Erasure : Chains of Love [ purchase ] In honor of this week's 9th Circuit Court of Appeal ruling that Prop 8 banning gay marriage in California is unconstitutional, and also to credit the state lawmakers of Washington passing a gay marriage bill there, I'm celebrating with a song by Erasure, featuring vocals by gay idol Andy Bell. Darius started the week with a synth pop tune that was heavy on the synth ; this one hits the pop a lot harder. And you can dance [...]
S'Express : Theme From S'Express [ purchase Bomb the Bass : Don't Make Me Wait [ purchase It's funny the tricks we allow our memories to play on us. All grown up, here on the wrong side of forty, it's so easy to look back on the music of my childhood and teenage years with a nostalgia that goes beyond being false and strays into the realms of the ludicrously wrong. I remember [...]
U2 w/ Bob Dylan: Love Rescue Me [ purchase ] U2's 1988 two-disc release Rattle and Hum is a hybridized bastard of an album, designed to accompany a rockumentary of the same name, with live cuts, b-sides, and revisionings of the U2 back catalog mixed with a handful of new originals, borrowed fragments such as Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, and cover songs performed with B.B. King, Bob Dylan, and New York gospel choir The New Voices of Freedom completing the journey of exploration of American roots music which previous [...]
Nanci Griffith : Love at the Five and Dime [ purchase ] I suppose you could call this post cheating on my part. After all, Nanci Griffith released the original studio version of Love at the Five and Dime in 1985, not 1988. On that version, there is a full band, but the production is handled with a light touch that puts the focus where it belongs, on Griffith and on a song which has arguably become a standard. But this is the live version, from 1988's One Fair Summer Evening, [...]
The Church : Under the Milky Way [ purchase ] When The Church's 1988 album Starfish was released, I was just 13 months old. Armed with that information, you might not be surprised to discover that this week's prompt left me scanning through a petty array of choices in my music library to make this post. Still, [...]
Steve Earle : Johnny Come Lately [ purchase ] Lucinda Williams : Changed the Locks [ purchase ] Though "alt.country" wouldn't be called that for a few more years, its big bang moment came in 1988, with the release of two of the most significant records the genre ever produced. In 1988, Steve Earle stood at a career crossroads. He had put out two fairly successful, left-of-center country records, Guitar Town and Exit 0. But, personality clashes and an escalating drug [...]
Franco and Rochereau : Lisanga Ya Ba Nganga [ purchase ] Public Enemy won The Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critics album poll for 1988 with It Takes A Nation of Milions to Hold Us Back . Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation , Tracy Chapman's debut, Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust and Michelle Shocked's Short Sharp Shocked rounded out the top 5. Robert Christgau, "the Dean of Rock Critics", started the Pazz and [...]
Little Feat : Let It Roll [ purchase ] By 1988 Little Feat were beyond their commercial prime - their best years by most accounts being the latter part of the 70s. Having lost lead guitarist and founder Lowell George in 1979, the band continued with many of the core members (Paul Barrere on guitar, Richie Hayward on drums, Bill Payne on keyboards ...) through the 80s and 90s. Bill Payne and Paul Barrere still tour today as did Richie Hayward until his death in 2010. Aging rockers they may be, [...]
Timbuk 3: Sample The Dog [ purchase ] I've blogged about Timbuk 3 in more personal terms here before, citing my mid-adolescent self, using the work of these early alternative radio, mostly-acoustic new wavers to mine the story between us, and how we find ourselves in music. But though other tracks on sophomore album Eden Alley are more radio-ready, and still others more edgy and weird, this is the cut that I spun more than anything that year, out of sheer joy. [...]
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Traveling Wilburys : Handle with Care [ purchase ] 1988 was Roy Orbison's big year. It started with Cinemax special, A Black and White Night, which aired in January. A diverse set of artists, including Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen, formed an all-star band, backing the man who perfected the art of the rock ballad. Orbison started out as a Sun rocker. After shifting to the nascent Monument label in the early 1960s, he had a long string of hits -- "Pretty Woman," "Blue Bayou," "Only the [...]
