The singing is tedious and professional and so is the orchestra, this is a passionless drag and though both my niece (who is 40 years old) and my Great Niece (who is 10 years old) liked it, I bet they can’t name one song.
Why should the age people died be so interesting… Presley was 42. Now I don’t know how old you are but 42 years old is at least an interesting age to die..
It was a busy Tuesday morning by anybody’s standards. 16 new releases, all some degree of major, all important for your music fan to have an idea about. And if he it wasn’t for Spotify, very very expensive.
I like the two newbies, #9 and #10 a whole lot, and congrats to Calvin for breaking US without Rihanna! Also, my niece mentioned that she never liked Justin till “Beauty And A Beat” so I guess it did its job and broke him out of teen idol category.
The top four are all newbies, well, Charlie Wilson is from last year. I can’t say I am a fan of the top two, but # 3 is a very very good one. Tegan And Sara? I am as shocked as you are….
She just kinda seems dead inside, like there’s nothing behind her eyes.” He added, “Like there’s nothing in her boobs anymore!”
Toast To Love – Avant – 90s soul man hasn’t lost a beat on his newest album, all old time r&b potboilers. The voice is the usual though he seldom goes up too high, and the production is new school but the song itself evoke the 1980s and the 1990s – Grade: B+
Teenagers are to rock and roll. what the story of Jesus is to the Gospels, everything else is to rock and roll what Parables are to the Gospel. They illuminate but they aren’t the point.
From Sunday morning thru Sunday afternoon I listened to it incessantly. Wrote up a review late Sunday afternoon and it posted on rock nyc Monday Morning. And now it is Monday afternoon and the My Bloody Valentine story is just about done with. I mean it is so Satuday Night And Sunday Morning
Beyonce is becoming the Queen Bee of Bad Vibes. There is something kinda nasty about the first couple of pop, condescending, a little on the Marie Antionette side of all of this and while I will be happy to refine my thoughts if 5 is as great as 4 was.
Sneak Out The Back Door – Ron Sexsmith – No, it isn’t the extended sarcasm of “Get In Life” and there is no line as gasp worthy as the “spilt milk” reference. But it is the next best thing and with its hint of suicide, it is a stirring piece of songwriting – Grade: A
People seem to think Gary is an acquired taste and I just don’t hear it. This is a mainstream pop song that twists a little of center but it still sounds wonderful. A really wonderful love song.
And that’s just off the top of my head and not reaching for the hall of Iman shame, Armstrongs and Presleys and Lennons! The good news hear is I just know I’ll get round to three of the names here and add My Bloody Valentine to the list! And maybe Steve Leckie will bring back Viletones!!
The tedium and the pressure of work palls after decades of it, there has to be more somewhere in 1960 and I will be Chad and my problems? Join the family canning business, no Dad, I wanna go my own way, I wanna charter planes
This might well be Trixie’s week but Kris’ song of imminent mortality is sure giving her youthful angst a run for its money. -or maybe because I am much closer to Kris’s age than Trixie’s. Neither the Wayne nor the Kingsbury are out yet but you can stream KB here.
Wow, a new Silverstein, Sexsmith Jim James (and a goodie by the sounds of it) and Eels (which I’ve been streaming with nothing but pleasure all week). But the week belongs to Chris Stamey, Stamey’s solo stuff is consistently better than his dB’s material and his dB’s material is pretty awesome in its own rights. Word is this was influenced by his work on the Alex Chilton tribute…
she found now – My Bloody Valentine – This is the shoegaze to beat all shoegazers, a introspective self-absorbed swirl of sonic guitar wallpaper par excellence. This will launch another dozen bands trying to recreate this feeling of a space drift – Grade: A
A disturbed genius not a million miles away from a Brian Wilson or a Phil Spector: he derives meaning from orchestrated sound that seems to bury itself into your subconscious. And the truth is, though it took 22 years of manipulation, it sounds easy: it has the easy of someone doing something only they can.
