Added to iPod
August 30, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 1 Comment
It’s all classic rock, all the time!
Nick Lowe - “Jesus of Cool”.
The Feelies - “It’s Only Life” A true ’90s classic!
The Black Crowes - “Shake Your Money Maker”
AC/DC - “Back In Black” Like Led Zepplin, still not on iTunes
Elton John - “Honky Chateau” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
Marc Bolan/T Rex - “20th Century Boy” The best greatest hits collection. From 2002.
Dar Williams - “End of the Summer” From 1997.
Jules & the Polar Bears - “Got No Breeding” Ah, Boston… Wore this album out a few times. Searched Mr. Shears out one night - somewhere near Emerson. We were drunk. He was drunk. Perfect Friday. Great record.
Then I went surfing for singles on iTunes and picked up the best of Tears For Fears, Elastica, Ruby, Hoffamoose?, City Boy, and Mr. Ringo Starr.
That makes it 7,647 or 23.1 days (if you’re counting).
Added to iPod
August 24, 2007 | Filed Under Music | No Comments
A few interesting ones…
Beastie Boys - “Check Your Head”
Bob Dylan - “Blonde On Blonde”
Pavement - “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain”
Rilo Kiley - “Under The Blacklight” This is their first album in about four years. And it is a good pop record. However - for all Rilo Kiley fans - part of the joy of their music was the lyrics. Those lacerating words and small landmines wrapped in cotton candy and Jenny Lewis’s sexy, gorgeous vocals. This album - on a major label - is just confection. You’ll find no “spring surprise” here - just fine pop craftsmanship and great vocals and catchy guitar licks. Which is not bad. But it is hard to listen to the songs and know you don’t have to flinch.
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals - “This Is Somewhere” The new album! YEAH!!! She is fantastic and the bands kicks butt. Sure - there are a couple of weak songs - but that does nothing to deminish tunes like “Ah, Mary”, “Apologies” or “Flying or Falling”. Awesome record. I can’t wait to see her in two weeks in Central Park!
Added to iPod
August 22, 2007 | Filed Under Music | No Comments
The truth is I have created a stack of CDs at home that I need to upload. This is all I managed on Saturday.
Steve Hackett - “Wild Orchids” This is his most recent album of new material (2006) and it is pretty strong. Mr. Hackett left Genesis back in the early 80’s and STILL puts out solo records and has a massive following everywhere but the States.
Various Artists - “Ska Is Dead” Though not to these ska all-stars. Big D & the Kid’s Table to the Toasters to the Pietasters to Fishbone to Catch 22. A great party CD.
Various Artists - “Supperclub Lounge Vol 3″ Techno/Ambient from a restaurant/club in Amsterdam. The first time we went was amazing. Five years later, it was beyond boring.
Mozart - “Requiem in D Minor” Roger Norrington conducts. Another great party CD.
Yes - “Close To The Edge”
Tranquility Bass - “Let Your Freak Flag Fly” One guy - Mike Kandel - is Tranquility. He produces all the sounds on this techno/jazz/drum & bass hippie groove. Great album from 1997!
Then I found a CD of a bunch of folks reading Hunter Thompson’s Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas. Those people include Jim Jarmusch, Harry Dean Stanton, Laraine Newman, Harry Shearer and others, with an intro and outro by HST himself. It might not be fulfilling to sit and listen in one sitting, but it should be great added to the shuffle.
Added to iPod
August 15, 2007 | Filed Under Music | No Comments
It’s been awhile. Still haven’t uploaded anything I came home with from the Warped Tour (where is that stuff?) But these bring me to 7350 songs or 22.2 days.
My Morning Jacket - “Okonokos” This is their double live record. Also their recording of “Rocket Man” that appeared at the closing of Californication.
Police - “Reggatta De Blanc” Not a big fan anymore, but this is good.
Squeeze - “East Side Story”
G Love - “Lemonade” Can G Love be bad?
Healing The Divide - This is the name of a charity for the benefit of the Dali Lama and the people of Tibet and this is the CD of a concert given at Lincoln Center in 2003. The Dali Lama speaks. There is an invocation by the Tuvan Throat Singers. Anoushka Shankar plays. Philip Glass plays and so do some Navajo indians. THEN there are four songs by Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet! What a wierd and amazing pairing. And it works.
Warped Tour
August 6, 2007 | Filed Under Main, Music | No Comments
This may be only my fifth time to the Warped Tour, but they are in their 13th season as the pre-eminent traveling punk rock summer show. This year was one of the best for me because… I think I was finally able to enjoy myself. Trust me – there is a big difference between chaperoning 12 year olds and being the driver for seventeen year olds. No hyperventilating this year and we hit no traffic either coming or going (a major miracle!). Just a pleasant, music filled ten hours on blacktop in the hot sun.