The Waterboys : Fisherman's Blues [ purchase ] I've never understood why this Jewish New Yorker loves Celtic influenced rock music. It doesn't make much sense, but it is true. It's not like I was exposed to much of this style of music before I went to college, other than a little Jethro Tull and some Van Morrison, yet I remember falling in love with Horslips when I first heard them. And although I still think their soul inflected first album was better than their big hit, "Too-Rye-Ay," [...]
Thomas Dolby : Budapest by Blimp [ purchase ] I'm sure many people, when they think of music of the 80s, think first of what was called at the time synth-pop. Many hits of the decade were characterized by a singer with a chilly sound singing over an entirely electronic backdrop. Much of this music was very effective, expressing the alienation that many felt at the time. Perhaps that is why the style is still very much with us. But Thomas Dolby used the same tools to very different effect, and [...]
Cake : Stickshifts and Safetybelts [ purchase ] Rather than describe a mode of transportation or a destination, this 1996 song from Cake's Fashion Nugget highlights the narrator's frustration with the "stickshifts and safetybelts [and] bucket seats" that prevent proximity and therefore physical affection in vehicles. There's no layered meaning to be found in these lyrics—no stacked symbolism or clever extended metaphor—as will be found in most Cake songs. Instead, this is a straightforward plea: "I need you here with me, not way over in a bucket seat." [...]
Kevin Braheny & Tim Clark : A Perfect Night for Flying Carpets [ purchase ] We haven't posted much ambient music on SMM. Maybe all we need is this one and you can easily extrapolate, heh. It's from a collection from the syndicated radio show Music From the Hearts of Space , created way back in 1973 and that features "space" music. The show's format segues the songs one into the other (often making it sound like one long song), bookended by the calm and ethereal voice [...]
The Kingston Trio: M.T.A [ purchase ] If you are a city-slicker like myself then you rely public transportation to get you to where you need to be. In large cities you really depend on a reliable and affordable subway system. In the large cities where I have lived (Chicago, Toronto, Boston) financing of the subway system is always a highly contentious political issue. It was this very issue that lead to the penning of the song "M.T.A." in 1949. In 1949 Walter O'Brien was [...]
Tom Robinson Band : 2-4-6-8 Motorway [ purchase ] This song came up on my iPod the other day, and I realized that it fit the theme, so I decided to do a quick post. I suspect that one of the themes that will develop as I post more will be "Songs I First Heard at WPRB." This is one of them. I fell in love with this song, and the Tom Robinson Band, the first time I heard them. Angry, but still tuneful English punk music. [...]
Robert Gordon with Link Wray: Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll [ purchase ] "Gonna rock 'n' roll all the way from Mars!" Here's Ray Scott, who wrote "Flyin' Saucers Rock 'N' Roll," quoted in Greil Marcus's book, Rockabilly: The Twang Heard 'Round the World : People ask me how I ever came up with the idea to write a song like "Flyin' Saucer Rock and Roll"...I saw one of those things. Near Indianapolis in '54, I saw something shaped like a big cigar...That's [...]
Sailcat: Motorcycle Mama [purchase] For my money, a motorcycle anthem should roar like Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild"-- unmuffled, dirty and heavy. And yet, in 1972, from the Shoals of Alabama, came Sailcat ...strumming acoustic guitars like the Lovin' Spoonful and singing like a pair of frat brothers about sleeping on the grass and living peacefully with squares. The song hit #12 on the Billboard Charts. (Even the concept album about a drifting biker went Top 40). [...]
Ani DiFranco : Gravel [ purchase Sometimes we travel farthest without physically leaving our rooms. This song's narrative voice is alerted to the arrival of a wayward lover by the sound of motorbike wheels on the gravel outside and so prepares for both war and surrender. What follows is an extended daydream: we believe at first that she welcomes this arrival on the porch and invites him or her in, but the fantasy sequence that follows tells a different story altogether. Our heroine fantasizes of riding out [...]
Star Maker Machine
James Blake – Live Album
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
Circo Voador anuncia shows de The Kooks, Foster The People, Friendly Fires, Gogol Bordello e mais
Gang Colours – Fancy Restaurant