On a night that finds Marissa Paternoster back from illness to lead Screaming Females once more again, I have to give the nod to David Bronson and the Long Lost at Fontana’s Saturday night at 10pm. My peers, who claim “today’s music don’t have the same soul, should try Bronson’s whose voyage of discovery (part two!) Story was the prog folk 70s modern rock opera to beat last year. And he doesn’t play live nearly enough. I’ve never seen him in person and I can’t resist it. An absolute must see.
I have only heard one song off Opposites and it is alright. unlike Andrea Bocelli’s dreaded opera lite. I’ve heard nothing off Jools Holland latest but I did interview back in the day when he was with Squeeze. Otherwise it is back to Rihanna for my pop kicks, I guess.
The Pitbull song is still hanging around? All a little 2012 isn’t it. I mean this entire chart feels moldy round the edges, after all this is 2013 and we expect Pitbull to act like it, ha ha ha. Zigga Zigga Zall…
Hurt – Johnny Cash – Cash takes Trent Reznors ode to self-immolation and turns it into a back door vision of death stranded in his quickly decaying body. Cash sounds very very old, he seems to be knocking on heavens door and heavens door is getting ready to let him in and the result is a cover that belongs more to Cash than Reznor – Grade: A+
After watching 90 minutes of black men pounding each other into submission we got to spend 15 minutes of a black women pounding us into submission during a musically negligible but emotionally gratifying response to both the setting and to her lip-synching controversy by Beyonce.
Shorter’s quartet plus a dozen odd violins, two more upright bassists, a big bass drum and a half dozen wind instruments all coming together to unload what sounds to my untrained ears to be a mix of Glenn Branca and Shostakovitch, oh and, Bernard Hermann. I keep on expecting Anthony Perkins to stab me in the shower.
Shortly after this snap was taken, Savile callously betrayed the trust of the 18-year-old and her parents Stanley and Phyllis by attacking her as she gave him a lift in her ca
Believe Acoustic – Justin Bieber – Partying like it’s 3020 ain’t what it used to be on this dreary six string version of the pretty crappy to start with original album plus three songs,. Those three include the completely asinine farewell to Selena the piano based “Nothing Like Us”, a pretty good reason alone for Selena to dump the cretin. Forget the terrible, generic lyric, the melody is just… actually I don’t think there is. As always, “Boyfriend” is the exception – Grade: D
At the time it seemed overlong and a little winded, and while it won on points, and it won on its best moments of which there were quite a few, there were stretches that didn’t take off. But now, it seems like a flawed masterpiece where the lenth of the show let it not build but flow in intensity.
Started From The Bottom – Drake – Ominous sample and an auto tune vocal on a loop going round and round which, in typical Drake fashion makes bragging feel like a form of deep deep depression. In other words: Awesome – Grade: A-
Bono doesn’t condemn the Pope because he knows the Pope. he is pals with the Pope. And Sinead can’t find the next target of her bile, everything feels wrong and strange, it is like she has taken one hit over the line and is having a paranoid meltdown.
Whatever problems you might have with the Who as music, the Who as philanthropists appears to be beyond reproach. Along with some four local gigs since December, the Who performed the 12-12-12 benefit for Hurricane Sandy victims which was sweet albeit longwinded. But better? On February 28th they will be joined by Elvis Costello for a different benefit, this time to aid cancer victims and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
How many 50 year olds are camping out at the wonderfully named Temple Island Meadows, Henley On The Thames. Still, they do things differently in England. I wonder if rock nyc’s uber-B-52s fan Michael Malone is going!
We The Common – Thao And The Get Down Stay Down – Playful stuff from a firm indie fave with a cross folkie flavor and a song that seems built to cross pop in a world where a hey ho hook is king. Thao claims Lilith Fair as an influence so I docked her a notch- Grade: B-
This is what they’d been lead to believe, and it answered her question as to why the place had been quiet: it was the difference between admiration, we all admire her emotionalism and also her lack of pretension, her ability to be deadly serious without taking herself deadly serious, and love. You could see Le Poisson Rouge fall in love with her.
