Several years ago, I posted a piece ( http://behearbenow.blogspot.co m/search?q=michael+brown) about Michael Brown, co-founder of the Left Banke, and composer of "Pretty Ballerina" and "Walk Away Renee" when he was 16, founder of the Stories, a Beatle-esque pop band that recorded concurrently with the Raspberries and Big Star, without ever achieveing any of their commercial success or notoriety, and finally, weirdly (since he was from NYC) the musical leader of the Beckies, an obscure mid-70's St Louis, MO rock band who put out one great (in my opinion and apparently no one else's) album on Sire which was remaindered a week [...]
Here's another track from the Columbia Records demo session in 1974. Randy Cohen and Chris Gray wrote the music, and all three of us wrote the lyrics. Bad Teeth - Jack Ruby
The Betwixt and Between Season Mix is named after an essay my father wrote when he was the editor of the Warrensburg Lake George News, which was antholigized in Carl Carmer's The Tavern Lights Are Burning. It described what my father called "the fifth season" in the Adirondacks, prior to the arrival of full winter, but after the pleasant foliage-filled days of early autumn. It's a time when the cold and wind and bleak gray skies encourage you to stay inside, when there is nothing to look forward to except another long hard Adirondack winter. "This isn't [...]
Rather than create a best of 2010 mix, I thought I would post three mixes I put together over the course of 2010 but which I never posted: Serendipity Mix This is a mix that grew out of a very fertile period of listening to my Ipod on shuffle on the way to and from work each day. It's an edited, truncated added-to version of what I heard over the course of a few days last summer. The Playlist: [...]
Looking over the playlist for the Out of the Blue Mix , I see that it's very heavy on slightly off-the-wall '70's songs. I didn't mean for that to happen, although I'm not sorry it has. A lot of good music was released in the 1970's, and even though I spent a good part of the decade working in records stores, I freely admit to ignoring much of it at the time. I was deeply involved in the New York punk/new wave/no wave scene, and I was drawn to a certain type of music - starting with the Velvets [...]
In early 1974, on a very cold and icy Saturday night, the members of Jack Ruby - guitarist Chris Gray, drummer and synth programmer Randy Cohen, violinist Boris Policeband and I - loaded Randy's Serge Synth (one of the first three created, and as large and heavy as a filled coffin) into his VW van and made our way slowly from the environs of 14th Street to a run down, cheap rate recording studio somewhere near Times Square, to record the demo that would make us famous, get us a record deal, get us on American Bandstand. We recorded three [...]
I've been making mixes for about three years now. Every once in awhile I go back and listen to an old one, and compare it to whatever I am currently working on, just to see if I can perceive any change in my mixing style and to see if, in any measurable my mixing skills had improved. It's a little discouraging to note that I haven't seen any noticeable improvement, either in song choices or transistions or in segues, over the course of the three years. There are mixes I like better than others, but there are none that [...]
There are many ways to spend a summer vacation. As a kid, I spent several summers at a sleep away camp. There were a couple of years of daily Little League baseball. There was a trip to Nantucket. The memories from these summers are still really strong. However, by far the most profound memories of summer for me have to do with the two summers my family spent in a ramshackle cottage on Lake Champlain, down a long dirt road off Route 9 near the town of Keeseville, NY, so hard to find that when my father wrote a piece [...]
My first exposure to Tim Hardin came on my second weekend at Windham College in Putney, Vt, in the fall of 1971. I was a miserably lonely freshman with no friends and nothing much to do. A friend of mine, Michael, who worked for a sound system company that rented out PA's for concerts throughout New England, called me that Saturday and said he was doing a Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen show at Windham that night, and did I want to help him unload, set up and then hang out. Which, given my lack of friends and [...]
I rediscovered this mix of '70's music I put together a few years ago, and I enjoyed it so much I decided to repost it. No playlist, just music. Enjoy. (The opening track is actually from 1981, byut it's so similar to the artist's '70's music I chose to pretend it was released a few years earlier than it actually was.) '70's Mix
My passion for what I call Softcore - West Coast soft rock and dance music spanning the '60's, '70's, '80's, '90, and '00's, has been revitalized, not sure why. It's not like it ever left, but it was definitely dormant. Anyway, here is a mix of new and old Softcore, inspired by John Sebastian's "Theme from 'Welcome Back, Kotter'." Jim Lewis, a friend of mine who lives in Austin, Texas, recently produced an album by the great singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso. When he emailed me some songs from the album, he mentioned that one of the songs (my favorite, [...]
