Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that the way I go about picking an Album of the Year is different from that of most music bloggers - or publications of any kind, for that matter. For one thing, I just pick from among those I've actually reviewed over the course of the year. I don't even pretend to try to sample and evaluate all the zillions of albums that have hit the market. That would be pretty silly to even attempt, especially when you consider that the GMC covers a lot of different kinds of music. [...]
"Deck The Halls" - Los Straitjackets "Joy To The World" - Stroudavarious Orchestra
![Passive Defence – Retire [kreislauf078]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/2215959_lg.jpg)
Tracklist: 01 Last Of July 02 Und Wieder Mal 03 Theories Of Minds 04 Don't Care About Your Harmony 05 Lost In The Fracture 06 Bad Conscious 07 Broadhead's Blues 08 Fade Out download
A while back I wrote about bandleader Claude Thornhill , who is unfortunately less remembered than many of his contemporaries from that era, but was nevertheless a very important part of jazz history. He was an outstanding instrumentalist, composer, and arranger, but in addition to all that he was a shrewd judge of musical talent - the kind possessed by singer Maxine Sullivan. She was born near Pittsburgh as Marietta Williams, but took her stage name as she grew to adulthood and began working her way into a musical career. By the late 1930s she'd managed [...]
As someone who has reviewed his share of Cuban music, I have to confess that I jumped to a premature conclusion when I received my review copy of the latest album from Pablo (Paul) Menéndez. I pretty much expected I'll See You In Cuba , coming out in early January on the Zoho label, to be a collection of traditional Cuban sounds - which would have suited me just fine. But even though the talented guitarist and his band, Mezcla ('Mixture' in Spanish), include a few tracks reminiscent of the usual music of Cuba, this album is [...]
In one of the more annoying lineup announcements of all-time, the producers of the Summer Camp Music Festival have unveiled the initial lineup for the 2010 event one artist at a time using Twitter . Joining usual Summer Camp headliners moe. and Umphrey's McGee on May 28-30 in Chillicothe will be Yonder Mountain String Band, The Avett Brothers, Keller Williams, Bassnectar, EOTO, Cornmeal, Family Groove Company, Backyard Tire Fire, Kinetix, The Ragbirds and Brainchild. The ADD Guide to Summer Camp Pt. 1 In other festival news, the principal partners [...]
I've always been a train buff, and since I'm also a fan of big-band music it stands to reason that one of my favorite songs of all time would be Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." I especially like the long version, which includes a 'jive' reprise. That performance, which features Dorothy Dandridge (who was just 18 at the time) and the Nicholas Brothers, is available below as an excerpt from the the 1941 film, Sun Valley Serenade . But even though Miller's version was number-one on the charts in 1941 (and won the recording industry's first-ever [...]
Please note: my regular file host has been hinky lately. That being the case, I'm going to (temporarily, I hope) include in each new post a link to a backup host. Thinking about the holidays while going through some old pictures caused me to recall a common and typical event from those days. Big family holiday dinners always included card games - both before and after the dinner. These were typically male-only affairs - not because the ladies didn't know how to play, but simply because they were busy in [...]
One of the most unusual stories of the Sixties had to be that of the Hombres, a group that started life as something else but then went on to record a strange, genre-crossing hit before eventually fading from view. The song was a novelty country-rock hybrid called " Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) ," and it would be the only hit for the group, a band that actually began as an offshoot of Ronny and the Daytonas, which was itself a sort of faux-group. Confused yet? Ronny and the Daytonas was the name of a [...]
If you liked High Performance – Live From Breaux Bridge: Part 1 , which I reviewed earlier this year, then the odds are better than even that you'll like a new release from the folks at Swallow Records, the Cajun/Zydeco music specialists, because it's pretty much more of the same. High Performance – Live From Breaux Bridge: Part 2 is 16 additional tracks, and that's good for those of us who like it. If you're not a fan of Cajun/zydeco music, then you probably [...]
Sometimes movies - even classics - end up being less remembered than the music contained within. A good example is the 1944 film, Laura , which is considered one of the best cinematic mysteries ever made and still has many fans, but probably isn't remembered as much as its timeless theme song. When producer/director Otto Preminger began putting the pieces together for his film production of Vera Caspary's novelized play, he had some pretty firm ideas for how he wanted to do it. One of those concerned the theme song, which would be played whenever [...]
