Friday Five : \'frī-(,)dā,-dē 'fīv\ : On the sixth day of every week, I hit the shuffle button on my iTunes, then share the first five tracks and thought for each track. Sometimes there is a playlist involved, occasionally we'll have a guest, but most of the time it's just me. The rest is up to you, our friends and readers! Fire up your media player of choice and share the first five random track of your shuffle in the comments. The Five: "Heaven" by Bryan Adams (from [...]
Rupert Holmes is probably currently best-known as a Tony-winning playwright, having picked up two awards for his Broadway musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood . But the multi-talented artist first rose to fame years earlier as a popular recording artist, whose best-known song - "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" - rocketed to the top of the charts in the late 1970s. (Video below.) Holmes was born in England as David Goldstein, the offspring of an American father and a British mother, but grew up in the New York area. His parents provided him with a [...]
Escape (The Piña Colada Song) - Rupert Holmes I was looking for something to kick off the holiday weekend. I think this does the trick. Enjoy!
Here's a bit of fun from Rupert Holmes' 1973 album, Widescreen , a collection of songs Holmes conceived of as "movies in sound." This is the fullest exploration of that idea from the album, and is more or less a full-blown radio play. In the liner notes to the expanded collector's edition (where the buy link goes, natch), Holmes writes: "Had I But Known (as they used to say on such [old-time radio] programs) that in the nineteen-nineties I'd have the chance to write four years worth of such programs for [...]
Here's a track from the soundtrack to Rupert Holmes' 2006 mystery Swing . You can read more about the novel, and listen to the soundtrack, at Holmes' semiofficial site . The novel is a murder mystery (and, like his first novel Where The Truth Lies , also serves as a metamystery) set in 1940's Golden Gate International Exposition. I won't summarize the plot here, but it's smart and complex, twisty and turny, and simultaneously hilarious and dead serious. Despite the grim, uncomfortable aspects of the plot, there's plenty of time for fun exploration [...]
Here's our second post for Rupert Holmes month on Silly Sundays. In 1979, this was a massive #1 hit for Holmes, the song that really launched his career as a popular musician. The album, Partners in Crime , contains a lot of songs themed around unhealthy relationships and cheating, most with a tongue-in-cheek attitude belying the serious nature of the unhappiness chronicled therein. Which is actually a clue to how Holmes works: he takes a truly unhappy situation and discusses it in a funny way, full of tiny, perfect details and human reactions, and makes you forget [...]
For the month of August, Silly Sundays will be devoted to some tracks written and performed by renaissance man Rupert Holmes ( official wiki AMG ), the only man to win a Tony and an Edgar for the same work. (We'll be hearing a song from that work later this month, methinks.) In 1971, Holmes was writing and recording and producing songs with his friend Ron Dante (of The Archies fame/infamy), and his friends The Buoys ( official wiki interview ). The Buoys were signed for a major label single, [...]
Rupert Holmes: The Pina Colada Song [ purchase ] It must have been a ton of fun to be an adult during the 1970s when this kind of stuff was happening. Not saying the tunes were always great, but the yacht rock lifestyle had its moments. I mean, who doesn't like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain?
From Convoy to Sean Penn's cinematic interpretation of the Bruce Springsteen song "Highway Patrolman," called The Indian Runner , filmmakers have fairly often looked to narrative songs for inspiration. Sadly, more times than not, they either seem to miss the mark (see: The Gambler ) or end up making a movie that has nothing much to do with the song ( Jumpin' Jack Flash ). However, sometimes they do succeed fairly well and we get an enjoyable movie like Alice's Restaurant or [...]
Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I've collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their "song obsessions of the week." Quite often it's easy to explain why the song is good; it's much hard to explain why we're obsessed. Maybe you'll become obsessed with one of these. - Adrian ( me ): Kanye West (with DJ Premiere) - Everything I Am [...]
From Ananova.com : A Bosnian couple are getting divorced after finding out they had been secretly chatting each other up online under fake names. Sana Klaric, 27, and husband Adnan, 32, from Zenica, poured out their hearts to each other over their marriage troubles, and both felt they had found their real soul mate. The couple met on an online chat forum while he was at work and she in an internet cafe, and started chatting under the names Sweetie and [...]
Just feel the extended chorus. Leave your whole life behind and focus on appreciating the funky clavi. Rock the super soft cowbell. Drive with the windows down for ONCE in your life. Rupert Holmes - Answering Machine ||: I'm so sorry, you have just reached my answering machine/I'm not here at present, I'm sure you know this whole routine :|| (fade out)
IckMusic
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The Twilight Sad cover The Smiths
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