Got Me Good – Ciara – this is a busy little track from the former Rihanna wanna be who found herself washed up after a disastrous opening slot for Jay-Z. This has beats to spear but the vocal is another nondescript effort – Grade: B
One of the three new ones is great, the other two aren’t bad, and one of the demos is good, one isn’t much, and the acoustic version is excellent. I hope she plays it like that live. Quite why she chose to roll out the demos of the first songs on the album, you’ll have to ask her.
Why is Stephen Stills still livving paycheck to paycheck? How much is a gram of coke nowadays?
While Nietsche is the man for college kids, Nietsche wasn’t as clearly a youthful signifier, Nietsche substituted gods for god, Camus restructured the world so we weren’t the center of even are own world. Presley made it fun.
No movement on this chart, everything is exactly where it was but you are there. And it is not a terrible chart but fun. Are getting to be less and less fun and Taylor actually said, and I quote, love is not the most important thing in the world!
Another 2.5M and 21 will be toppled by a 22 year old! Meanwhile, I haven’t hear the Meek Mill (it’s not on Spotify) though my nephew Jeff swears by it. As for Rod? The album is a train wreck but hey, it outsold Neil Young so you gotta think there are some people out there who like their aged raspy not fuzzy
Toot N Toot N Toot – Curtis Mayfield – if ever a man’s career felt like one long highlight this is that man. But even so, those early 80s disco funk albums were phenoms. The reason people can’t write dance like this any more is because people can’t arrange songs like this any more. Because they aren’t using full orchestras live in a studio – Grade: A
Half an hour of awesomeness, especially the beginning where Denzel is nailing a girl young enough to be his daughter all night before lines of coke and Joe Cocker’s”Feeling Alright” gets him to the airport on time
Grace’s music is a tangled interlocking of roots and rebellion under a gauzy tinsel town rapping. It is truly rebellious, because it subverts from the inside out and converts from the outside in. She is a singular person, spreading the wings of fashion into the winds of style
“Mystery Train”, a sort of decline and fall of the American Empire as seen through the eyes of strangers and refracted thru a rock and roll spectrum, is a fun ride and a smart movie.
So now it can be told: Yoko Ono was a nuiance to McCartney, but Allen Klein was a danger and Allen Klein was why they couldn’t continue
In the end, what BV did over the week was cement its place as the center of the alt world. It became not just the only place to be for listings but the only place to be to take the pulse of how the music world was handling the Hurricane
“Paradise Garage” was the great gay disco hangout that heralded House in all its beauty and my bet is this started a tribute even though the video is aggressively heterosexual. It used to play before the movie at the Waverly on 8th street every saturday and became part of the scene.
Luv XXX – Aerosmith – I hear the rest of the album sucks and that might well be but this opening salvo is a crunchy little rocker that shakes the cobwebs off and from its “Hello, hello, hello…” first lines wonks its way thru in powerful fashion. Really, not terrible – Grade: B
So let’s look at 2016: Christie better get to Weight Watchers fast if he wants it all and Cuomo better take that smug smile off his face. Plus, if Christie wins? All Springsteen all the time.
With a presence both electrifying and casual, the lanky, scruffy, good looking Texan Gary Clark Jr. , managed the stage with the cool you imagine a Hendrix had near the start of his career
In the past 25 years since the Smiths brole up, Morrissey has released nine albums of original material, 11 Greatest Hits Packages and 2 live albums and Johnny Marr has released… NOTHING!
On This Winter’s Night – Lady Antebellum – A vision of hell, the breathing embodiment of Scrooge’s old admonishment ” “Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”. With worlds of competition, this includes the single worst versions of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and “All I Want For Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”. A dreary, dire, humorless slog through worn out chestnuts that are like old horses dragging overweight Christmas tourists from the Mid-West around Central Park.
Swift Technique really put on a show, they dance, they talk, they lay on the floor with their feet in the air, and they take it all the way.
I am not a Leo fan but I am guessing it is just one of those things, you can’t like every good singer songwriter, sometimes their cap annoys you or the name -six letters in two words, oh please, rubs you wrong. Or something about their melodies never hits your sweet spot.
You Made me Change My Number (remix) – A.M.X. – Featuring Snoop Doog who for once doesn’t crowd the star out of his own song. A.N.X. thinks he is the next Marvin gaye but here he is just a Prince of electronica. Still, a good prince of Electronica – Grade: B+
Since we all know how it works out, kudos for a Tehran so tense and scary it is like another planet and a creeping, intense, nail biting thrill even after the flight with the six Americans going home, has left the ground.
Far be it for me to judge people’s sexual desires, but a Justin Bieber sex doll? Er, that seems to be crossing the line into tastelessness. Surely the twinkie business can do a little better than this.
The platinum edition contains a number of exclusive items that won’t be available to buy separately. It includes a copy of the album, along with a 2GB credit card-style USB, a unisex T-shirt with a Michael Muller photo printed on, and seven art print 12×15 lithographs
Not to be mistaken with the dreaded Ben Folds, Vaughn wrote Marshall Crenshaw’s masterpiece “I’m Sorry (But So Is Brenda Lee)”. He is more like a rockabilly Randy Newman with a wicked sense of humor and a taste for country, and Ramblers.