Ska was big on the menu this year. We started off the morning with Bigger Thomas, a fun local band. Then the Toasters, though I had trouble finding their stage. (Signage, people. Is that so hard?) Then the Fabulous Rudies from San Diego, who were great onstage with a cool guitar player – however the CD doesn’t even sound like them. Later, there were some alterna-ska bands like Pepper and Big D & the Kids Table. Good music and more interesting to me then the usual diet of shrieking-white-twenty-something-males who dominate the stages.
However, my main band was Bad Religion. Since I started going to these shows, it has been painfully obvious that 99% of the attendees were AT LEAST 20 years younger than me. Bad Religion has been around since the 80s – still talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk – and are as old as I am! Their new record “New Maps Of Hell” continue their tried and true brand hard rocking social commentary. So – I wanted to be in the middle of this audience. As close to the stage as I could get. Ergo – I was in the mosh pit. Let me pass on what I have learned over the years about moshing, slam-dancing and crowd surfing. There is etiquette involved. Surfing is a bit problematic because you don’t know which direction the surfer is coming from until they land on the back of your neck. But everyone understands this and you move them along until the reach the front of the stage and are lifted off the crowd by very large security men. If a surfer falls – you pick them back up. (Oddly, most surfers – at least at this show – were girls). As for the dancing – a mosh circle is organic. It forms where ever it forms. A song begins, some people push back to create the circle and there you are. With the “slam dancing” (for lack of a better term) that happens in the circle, you just push the “dancers” back into the circle. They run into you – you push them back. If anyone falls, they are immediately helped up. Someone will pick up your cell phone or glasses to keep them from being crushed. Dancers are all sizes, shapes and genders. One guy next to me had two withered arms and was right in there with it. You might get hurt, but no one is hostile or violent. In fact, the highlight of the set (and the band was perfect!) was when the crowd surfed a guy and his wheelchair.
Let me say that again – they surfed a guy WITH HIS WHEELCHAIR! He held it in front of him as the crowd gently carried him to the front. The band stopped dead in the middle of the song to acknowledge this move, we all cheered and the show continued.
And, really, how bad can humanity be if something like that can happen?
Added to iPod
August 4, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 2 Comments
Well, tomorrow is my fifth trip to the Warped Tour. Where I will once again “blister in the sun”. I’ll see Bad Religion and paramore while there and see if anything else is interesting. Chris and friends will be crowd surfing to God knows what…
Here are some new tunes:
Joe Jackson - Greatest hits. Actually just cannibalizing Itunes to create a greatest hits of all albums except “Jumpin’ Jive” - which I have in its entirety.
John McLaughlin - “Electric Guitarist”
Spoon - “Ga Ga Ga Ga” The new one. One of my new favorite bands.
fIREHOSE - “Flyin’ The Flannel” From Mike Watt and the boys back in the day.
Psychedelic Furs - The “Sister Europe” LP.
Teenage Fanclub - “Bandwagonesque” The only one I really like. Very Big Star-esque.
Also - Today I sat in Yankee Stadium and watched A-Rod hit his 500th home run! We had just sat down and it was over. First pitch. Had to get home and watch the replay to really see it happen.
Twilight Singers
July 31, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 1 Comment
Remember Greg Dulli and the Afghan Whigs? For a time they were one of the most exciting and frustrating bands around. When they were hot (like on Gentlemen or the beginning of 1965), no one could touch them. But there were also many misfires – songs that didn’t quite go anywhere. Half-baked material. Half-baked concerts. Then they were gone.
A brief Google search for Mr. Dulli found him fronting a band called the Twilight Singers and releasing their 2006 album “Powder Burns”. I have had this on my iPod for a while and it just gets better with every spin. This is a whole record – solid from start to finish. Notes on the website say it was started at the lowest ebb in his life and eventually saw Mr. Dulli turn himself around during the recording. The album was completed in the French Quarter soon after Katrina. That’s why a tinge of darkness – twilight, if you will – strokes all these songs. It is some of his best work and the band is phenomenal! Muscular guitars, propulsive rhythm section, a cushion of strings here, a flourish of sax there, and Dulli’s smoky vocals squeezing every ounce of drama from the lyrics. From the opening licks of “I’m Ready” to the blistering “Bonnie Brae” (featured on last season’s Rescue Me) to the gorgeous “The Conversation” and ending with “They Ride”. Mr. Dulli is on his game and THAT is cause for celebration. People – This is what rock albums USED to be like before everything became lame and whiny. Screw the Shins, Wilco and their ilk.
Buy it and hope they tour.
Added to iPod
July 29, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 9 Comments
On a lazy, rainy, hang around weekend - what’s there to do but watch horror movies and upload tunes?
