It's always great hearing a remix of the newest track, but it's also just as cool hearing a classic track from years ago pumped full of modern electronic bass. Today I've got a crunchy new electro house take on the track 'Automatic' from 802s stars Pointer Sisters. It's got an 802s vibe, but with the pounding bass you can't get enough of . It's done by DJ Kue and The SNDCLSH, (The SNDCLSH is actually Lupe Fiasco's new DJ Project Turn it up, enjoy! Pointer Sisters - Automatic (SNDCLSH & Dj Kue Remix) | [...]
In early 1985, the shift in my musical interests, which had been evolving and changing in fits and starts for a couple years, was ongoing. By '85, my friends and I had our driver's licenses, so there were more opportunities - if we could procure transportation - o make the trek into Cincinnati for music. (of course, funding such purchases was an ongoing challenge) Though MTV had finally made it into the homes of our small town the previous summer, not all of us had cable, so the channel was merely [...]
Paloma and I upgraded to HD recently which is how I ended up on the Game Show Network the other night. As HD is a new experience, I find that I surf for shows to look at rather than watch . I didn't even know we had the Game Show Network, but when I saw The $25,000 Pyramid listed as I scrolled through the channel guide and couldn't help but be curious as to what a game show from the 1970s might look like in HD. I tried [...]
By December 1983, my radio listening habits were going through a migration from Top 40 stations, which I had been listening to for a couple years, to the album rock of Q95 and, mostly in the evenings when reception was possible, the newly-minted 97X. But, Casey Kasem and American Top 40 was still a drowsy weekend morning staple and I would often peruse Billboard magazine when I'd come across a copy in the magazine racks at Walden Books while hanging out in the malls in Cincinnati. During [...]
As we closed in on Thanksgiving in 1982, I imagine that it seemed as though summer had never happened and never come 'round again. We were housebound more as raw days of wind and cold, stinging rain were a November staple in our part of the Midwest. For one of the first Novembers of my life, I had the radio to help battle the restlessness of being a kid confined to quarters. Casey Kasem and American Top 40 was a drowsy weekend morning staple. But there were sixty songs beyond the ones Casey counted [...]
More of the greatest AOR ever.
The autumn of 1981 was the first time that the radio was the first thing I turned on in the morning and the last thing turned off at night. Q102 would air the Top Ten At Ten weeknights at the titular hour, so a lot of nights I'd leave the radio on, listening well after they'd finished counting down the day's most requested songs. The station was the station for most of my junior high classmates and the previous evening's countdown usually merited at least a few minutes discussion and debate the following day. [...]
It was some time in early autumn of 1990 when I read that assessment of Concrete Blonde's self-title debut in a copy of the Trouser Press Record Guide . I tucked the book back onto the shelf and, as I left the bookstore, reached up and felt the sides of my head. I had ears - I needed somewhere to put my ear buds - and, in my backpack, I had cassettes that contained all three albums by the trio of Los Angelenos. I'd missed Concrete Blonde's Trouser [...]
R.E.M. announced their end last week and it's taken me until now to ponder that news. That alone is evidence of how much I'd lost touch of a band that, for a good half decade or so, was a fixture in my world. Now that I do reflect on the career of the Athens, Georgia quartet, I realize that R.E.M. was arguably the ultimate college rock act for me and, like a lot of people from that period of higher education, we simply went in separate directions, unable to maintain a once seemingly unbreakable connection. I'm [...]
As the contents of my head need to settle back into place, I'm pulling up a Billboard magazine Hot 100 chart from the early '80s – a period of my initial infatuation with music and radio – and checking out the debut songs for that week. So, here are the eight songs making their first appearance on the chart during this week in 1982… Billy Preston - I'm Never Gonna Say Goodbye from Pressin' On (1982) (debuted #90, peaked #88, 3 [...]
The living room of our treehouse is a very cozy nook to me. From the second floor perch at the corner of a T intersection, there is often a steady flow of traffic and pedestrians to observe. A friend once called and asked what I was doing. "Watching Afternoon Traffic Theater ," I replied, describing the actual scene playing out down below, some twenty-yards away - two middle-aged woman who had had some minor mini-van tête-à-tête. I covered the incident until its underwhelming conclusion without lifting my head [...]
At the suggestion of a friend from college, I've been reading and reading with the actual intent to learn and not merely for entertainment. I've actually been studying, something that I rarely did in college. Some of the concepts have been abstract, but the neurons still fire and the subject matter holds the potential for being of great use. (as opposed to those metric tables junior high) Thirty years ago, I was in eighth grade and mindlessly memorizing metric conversions that I would never use. Football and classmates of the female persuasion [...]
With nothing of use in my head, it's a good time to pull up a Billboard magazine Hot 100 chart from the early '80s - a period of my initial infatuation with music and radio - and check out the debut songs. So, here are the seven songs which were making their first appearance on the chart during this week in 1982... John Schneider - In The Driver's Seat from Quiet Man (debuted #90, peaked #72, 6 [...]
Working in one of the larger record stores I'd ever stepped into for much of the '90s provided the opportunity to encounter a collection of characters that one might ordinarily have to do time to experience. (an outcome that one co-worker narrowly avoided after being busted for manufacturing his own money) Of these compatriots, The Drunken Frenchman was certainly one of the more memorable. A good decade older than most of us, he had eased into the role of gruff, cantankerous elder so effortlessly that there was a yard no doubt lamenting his [...]
Ceremony, Burning Hearts, and Memory Tapes are three different artists with very different sounds. Their influences certainly intersect though, allowing the material to sound like creative odes rather than blend replications of genres and movements that are now in the past. They encompass a wide range of styles - from glam-inspired post-punk to flamboyant dance-pop - and remain interesting in the process.
1983 was a pivitol year for me and music. As the year began, I had begun to explore more of the radio stations available to me in our corner of the Midwest, gaining familiarity and interest in songs and artists that I might not have heard on Top 40 radio. I was also hearing music from the '60s and '70s, some of which existed as vague recollections, but much of it for the first time. There would never be a time in which more music would be a wholly new experience for [...]
Last week's selection, Duran Duran: Rio, has held up surprisingly well. Despite the album's undeniable 1980s style and imagery (the cover art alone is integrally linked with childhood memories of my older sister's vinyl collection), hits like "Rio," "Hungry Like the Wolf," "New Religion" and "Save a Prayer" are just as catchy and interesting now. [...]
Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik just released his new album, Covers 802s. Best known for his hit single "Barely Breathing" and his Tony-Award winning compositions for the musical Spring Awakening, Sheik here gives his own interpretations of synth-pop songs originally recorded by The Cure, New Order, Tears for Fears, The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, The Thompson Twins, Love [...]
As part of a semi-recurring series , I thought that I'd pull up the Billboard Hot 100 for this corresponding week from a year in the early '80s and note the songs that were debuts. I'm opting with 1982 again as it was the year during which I listened to more Top 40 radio than I ever would again. (there are also a lot of missing issues during the Junes of the first half of the '80s in Google's online archive of Billboard magazine , but '82 is there) [...]
this song is sick
The Gumshoe Grove
Barely Awake In Frog Pajamas
Music @ Blogcritics.org
Obscure Sound
Muruch
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Whitney! ♥
The Twilight Sad cover The Smiths
Download: The Violet Lights - "Sex and Sound"
Listen: Burial - Kindred [EP]
