There are a bunch of long songs on YSIV (Young Sinatra 4), but I’m not sure that it totally works for me. Goodness knows I don’t have a problem with long songs in general, but I really kind of want more evolution over the course of a track than this exhibits.
See, now, this makes a point. Bellow through a bullhorn, pound away with some bass and drums, get the point across. Done.
[Read More]I’m old, so I’m out of touch with music. Keeping up with the latest artists and releases requires a lot more hustle than I can really perform. Not to mention that my own personal network just doesn’t dig up stuff for me as much as it used to. It’s a natural thing, and it’s just a fact of agint. Music is a young person’s game. But I’m relatively more in touch with some scenes and genres than others. Hip-hop? I’m hopeless. I’ll just randomly come across artists, and I have no idea of how big they are or aren’t, or their reception. So, Logic - I have this record, I like it. He has a billion records though. How is he perceived? How is the rest of his body of work? No idea! It didn’t used to be this way.
[Read More]I’ve mentioned it before, but Stretching Out is probably the best single Skatalites album. This is a double live album from 1983, during a time when all of the eight surviving original members were back together in the wake of the second wave reviving interest in ska. It catches the band at the top of their form, full of energy, playing many of their greatest songs. If not for the sad absence of Don Drummond, I’d say it catches them at the absolute height of their powers, a neat trick for a band that has played music across six decades.
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