We may all disagree about many things over the years but I think we will never be able to agree on anything as much as we agree that Coldplay are passive-aggressive egocentric bedwetters, who suck live at almost inhuman proportions
Ne-Yo and Kylie have been getting props all over the press and new Dionne is always a pleasure but hot the heels of the awesome Most Of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear On No Stamp , on Election Day, Public Enemy is the team to beat. I wonder if Obama Baby is gonna make a liar outta Chuck D and get four more years. My prediction? Yes he can
Disco Boogie Song (Live) – We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It – If I had a band all we would do is cover this song for 20 minutes and then leave the exhilarated audience screaming their approval! With a zipped out two note synth leading the way, and Magz improvising a call to dance – Grade: A+
Sting, who looks more like Popeye with every passing day, is so earnest you just wanna smirk at him. Nothing kills compassion faster than self-righteousness
The Aimee Mann album improves with every listen and “Gamma Ray” is the best song, both Taylor and Titus are the best song of three. and the dB’s only had two killer tracks… but they did have two killer tracks.
There are only two types of people in this world, pop fans and everybody else. I am a pop fan, and as such can’t wait to see the South Korean K-Pop phenom BIGBANG at the Prudential Center on Thursday. An all boy band of bubble gum pop without the usual layer of complete weirdness, BIGBANG are the pop band as writ with bucketloads of electronics throw in for the helluva it.
The question isn’t whether Calvin Harris can conquer the UK, obviously the great DJ can, but whether Calvin Harris can conquer the US, and I don’t know what the answer to that might be… but I fancy his chances.
Robbie Williams threatened not to tour the UK if “Candy” didn’t hit the top of the charts. So it did of course, and, having seen Robbie at Hammerstein once (actually, once at Jingle Ball as well) I am hear to tell you EVERYBODY WINS! This modified, orchestrated reggae rhythm is a pure pop stroke of immense and beautiful extremes. Cmon, Robbie. We need you Stateside.
Old Shep – Elvis Presley – “When I was a boy, Old Shep was a pup…” . One of the great death songs and when Presley can’t shoot the dying doggy I bet you can’t hold back a tear. If Presley sold this song any harder, you’d believe his name was Jim! – Grade: A
He passes on a couple of hits, he dolls out his instrumentals like it was gruel and we were Oliver Twist, and his re-defining artistic achievement Time And Tide came and went with minimal publicity. Robbie calls himself lucky, but he isn’t lucky enough, perhaps the self-effacing man should get somebody to awaken the graying of America’s denizen to the great musician in their midst.
From Gainsbourg To Lulu – Lulu Gainsbourg – So many guest stars, I’m expecting Serge’s on to change his name to Lil Wayne any second now, and the 26 year old looks a though he’s 47. The stench of stale Gauloise is all over the album, but it is really quite good. Especially on the songs where he is channelling his Papa, who, indcidentally, wrote all the songs to start with – Grade: B
1. Africa – The Meters – Thinner and funkier on record, louder and more anthemic in person, either way it sounds like a funk band bringing it home – Grade: A-
In a very satisfying synchronization, Anthony sings Anthony, Billy’s punk move by a punk band and two Queens boys salute each other through the decades. Grade: A
Wild bitch nature, maybe. If you were in the Northeast and got smacked in the face by Hurricane Sandy, you were taught a quick lesson in just how puny we all our against the forces of nature. With a week of warning, we played defense all the way and all we could really do is run and hide till the little sucker blew over
Sous Les Soleil Exactement – Lulu Gainsbourg and Shane Macgowan – You think you’ve lived a long life, done a lotta things, some good, some less so, but you’ve seen it in full. But you ain’t lived till you’ve heard the Pogues leader slurring in French – Grade: B+
The revellers were boogieing hard all night long and the instrumentals never wandered from that syncopated rhythm at the heart of funk, invented by the likes of the Meters and alive and sizzling in the capable hands of the Metermen
As though there wasn’t an idea, a sound, an explosion they wouldn’t through at you in their attempt to seduce and beat you into submission. Songs come in acts, birds tweets, tracks flit and start, in waves of power that wash over you like the oceanic metaphors floating across the sea of sound
The King of late 1970s AOR and blue eyed soul was nearly the exact opposite of the punk I was so crazy about when he first hit it big. More fool me: imagine Bread covering Hall And Oates and you get a feel for the superb AOR, a creamy easy listening swirl of sound, Dupree was responsible for.
the new Bruno Mars is a deeply disappointing piece of pop product, by the numbers r&b that Mars outgrew around the time he was pleading guilty to cocaine. I can’t believe it is a pop charts move, he has already proven he can handle the charts fine… then what? A lack of imagination? No, folks, he ain’t the new MJ
The Stone Sour album is really great, I prefer it to Slipknot. Taylor deserves where she is and I figure there are 5 more winners here. The Lady Antebellum Christmas album is the pits, and Brandy? Really the worse.
Luv Letter – Tina Marie – I am sure I wasn’t the only one very upset over the death of the great “Coffee, Tea Or Me” gal, but this, the full version of her great last song is a reminded of how just much we’ve lost. Better than anything Brandy released this year… by far – Grade; A
How sorry or even concerned can you feel about Stickles hubris distaste for the rock and roll lifestyle? It’s like that Nick Taylor memoir, you want all this and you want us to feel sorry for you? It makes empathy hard and harder
With a long tour looming you can absolutely see why Armstrong would want to straight, but six months? According to adict-help.com, the average stay in an alcohol rehab center is 30 days. Who needs 180 days? What is going on here?
Bon Jovi to play the Etihad Stadium in June next year – with tickets priced from £12.50. The New Jersey legends will be at Manchester City’s home ground on Saturday, June 8, 2013 as part of their Because We Can – The Tou
Killer Mike At CMJ Showcase, rapped for half an hour on one of the best vibed and most communal hip hop shows I have ever seen on October 18th, there was nothing I didn’t love about this set except, wait, he didn’t perform “RAP Music” and it was over way too soon.