Beautiful – Teena Marie – Ivory snow r&b old school. A magnificent album filled with strong songs, great vocals and, well, naff lyric kinda comes with the territory but a fine farewell from the great dance diva.
I haven’t had a good idea all year, which makes me the opposite of Visual designer and artis Alfra Martini who thought up the concept of the year. Substituting rock stars with kittens on famous album covers and then posting them on her Tumbler account!
This year I plan to do a better job of figuring out what I love most by doing less of a job on what I like best. The top ten songs are in order of preference, the rest of the songs are order in which I added (more or less!)
Hey ho, ho hum. Gary Allan isn’t BAAAAAD, or even bad, he is just the latest in a growing list of country boys with biceps and a soft side. You can’t throw a brick without hitting one and while with the exception of an Eric Church here and there I am not a fan though I don’t want them burnt at the stake either. On any given album there is a song or two that will break pop and a lot of country by the numbers.
I really can’t hear why “Thrift Shop” hit so big, it isn’t really all that hot as even novelty. Except for that kid, who sounds weirdly like Ke$ha saying “I like your beard”. This is such a boring top ten, wake me up next week…
I Believe Love’s A Prima Donna – Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel – Ah yes, whenever men are intuiting by the sigh in a woman’s eye, you know it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. And, this, a 1976 single that should have been huge in the UK but peaked at # 28 because man is it over blown. But ina greatw ay, with a stand out instrumental break and a gorgeous melody… Steve wasn’t done… yet – Grade: A
My feelings about Crenshaw must be pretty well documented by now I’m guessing. I consider Marshall one of rock and rolls greatest songwriters of all time. So despite no longer owning a turntable I invested my seven bucks and got the EP a couple of days ago.
If you’ve listened to “Bastard” and “Yomkers” you might be wondering what Tyler’s next solo will be like? Will it be a hip hop star heavy extravaganza and that will be the end of Tyler as we know him?
Millions – Pusha T – Getting his Weezy in with more than a passing nod to “A Milli, still Pusha T is in better voice than I’ve heard him in years and if it is all obvious “half a millin in the ceilin” is a great rhyme! – Grade: A-
At some time I start to wondering, why am I staying up late, getting shoved and pushed, to watch OK versions of Clash songs by talented denizens of the Bowery, but not much more? On television?
At well over an hour, the album goes on forever and hits some fairly low points on its way but really, if only for the opening track, the awesome “Cool Zombie” it would be worth the while and if for only going after Russel Brand twice it is worth the benefit of the doubt.
So the news that their 2013 release will be about the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, the same one that brought us the young Bon Dylan among others, and starring Justin Timberlake, is really and at least interesting.
This is about the songs on the soundtrack. I guess a generation lost in space could do worse than trance rock, prog rock, twee melodies that hold from time to time and a whole lotta shoegazing
After promising to never go to another festival in my life, not even Governor’s Ball on Randall’s Island while you are at least not stuck for the night in a sleeping bag, I bought a three day VIP pass for the June 7th to 9th long weekend.
Yellow Raincoat – Justin Bieber – Yeah kid, growing up is tough, you’re right. And I am glad you feel like writing an earnest acoustic blues song. I just wish it was a lot better than this one, I mean really? Does bieber think apeing Ben Harper any good at all? – Grade: C
The Draconian excess isn’t that at all, it’s just dayglo sticks. Essentially, Donner places the generation gap as just business as usual for Jamie. The revolution was in fashion and style but the essential Englishness didn’t change.
Beyonce’s refusal to make a statement seems like either fear or indifference. She should have said: “Because of the cold weather I used taped vocals. This is standard practice but now I wish it had been made clear.” She’s even acting like she was caught cheating on her SATs