Brian Eno & David Byrne - “My Life In The Bush of Ghosts”
Uncle tupelo - “Still Feel Gone”
John Coltrane - “A Retrospective” Three-disk set.
Versus - “Two Cents Plus Tax” Great pop from this NYC band.
Richard & Linda Thompson - “Shoot Out The Lights” A classic.
PIL - “The best of..So Far”
Now a very special addition. I spent my Saturday night (since no one else was home) recording old vinyl. These four were part of my life in the early ’80s in Boston. They are pretty much one offs because they all came out in 1980-81 and - hell, there was a LOT of good music coming out in that period. Each of these bands got lost - where never picked up or developed - and that is all she wrote. But I loved these records because of the time, the place and my life at that point.
Interview - “Snakes and Lovers” This album was just self-titled in the States. You all know “Adventurers”, right? “Hide And Seek”? The lead singer sounded a bit like Richard Butler of the Psych Furs.
Private Lightning Their only LP. Fun Boston band I saw open for the Boomtown Rats at the Orpheum. Big sounds, big songs and a beautiful woman playing violin. What could be bad?
The Vapors - “Magnets” Everyone knows the song “Turning Japanese”. Well, this was their second and much stronger LP. Songs of fear and paranoia with a new wave beat. The lead single was a bouncing little number about “Jimmie Jones”. The title track a fabulously dramatic take of the Kennedy assasination. What ever happened to these guys?
Original Mirrors Self-titled LP. Another Motown-meets-new wave enterprise (good cover of “Reflections”), but not nearly as mannered and self-conscious as some of that stuff got (remember the Style Council?). A bright, shiny sound with good crunchy guitars. Friday night in Boston under the Great God Citgo! Kenmore Square - here we come!
Added to iPod
July 27, 2007 | Filed Under Music | No Comments
a little of this… a touch of that…
First off - my new Global Rhythm disk from the magazine of the same name. Nice mix of different things. For techno, we have a cut from Joi off their new album and a duet between Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale. There’s a new tune from Zap Mama and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Also, the Skatalites and that new band out of China - the 12 Girls Band (which really has 13 girls). Then:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Just a collection of singles from CSNY. CN, CSN and just S.
Jacqueline Du Pre & Daniel Barenboim - “Five Cello Sonatas” Talk about a storybook couple… The bad thing about this live recording is that you can hear constant coughing! I mean - I would have shot the guy from the stage! Does this happen on a lot of live classical CDs?
Martha Argerich - “Live from the Concertgebouw” Great pianist!
Various Artists - “The Soundtrack to Desert Blue” Very indie soundtrack. Never saw nor heard of the movie before, but it carries two cool and otherwise unavailable Rilo Kiley tunes: “The Frug” and “85″. New album out soon…
Added to iPod
July 19, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 2 Comments
The computer is fixed and I am free! Here is the group that pushed me over 7,000.
Tangerine Dream – “Soundtrack to Sorcerer” A very tense film. Check it out.
Steely Dan – “Aja”
Violent Femmes – The classic first album.
Various Artists – “Soundtrack to Diner” One of the best coming of age movies ever. The playlist has always been one of my favorites – from Bobby Darin’s “Beyond The Sea” to Jimmy Reed’s “Take Out Some Insurance” to Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s “Ain’t Got A Home”.
Finally – a four disk set of jazz called “The Verve Story: 1944-1994”. Now, I like jazz but I’m not a huge fan. I have some Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Medeski Martin & Wood and others. But this set fills in the blanks nicely. The songs are classic and so are the performances. Everyone is here: Charlie Parker, Illinois Jacquet, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, etc etc. An excellent collection.
Oh – I also added Falco’s “Rock Me, Amadeus”. In German, of course.
Added to iPod
July 16, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 1 Comment
My computer got fried during the thunder storm last week, so I have not been able to upload more of the collection. But I did add a few things:
Ambrosia - First album. The only good one. Progressive and pop with good lyrics and time structures.
John McLaughlin & the Mahavishnu Orchestra - “The Inner Mounting Flame” McLaughlin is one of my favorite guitarists and this is a seminal album from 1971. HOWEVER - anyone into his work or early jazz fusion in general should look for his solo LP a year before called “Devotion”. Very psychedelic - extended jams and lots of distortion. But the interplay between McLaughlin, Buddy Miles, Larry Young and Bill Rich are amazing.
I also downloaded Friday night’s Dispatch concert to the iPod. Modern technology is fabulous!
