Music Musings and Miscellany (Free subscription) | yesterday
Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. THE BYRDS – So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star / Everybody’s Been Burned (Columbia 43987 1967) They had a bit of a nerve poking fun at the Monkees when just a couple of [...]
Jonk Music (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
"It Ain't Gonna Save Me" from the album Watch Me Fall 2009 iTunes As far as persona goes, this middle-school dropout from Memphis is as misanthropic and explosive as Iggy at his peak. But, as negative, bellicose, piss-drinking fuckups go, he certainly does work hard. Since the 1990s, he's issued a steady stream of music under a confusing array of auspices, including the Reatards, Lost Sounds,...
cowsarejustfood (Free subscription) | 24/11/2009
variations on a theme? not om. not hadyn. just that i’ve got a pile of this-kind-of-thing mooching desk space right now; from the ever reliable in the red, is john dwyers newest as thee oh sees; slightly surprisingly from de stijl, the (overly') perky pens record; and the vivian girlsish rocket-spunk conciseness of brilliant colors [...]
Art Decade (Free subscription) | 23/11/2009
The Byrds: He Was a Friend of Mine President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 46 years ago in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Miami New Times | Complete Issue (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
As both the precocious bard and poet laureate of the Laurel Canyon elite, Jackson Browne created a late-'60s/early-'70s repertoire that found him standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other notables of the day. Alongside peers such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young...
DCist (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
Dawes When I think about the band Dawes , I'm reminded of that line in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou when George Clooney's character, Ulysses Everett McGill, is explaining the sound of his band, the Soggy Bottom Boys. In an attempt to convince the old blind radio station operator that the group is worthy enough to play on air, Everett says, "Uh, sir, the Soggy Bottom Boys is been steeped in old-timey...
A Boat Against the Current (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
November 17, 1944— Gene Clark , an original member of the 1960s pioneering folk-rock group The Byrds , was born in Tipton, Mo., to an amateur-musician father who fed him a diet of country-music standards. Ironically, the future composer of “Eight Miles High” and several other original compositions for his band saw his career blown off course by fear of flying—and his life ended...
Word Magazine blogs (Free subscription) | 15/11/2009
All this reminiscing around the career of the mighty ELO got me musing about something. Is Jeff Lynne basically the single luckiest/most fulfilled bloke in the entire history of rock music? Let's look at the evidence... Here's Jeff, a member of an obscure Brummy beat combo who's grown up being heavily influenced by a range of artists, each of which have blended to form a part of his musical DNA. There's...
American Power (Free subscription) | 15/11/2009
You know what it's like: There are some songs, like Jimmy Hendrix's, "Purple Haze," or The Stones', "Jumping Jack Flash," where the guitar introductions practically clinch the recordings all by themselves. That's how it used to be for me, with Patti Smith's cover of "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star." (Wikipedia's entry on The Byrds' orginal is here , with discussion...
Advertising For Success (Free subscription) | 15/11/2009
At the base of the monument it says: This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in the world. The Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima is one of the world's most haunting memorials. The bronze statue of a girl holding a paper crane atop the memorial is the likeness of Sadako Sasaki. Sadako was two when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nine years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia....
The Music Digest (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
In his Ash Grove recording, guitarist Dave Alvin laments the loss of a favorite Los Angeles club, a venue that should be on the National Register of Historic Places. It would have to be in an urn, however, the club burned not once, but three times. Ed Pearl (an uncle of Spirit's Randy California) founded the 250-seat Ash Grove in 1958.
Wolfgangs Vault (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
Listen to Steppenwolf performed at Fillmore West on August 28, 1968
Some Velvet Blog (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
Soulsavers' new album Broken seems to have fallen on quiet ears since its release in August. The band's redemptive gospel-goth-rock & soul seems to have gotten more cinematic and sonically expansive since their album of almost two years ago, It's Not How Far You Fall, It's The Way You Land . Mark Lanegan continues to handle most of the vocals along with collaborators Ian Glover and Rich Machin....
Transpontine (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
Thanks to Bob from Brockley for providing me with a rare opportunity to weave The Cowboy Junkies into the Transpontine Mythos, albeit via a rather indirect link with South East London. For, as Bob notes, Canadian singer-songwriter David Wiffen was actually born in Sydenham in 1942 and spent his childhood in South London and Surrey before moving across the ocean at the age of 16. In the early 1970s...
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