Over at The Hits Just Keep Comin' , JB notes the reaction of listeners to Mannheim Steamroller's A Fresh Aire Christmas during a stint DJing at an easy listening station in the late '80s. ("You wouldn't think that the elevator-music audience would use language like we heard on the telephone.") I remember A Fresh Aire Christmas being released for the holidays in 1988. I was a junior in college and it was my second Christmas working in a record store, having earned the [...]
That Game Theory's entire catalog is seemingly terminally out of print is a great travesty. Certainly they were one of the most important purveyors of '80s pop music in America. Over the course of three incredibly ambitious and almost flawless records, they had as good a track record as almost anyone besides XTC for consistency.
In surveying jangle-pop albums, calling an album great makes allowance for more uninspired tracks than on most other genre releases. Like early '50s rock albums by groups like the Everly Brothers – who inspired many of them – they are slipshod assemblies of 45s and tracks produced to sound faintly like those 45s. They're nevertheless [...]
VIDEO PREMIER: When ever there is a #2 in a song title I think of the melvins #2 Pencil track. Don't ask me why it's irrelevant here. This new The Nico Blues - "Folk Song Number Two" video is shot entirely on GoPro Cameras and is as folky sounding as kraftwork sounds like van halen. What? Yeah, seriously folks if Mitch Easter started producing the shins or superchunk he'd have them sounding like The Nicos Blues. Great band. Enjoy! Elsie's Hooked on Second Chances MP3 by [...]
I was in Chicago the weekend of 11/19 to see DJ Shadow with Pigeon John at Park West. My friend Erik came along. Before the show. We both walked out with some good finds. Here are mine: The Moody Blues - Caught Live + 5 (2 LP, London Records, 2 PS 690/1, 1977)($2.99) Kind of a controversial album in the Moodies catalog in that it was released without the band's permission. The "Live" part was a concert recorded in December, 1969 at The Royal Albert Hall during the To Our [...]
Grant Widmer of Generationals took some time to send us a list of his influences. Rating: 5.0/ 5 (1 vote cast) Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for links that don't make it onto the blog.
What comes to mind when you think of 67? The number of throws in judo? "Jailhouse Rock?" (Rolling Stone calls it the 67th greatest song of all time.) The 67 seconds it took Elliot Spitzer to announce he was resigning from office? Your local mathematician will tell you that 67 is what's known as a lazy caterer's number, meaning it's part of the so-called lazy caterer sequence, which has to do with the number of pieces of a round object—say, a pizza—that can be made with a specific number of straight cuts. For example, if you make three straight cuts [...]
The weekend I was in the Twin Cities for the Umphrey's McGee concert at First Avenue, I had the opportunity to hit Cheapo Discs in Fridley, MN. While not as "hip" or "cool" a location as the Uptown locale, they have a surprisingly decent selection of CD's and LP's and would recommend it. I had a gift certificate for Cheapo from my birthday in October that was burning a hole in my pocket. I had started by perusing the CD's there and had amassed a decent pile, but ended up putting it all away after I started flipping [...]
If you were an obsessed young rock fan in the pre-Internet days, you scrounged for information on new bands any way you could. Magazines, The Trouser Press Guide To New Wave Records , opening acts at shows - all potential links to the next epiphany. Another way to look for bands was to connect the dots: so if you were an R.E.M. fan, you found out about the Replacements because Peter Buck played the solo on "I Will Dare," and found out about Pylon or the dB's because R.E.M. covered them. I got turned on [...]
An exciting email passed my way this week, news that the catalog of I.R.S. Records -- the label known for bringing R.E.M., the Go-Go's, Oingo Boingo and a ton more '80s and '90s acts to the masses -- ... Continue reading "I.R.S. Catalog Reissued Digitally: Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, the dB's, Let's Active, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, General Public, more" >
There's been a lot of talk around the blogosphere lately about the rash of takedown notices that were issued to several mp3 blogs last week. It seems as though certain labels have targeted blogs and hosting sites such as Blogger have been removing entire posts without the knowledge or consent of their authors. At least one of my favorite blogs has called it quits over this ... and others seem ready to follow suit. Paul at Setting the Woods on Fire said it best when he said he always assumed he [...]
Tomatoes and corn and longer shadows. That's August to me. Here's #6 in this Summer series. Forgetting to bug any of my more artistic friends to make cover art, I did this one myself... and it shows. But musically, this one turned out pretty good. Have a good weekend. DOWNLOAD SUMMER FRIDAYS #6 Here's the track list: 1. The Kinks - Party Line 2. Envelopes - I'd Like 2 C U 3. The [...]
The Southeastern United States was the epicenter of jangly 80s music, in particular Georgia and North Carolina. Here are some of my favorites from the great Southeast. GEORGIA The grandfathers of jangly 80's rock, R.E.M. got their start on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens. Their first single was released on the independent Hibtone label in 1981. It included two songs that were re-recorded for release two years later on their Murmur LP. Here are the original [...]
Happy Record Store Day ! Maybe one or more of these songs will tempt a purchase in your favorite independent record store... I've pondered making a three-playlist series: sunrise/daytime, sunset/evening, and late night. That's still possible, but "sunset" is probably getting voted off the island. So first up is the sunrise/daytime playlist, which swings from electronica to word jazz within three songs. Lyrically, those songs move from "I smell your sweat on my skin/Breakfast in Vegas on cocaine and gin" to to "When everything's orangey goofy like this, trouble's a joke/Just an orangey [...]
This is a sprightly little tune from the Kadane Brothers, not the usual affair from the Slowcore pioneers. What Fun Like Was , their first album, is one of the best. Their current band, The New Year, will hopefully be releasing some new material soon - I am looking forward to that. mp3 To The Ground Bedhead - WhatFunLifeWas This is a new one, a nice little pop nugget from LA's The Broken West . In fact, the whole record from [...]
Mitch Easter is probably best-known as a producer, behind the boards (along with Don Dixon) on R.E.M.'s first two albums, which were recorded in his famed Drive-In Studios (formerly known as the garage at his parents' house in Winston-Salem, NC....
"I'm in the church and I’ve come / To claim you with my iron drum." -- John Cale, "Paris 1919" "How did I not hear about this until yesterday? What rock have I been living under?" -- Tom wondering how he missed the Snakes on a Plane buzz "Yeah, it did have its moments -- its moments of abject torture and its moments of just straight-up torture." -- Tom, making a few clarifications on a Clerks II review "You’re a Dave Kingman of comedy." -- [...]
Barely Awake In Frog Pajamas
Obscure Sound
Review Stalker
Time to play b-sides
owl and bear
Merry Swankster
Hello Vegetables
A to Z
A Fifty Cent Lighter & A Whiskey Buzz
Sound Bites
Setting The Woods On Fire
Kofi's hat
Songs in Space
Recidivism.
A-Trak - "Round of Applause" / "Where My Money At" (MP3 Download)
Diplo - "Climax" (MP3 Stream)
Out This Week 2/14
Sleigh Bells: ‘Reign of Terror’ full album stream
Jackback Feat. David Guetta & Nicky Romero – Wild One Two
