There are some things I miss from physical media. Browsing through music stores, looking at cover art, reading through booklets for liner notes and credits, all that stuff was fun. But it’s nice not having to shuffle around CDs, it’s nice not to have to lug stuff around when I want to listen to something different, and it’s really, really nice not to have to deal with stupid hidden tracks.
[Read More]Every now and again, I just sieze when a song comes on. I just have nothing to say. I like this song! I like this album! But, uh, here it is.
We’ve had Carl Newman before, with the New Pornographers and Zumpano, but here he is recording under his own name. And, frankly, it pretty much just sounds like the New Pornographers, but with less Neko Case.
[Read More]Smokey Robinson here with the official anthem of red pillers everywhere.
Slick Rick’s classic debut, The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, was tremendously influential. While there’s nothing super special about the beats, Rick’s flow (complete with odd delivery) and storytelling were groundbreaking at the time. You can see his influence just by listening for how many great rappers pay homage to him, ranging from Ice Cube, to Snoop Dogg, to Black Star, among many, many others.
[Read More]Just a quick entry today, but some fun songs.
An early song from Big Black, this was on the EP Bulldozer, the first one that featured Santiago Durango and so is really the first real recording from them. This song was later found on The Hammer Party, which collected the first couple (or three, on CD) EPs. It’s an interesting document of a band that is kind of finding their sound, and there are some strong songs on the collection.
[Read More]Can you tell the Voodoo Glow Skulls and Suicide Machine apart? Most people can’t.
Soul revivalist Willis leans more towards the Motown end of things than the Stax/Volt side, although obviously there’s still plenty of Stax influence here as well. And my god, those drums at the start of the song. Anyway, this album (Keep Reachin’ Up) is fantastic.
Voodoo Glow Skulls are usually at their least interesting in their generic hardcore mode. This is, um, a pretty generic hardcore song.
[Read More]Been a little while since we’ve hit any ska. Fixed that today! PICK IT UP, PICK IT UP, PICK IT UP!
Another New York third-wave band, the Scofflaws were distinguished by…well, let’s be honest, nothing. But, they had solid chops, were amusing without being too smug, and wrote some good songs, so they’re worth a go. This is from Ska In Hi-Fi, their best album, featuring as it does odes to nude beaches and William Shatner.
[Read More]Just narrowly missed “Buffalo Soldier”, as played on a xylophone today. Dodged that bullet! Here’s what we do have today.
I try to not be totally ignorant of current pop music, but let’s be honest: I usually am pretty ignorant. Every now and again, though, I’ll just pick up an album that’s been getting really good reviews, and I’ll often enjoy it as a break from the usual grim frowny stuff we typically have around here. All of which is a long way of saying that, yeah, this album is pretty good.
[Read More]Just in case anybody is curious, I’ve started using ToVid to upload songs to YouTube. It seems to work with a minimum of hassle, the only drawback being that I sometimes need to convert songs to MP3 before uploading them. For that job, media.io seems to work pretty well. Between the two of them, it means I don’t really need to do very much to get things uploaded. As for today, let’s hope today’s songs are a better bunch than yesterday.
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