moment in time it was all extremely exciting.
As always, let me know if I left anything out. Mick Jones had produced the first cut, but the other members were dissatisfied and producing duties were handed to Glyn Johns at which point the album became a single LP. The original cut has since been obtained and subsequently bootlegged.
I consider myself a fairly huge Clash fan and I knew zip about this. I'm embarassed but at the same time pretty excited that I found some new Clash tunes! Managed to get my hands on a copy, and it seems that the aforementioned Glyn Johns did a bit of a hatchet job on Combat Rock.
In addition to the editing of the tracks, some on here are alternate takes, and although a couple are fairly muddy the majority are of really decent sound quality!
So, yeah, I'm fairly stoked. It's all over the web, apparantly, readily available with the blessing of Mick Jones. Did any of you reading this know about Rat Patrol? Everyone has made a few musical faux-pas during their lifetime. If you're me, then you've made more than a few. Bands or albums that you were infactuated with at the time that sounded groundbreaking and fresh then, after a period of a few years sounded horribly dated or just plain horrible.
You ask yourself, "what the hell was I smoking? I was in love with the band's album Love God back in the early 90's until Rumproast informed me that the singer sang with a lisp. You remember their big hit, right? A reggae-rock-techno cover of the Stones I'm Free.
I didn't believe him, if I recall, but upon close scrutiny of that particular track I came to the realization that he was spot on. I sold the thing immediately. He was right, of course. They were crap. We used to mock each other relentlessly, and you know what?
It was the honorable thing to do, to save each other from commiting musical suicide. And then we bought tickets and went to see Jesus Jones The following has nothing to do with music, or comics for that matter, it's just something I read the other day that made me laugh out loud.
And since that doesn't happen very often I thought I'd share. After you read it you'll probably be convinced that I'm this totally bonkers guy living in a basement like that Silence Of The Lambs dude, but I'm really quite normal.
I've just got a very bizarre sense of humor. Enjoy, and special props to whomever can name the author or the book from which this was taken. I immediately knew the dopes had come over.
I opened the door and invited them in. I was happy to have company even if they were a bunch of dopes. They turned to me and shouted back, "Goodbye, you big fuckin' idiot! In , the New Musical Express ran a story about a Clash fan who bit off her boyfriend's earlobe during a London show — behavior Jones says "wasn't unusual" at their early club performances. Since I'm still computer challenged at this point I'm going to recommend you read the following bit of music minutae, an extremely engrossing essay on the late, great Lester Bangs.
Music critic for Creem magazine and all around scuzzbag. Love him or hate him I'm of the former camp , this is one interesting and insightful read. But the only way to get Bangs right is to get Bangs on paper. I was well into the endnotes of Mystery Train, Greil Marcus' popular treatise on rock music. Following a couple dozen pages of detailed notes on Presley, Marcus arrives at what he calls "the finest, or the most final, words of obituary spoken on the occasion of Elvis Presley's death.
I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis's.
But I can guarantee you one thing; we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying goodbye to his corpse. I will say goodbye to you. Those were the first words of Bangs' I had ever encountered and they numbed my brain for a while.
Often, the form of snobbery reflects the offending individual's socio-musical background. For example, a common snobbery of the musically adept is the affectation that one's place in the rock snob heirarchy is either the cause or result of superior aural abilities.
However, a form of snobbery can be adopted by someone not a part of that group; Pseudo-rock snob is a type of snob. Such a snob imitates the manners, adopts many of the tastes of true rock snobs and attempts to pass themselves off as a true connesseur of great music. It affects their world-view and affects the lifestyle of a social class of people to which he or she aspires, but does not yet belong, and to which he or she may never belong.
The musicianship and variety of instruments played on Roots and Crowns is impressive as well. Here, take a peek at the credits: Tim Rutili vocals, guitars, piano, electronics, field recordings, organ, synthesiser, banjo, loops, bowed balalaika Ben Massarella pistons, Zuni rattles, counting stick, bronze fork, gourd shakers, glass, oak chimes, ribbon crasher Jim Becker violin, banjo, bass, xylophone, cajun accordian, mandolin Joe Adamik drum kit, bass clarinet, wurlitzer, piano and organ, vibraphone, Dr.
Sampler, bells, melodica and prepared metaliphone This is one of those "damn glad I kept it" discs because even though I couldn't quite get into it at first it eventually grew on me and now it's a favorite with weekly spin honors. The itunes review states that Roots And Crowns "sounds like nothing so much as the perfect experimental country rock band that Wilco And Sonic Youth have yet to get together and form", and they're pretty spot on. It's dark, organic and experimental all at the same time and I highly recommend you pick up a copy and see for yourself.
If I wouldn't have been brain dead when I first picked this up in it would've probably ended up topping my year end lists. Other than seeing a band live, headphones are the best way to experience music.
Little nuances appear that were too subtle to hear on your car stereo, the bass sounds fuller and, in the case of your more psychedelic offerings, the full power of stereophonic sound floats from ear to ear demanding your full attention.
Peppers, The Beatles natch! Our main computer crashed over the weekend, and I'm having difficulty retrieving the 12, or so songs from the hard drive. I've got them on my iPod, but I'm not technically savvy enough to transfer them to the iTunes folder on my laptop.