I wasn't a huge fan Hall and Oates during the '70's and '80's. I liked 'em, and I recognized they were a cut above the average white Top 40 hitmakers. But, like a lot of people I was turned off by their ubiquity. I owned the 45 of "Rich Girl," and I loved the fact that they had written and originally recorded "She's Gone," one of my favorite soft disco hits (in Tavares' version). But in general I didn't pay much attention. Maybe it was Oates' mustache. I bought the Hall and Oates Anthology that came out last Fall, and [...]
Just in time for Spring (actually a little late), here's a Winter Mix, based on the great Stone' song, "Winter," from the under-appreciated Goats Head Soup . Winter Goats Head Soup The Rolling Stones A Week Without Sunlight So Close To Life Moonlit Sailor Dragon The Amazing The Amazing Silent snow London Town The Magic Theatre Sleeping In Our Clothes Hold This Ghos t Musée Mécanique Angel Echoes There Is Love in You Four [...]
My memory tells me that I first heard about Big Star in a review of "Number 1 Record" by Ellen Willis in the New Yorker. But after Alex Chilton's death last week, I went online and accessed the New Yorker's archives, and I didn't find any record of that review. In any case, I remember very clearly buying the album at a record store in Kenmore Square on a visit to Boston in the winter of 1972. I also remember being instantly hit over the head with the album's obvious brilliance. Songs like "Ballad of El Goodo," "13," "When My [...]
Here's a mix for a beautiful Spring Sunday morning. Not too NPR-ish I hope. No playlist, you'll have to trust me. Sunday Morning Brunch Mix
One of my music-related hobbies is inventing names for genres of music that either have no name or whose name leaves me cold. A couple of years ago I coined the term "softcore" to signify the modern version of '70's soft rock (or yacht rock or Pacifica, as it has been variously referred to). I would be lying if I didn't admit to hoping that my genre names would catch on, and Pitchfork and Hype Machine and Stereogum would introduce bands with my genre name as a descriptor. Well, it didn't happen with Softcore, which is a shame, because it's [...]
Apologies for the long pause between posts. Life got in the way. I am posting two new mixes, both of which I completed a while ago. I have lived with them for several months and I feel like they hold up well. The first mix is called the "Bright Orange for the Shroud Mix," and it's based on one of the Travis McGee series of novels, written by John D. MacDonald. I consider MacDonald to be one of the greatest writers of popular fiction I have ever read. His novels were seamlessly plotted, carefully [...]
One Sunday afternoon late this past summer, my wife, Sara and I were driving down a lightly-populated country road that on one side was separated from the Long Island Sound by a thin barrier of marsh grass and bordered on the other by modest summer homes. As we rounded a curve, we passed two young women walking against the traffic, both holding small, terrier-like dogs. Glimpsed quickly as our car passed, the women, wearing high heels, short dresses and full make up, seemd oddly out of place. "Trashy girls and their trashy dogs," my wife said, and then we were [...]
Periodically, my nephew, Rob Miller, sends me an update on Mister Loveless, the up-and-coming Bay Area band he fronts. His emails are always interesting since they provide a great deal of incite into the rewards and frustrations of trying to find your way in a popular music environment in which the rules are either disappearing or being rewritten every day. Dear Robby How's it going? How's the family? I apologize for not writing sooner. It's been rather chaotic here in Loveless country. Which, for the most part, is a good thing. We just returned from a [...]
Here's a mix of songs I've been listening to lately. It includes everything from Liquid Liquid's "Cavern," from 1983, to "Headphone Space," off of A Sunny Day in Glasgow's newest album. Of particular interest is Connie Converse's "One by One." I posted a link to an NPR piece by Converse on the Be Hear Be Now Facebook fan sight. It's a fascinating story , and a haunting, unforgettable song. The playlist : 1. Fire Truck - Conner Hall 2. Cavern - Liquid Liquid ( Optimo ) 3. Music for Gong [...]
Be Hear Be Now
My Funny Valentines
Download: James Blake Live Album (Unofficial)
Lana Del Rey - Without You (Kill Paris Remix) [Dubstep]
Miike Snow - “Paddling Out” Jacques Lu Cont Remix (MP3 Stream)
Iron & Wine and Patty Griffin