Dispatch
July 14, 2007 | Filed Under Main, Music | No Comments
Last night, my son Chris and I saw Dispatch at Madison Square Garden on the first of their three night stand to benefit Zimbabwe. Dispatch is a jam band - part funk, part jazz, part rock, part reggae. All three shows are and have been sold out (though rumor has it you can still get tickets somewhere). Up until two years ago, I had never heard of them and I was not familiar with their music. But two of Chris’s friends turned him onto the band and they would learn some of the songs to play around the fire on some of our camping trips. So when I stumbled across the show one day in March, the friends told Chris they already had tickets to every night of the concert. Knowing there might be a ticket drop, I signed up to the bands website and won an auction for a pair of tickets. (Hey- it’s all for charity.) Needless to say, since Chris’s friends are also teenagers and teenagers are not to be trusted (or believed), they never did have tickets.
The show was excellent. This band had disbanded in 2004 after a free concert on the Esplanade in Boston that pulled over 100,000 people. My guess is they have never played this big a venue in NYC - let alone sell it out for three nights. AND there are only three of them! A jam band with three members! They switched instruments, they all sang in perfect harmony. The sound was amazing! Occasionally they brought out a horn section or another percussionist. But these three guys whipped-up a rabid teenage/college-age fan base without benefit of airplay, hit albums or even being around the past three years. And where did they get started? VERMONT!
Their connection to Zimbabwe is that some member lived there for a while and they have family and friends there. Thus the band was amazingly quiet on the real reasons for the current horrendous poverty and economic failure in this country. Current President Robert Mugabe was never mentioned and he alone has killed this nation. Another petty politician who won an election in 1987 and decided to crown himself King. In his attampt to divest the country of all white people - many of whom ran the farming industry that had this country known as the “bread basket” of Africa - he destroyed much of the nations farmland and turned the land over to people who could not sustain it. Now the country is literally starving. However, I’m sure fear of retribution and a hampering of Dispatch’s efforts to help have kept them from pointing fingers.
Grace Potter
July 8, 2007 | Filed Under Music | 4 Comments
So you can keep your Joss Stones and your Amy Winehouses. I am in love with Grace Potter and her band the Nocturnals. I have been digging the album “Nothing But The Water” but I finally got to watch the DVD that came with the CD I purchased (in Vermont!) which has five cuts from a show they did in Burlington. What a good time that must have been! She really works the songs and the band (I especially dug when - at the end of “Joey” she breaks into Lucinda Williams’ “Joy”). Kerry hears a lot of Bonnie Raitt in her. I’ve checked her website (www.gracepotter.com) and the closest she will be to Jersey is the Central Park Summerstage in September.
You can bet - I will be there.
Added to iPod
July 4, 2007 | Filed Under Main, Music | No Comments
Wow - It’s been a whole week! And I’m closing in on 7000 songs.
Mojo Presents - “The Sun Is Shining” Now, I always loved free toys in my cereal. The next best thing is free CD’s in magazines! This is a reggae complitation from the most recent Mojo Magazine. A perfect selection of Lee “Scratch” Perry, the Heptones, Burnin’ Spear, Yabby You and Bob Marley. I have also started to receive the magazine Global Rhythm which has a World compilation CD - so EVERYTHING can be considered “new” music to me. Can’t wait.
Sinead O’Connor - “Sean-Nos Nua” and “She Who Dwells In The Secret Place Of The Most High Shall Abide Under The Shadow Of The Almighty”. Say that five times fast… I love Sinead. She has a great voice, great songs and - like any Irish lass worth her salt - she has more balls than most. “Sean-Nos Nua” is her “traditional” Irish album, though most of the songs are unfamiliar and in Gaelic. “She Who Dwells…” is a double disk with the first being odds, ends and collaborations. The second is a live concert with hits and songs from “Sean-Nos Nua”. A very strong performance… and NEITHER album was given the time of day in the States.
Neil Young - “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and “Tonight’s The Night”. Both burned from the vinyl. As I sit here listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage on Sirius (my wife’s favorite station), I was thinking that “Tonight’s The Night” should qualify as a great garage record. It is rough, loud at times and full of passion. Crazy Horse is one of the best garage bands ever. So why doesn’t anyone ever play this record? Because it’s no fun. I mean - it is a beautiful and powerful piece of music. But it is not a frame of mind that you enter lightly. Recorded around the death of two close friends - Bruce Berry, a roadie, and Danny Whitten, singer and guitarist for Crazy Horse - both lost to addiction. The vibe is dark and raw. Reflective and angry. The liner notes contain a letter from Neil to Danny after his passing. The album cover shows the band (which included Nils Lofgren) with their names under their pictures and Mr. Whitten’s name alongside under an empty space. Sometimes I think it is a shame because there are great songs here - worthy songs - but they will be lost. They can’t really be pulled out of context (much like Lou Reed’s “Berlin”).
I guess what I’m saying here is - grab a drink and spin this record every now and then. It deserves to be played.
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