One of the things I enjoy about digging through old pictures is how I inevitably stumble onto surprises, in some cases jaw-dropping ones. That would be a good description of how I reacted when I recently found a picture of myself from the Fifties, when I was a teenager and obviously fashion-challenged. I think I remember the gaudy striped shirt, but I cannot believe that I ever wore those pants in public. It seems to me that they were called clamdiggers, or beachcombers, or maybe pedal pushers. And girls sometimes called their version Capri's - I [...]
I've always enjoyed listening to the pop-music harmony groups of the Fifties and Sixties - guys like the Lettermen, the Four Freshmen, and others. They pleased a lot of fans with a sound that fit somewhere between earlier groups like the Pied Pipers and newer combos like the Beach Boys. But there were some very talented bunches around who never really hit it big, at least as measured by huge record sales or lasting fame. One of those was the Arbors, a group that only had a few moderately successful records but went on to prosper in [...]
Lily Allen is taking a career break , and won't be releasing any new music until 2011, or maybe - if we're lucky - 2012: Speaking to Radio 1's Sara Cox she said: "My last gig is my Dizzee Rascal concert at the O2 (London) in March. That's the last thing I've got planned. "I'm just going to concentrate on doing some behind the scenes sort of stuff." Given that it was nearly three years between Alright, Still and It's Not Me, It's Me Me Me, saying that you shouldn't expect an album [...]
Don’t you just hate when famous people sit around and feel sorry for themselves? Alec Baldwin says his movie career is such a failure that he’s retiring in 2012, claiming he doesn’t have any interest in acting anymore and that he’s young enough that he could do something else. He's been nominated for Golden Globes , Screen Actors Guild Awards , an Academy Award , received several Emmy nominations and even wins for his work on his hit tv show " 30 Rock ," and is already garnering some [...]
If you read my stuff with any regularity, you had to know this one was coming. After all, it was just last week that I generated a piece called Alan Jones - Father To The Son , and I even mentioned the possibility, so no surprise here. But that doesn't mean Jack's story is any less interesting than his father's - and in some ways, it's better. John Allan "Jack" Jones was born in Hollywood, a less than surprising beginning for the son of movie stars. (His mother was actress Irene Hervey.) Young Jack grew up in [...]
I would think that an artist would encounter a lot of obstacles in generating a debut album. First of all, they're almost certainly not well-known, so even getting the album made is an accomplishment. But even beyond that, they still have to get the album exposed to music fans, who will hopefully find that the artist has something to offer. Of course, that part of the process might have become a little easier than it once was, given the prevalence of web-based reviews (like this one) and the ease of listening to clips by clicking on an album [...]
Holidays always kick up the ol' daydream machine a notch or two, but I guess I'm not the only one with that reaction. Most of us have a lot of memories squirreled away in our heads and it doesn't take much to jar some of them loose from their hiding places. Thinking about the just-finished holiday, I was going through some old pictures and ran across a very simple one from over fifty years ago. It was taken at my maternal grandparents' house during one of our big family holiday dinners, and [...]
One of the things I enjoy most about digging into music history is the way the process sometimes leads me into unexplored territory. The latest example occurred while I was putting together a recent piece about pop star Mel Carter and ran across another singer, a mysterious lady who'd also had a best-selling record of Mel's big hit, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," but a dozen years earlier. At that time the singer was known as Karen Chandler, but she had performed earlier in her career as Eve Young, and was actually born Eva Nadauld. [...]
I had intended to write a piece about crooner Jack Jones, who has had - and continues to have - a long and successful career as a jazz and pop singer. But I decided to save that for another day, and instead tell the story of his talented dad, Allan Jones, who paved the way via his genes and his influence. The Pennsylvania-born Jones was the son of a coal miner, and spent some time underground himself as a young man but was able to sing his way into a scholarship that took him out of the [...]
Geezer Music Club
Minimal Freaks
Hidden Track
No Rock And Roll Fun
Allie Is Wired
![Washed Out - It All Feels Right [OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/qJILRWBKnQ4_130.jpg)
The Mantles – Long Enough To Leave Review
The Swiss – Elouisa EP
Jerome LOL – Tell U.
Victoria Justice Releases New Song "Shake"
Stream: Avicii feat. Aloe Blacc – Wake Me Up (Radio Edit)