I'm gonna have to start it all over again, downloading cd by cd. That's not such a bad thing, really, the thing was due for a thorough scrubbing anyway. I'll try to post stuff as often as possible, but perhaps they won't be as frequent as they have been, for a while anyway.
Every other day most likely, maybe more. If any of you out there know how I can transfer the contents of my iPod to the laptop other than just the "purchased through iTunes songs--I have a lot that weren't!
Thanks much. Here's a fun new blog that you folks should participate in. Here's the author's first posting: "Each week, I'll be picking a topic for the list, and at the end of the week I'll post the six most popular suggestions in no particular order. If you grew up in London in the 70s, you might remember Capital Radio's Nicky Horne did a weekly show of the same name and same concept. To kick things off, I polled some friends and colleagues for my first list, which I've put below, with a few comments, as a hands-on introduction to the kind of thing SixOfTheBest is about.
Halloween is just around the corner, folks, and before Tim Burton slithered onto the screen there was What makes this retro stop animation special so If those names don't ring a bell then you need to brush up on your pop culture trivia. These are two of the most important names in all of comicdom, the former the co-creator of MAD magazine and the later a prolific artist for MAD, Madison Avenue advertising campaigns and about a zillion other high profile comic concepts. Check out the rock band in the video below.
Look familiar? M Ward, who released my favorite album of , Post War, has announced that he will finally release the follow up in February It features an all star cast of musical royalty, including but not limited to Lucinda Williams, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy fame and Zooey Deschanel.
Why the hell does Sandinista! The 4th album by The Clash, Sandinista! Loved this. Another Irish act I've been sleeping on, had pretty much written him off as the Father Ted song guy. Big fan of the unique vocal delivery, instrumentation is really well chosen to mix standard rock with more unexpected sounds.
Songwriting is cool, love the full commitment to the sleaze throughout. And Songs of Love is just a great song. Have to imagine Matt Bellamy is a fan, some seriously Muse-y parts throughout. All in all I enjoyed the shit out of this and will for sure be doing some repeat listens. The Divine Comedy is a very recent discovery for me.
I actually just heard one of their his albums, "Fin De Siecle", right before starting the top albums list and immediately fell in love with it. This album just as good and a little different. There are hints of early Scott Walker here as well as early pre-disco Bee-Gees and bunch of other influences. Great lyrics that are sometimes tongue-in-cheek. Can't wait to dive further into other albums by them. This is definitely very different from all the music I've encountered before, so this website is doing its job.
Some of the lyrics are a bit too much, but the overall sound is great. An oddball record to be sure. Theatrical, excessively so. Bet it would be fun seeing with a full orchestra. Sometimes the lyrics are eh, and I feel like that's the foundation of the song.
Can't say I didn't enjoy it though. Very much loved this record. Voice like Bid Este disco es muy interesante. Las canciones transmiten una vibra muy diversa y no aburre. El soundtrack de un musical honesto y despiadado.
No creo escucharlo completo muy seguido en el futuro, pero no cabe duda de la calidad de la obra. De esto se trata este ejercicio. Sin conocimiento del nombre del grupo ni de sus discos nos echamos el clavado en blanco. This guy looks and sounds like a douche bag, but this album was not bad. Half cabaret and half pop.
We disagreed on the rating- e adored it, j felt neutral. There were songs which deserved 1 and songs which deserved 5. A few songs were balancing between being interesting or just bad.
I usually don't like this music genre, but this one was a nice surprise. You know what? This was a lot of fun. Also reminded me of Taco Puttin' on the Ritz. Just a fun, goofy album. Ben Folds does a great cover of Songs of Love so this gets an extra star. Pleasant listen, something different. Very interesting album. It kind of reminded me of a very older more fabulous version of Cake. The last couple tracks were more reminiscent of broadway and New York showtunes though, so that was a fun surprise.
I don't know if I would listen to it again but it was definitely unique. Definitely made me curious about the album and I'd say this observation persisted. The songs were catchy, the lyrics were offbeat but really intricate cool stuff , starts of tracks had annoying talking bits, and almost every song had some annoying instrument often from the brass section.
It felt like an even more satirical Interpol or Franz Ferdinand. So wacky, but surprisingly infectious. And kudos to creating a theme for the album and sticking to it. This was… unique. The singer first reminded me of Mike Patton, but then he seemed closer to Scott Weiland. It grew on me a lot. Definitely something I am looking more into. You know, this is kinda catchy. I can definitely see myself listening to this more than a few times. I've never heard of this band but the album cover is slightly intriguing in its trying-too-hard ladies man look and name.
The opening track, Something for the Weekend, opens strong with a certain nearly but not quite entirely camp attitude. The next song, Becoming More Like Alfie sounds even more like the singer is singing with a wink. Dark and funny. Very British. I dig it. Over dramatic, with good music and clever lyrics. Yeah this is ok but a bit long-winded, the novelty of whatever genre this is wears off p quickly.
Too much "Gen X being all offbeat again! Advanced Search. Casanova Review by Ned Raggett. Track Listing. Something for the Weekend. Neil Hannon.
Becoming More Like Alfie. Middle-Class Heroes. In and out in Paris and London. Songs of Love. The Frog Princess. A Woman of the World. Theme From Casanova. Something for the Weekend Neil Hannon. The Divine Comedy.
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