Let’s give Bruce Springsteen this much at least: given the opportunity to release his inner Bono, to go to that place where low culture reaches high, he didn’t falter.
This is BBC’s list of bands they predict big things for in 2015, and they’ve been known to get it right.. BBC asked 140 influential music industry experts, DJs, critics, broadcasters and bloggers and, shock, only found one Stateside artist out of the 15 being touted.
Hollywood High – Mike Hudson And The Pagans – Cleveland rocks, even in LA, even 30 years after the fact, nothing is lost and nothing is left behind on this terrific punk, yeah, but just for a name because this label less hard rock.
Sure “Blank Space” is the best song of this year, last year and probably next year but lets take a second to namecheck Pittsburgh’s finest the Gotobeds, whose “New York’s Alright (If You Like Sex And Phones)” is as good as its name, hell it’s as good as its first line.
An 18 year old black kid has a fight with a white policeman, punches him through an open or closed window, runs away, is told to stop, turns back from ten feet away and gets shot six time, twice in the head, dies of course, and the Grand Jury chooses not to indict the cop. Meanwhile, my white friends “are so over Ferguson”
Labrinth is a Simon Cowell find, and the soulful guy? You can hear the ching ching going though this is his breakthrough in the UK. A good soul ballad, a little later than planned. But Take That with a typical dance pop track win the top spot… their 12th since 2008.
Olly sounds a little more ordinary, a little too plastic pop on his new album, but I’ll be listening more once its released Stateside. But the real question is, despite its record breaking first week, how does One Direction finds itself looking up at Ed Sheeran who has been on the charts since JUNE???
Pray To Jesus – Brandy Clark – Lovely country track with a vicious and sad (and maybe a tad obvious) vision of white lower middle class America, equating faith with luck. Not inaccurate just a little self-evident – A-
Billy travelled through the American midwest with fellow singer-songwriter Joe Purdy, tracing the legendary Rock Island Line railroad for it’s starting point in Illinois to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where the song of that name was first collected from inmates at the Cummins Prison Farm by John Lomax and Lead Belly in 1934. On the way, Billy and Joe found time to play a pop-up benefit for the people of Ferguson.
Yusef is playing Fallon the day before I am seeing him in Philadelphia, Dave Grohl is everywhere but no shocker there, Mary J is on both Wendy Williams and Jimmy Fallon but I’m going with Kristin Chenoweth because I’ve loved her ever since her break out role as Sally Brown and she has a new album out. All legitimate reasons.
It is like the world is giving me a rest while I think back on the past year and decide what I liked and didn’t. The rule of thumb is, if Pitchfork are raving about a band I haven’t told you about already, the band sucks. The AC/DC is excellent but since I’ve already heard it… I’m gonna go with Mary J. Blige for most anticipated.
I saw Cat Stevens/Yusef at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction earlier this year. He only played three song and they were all great and at the time I was furious the E Street Band received over an hour and Stevens just 20 minutes. Well, it will take a trip to Philadelphia’s Tower on Thursday but we will get to see a full Stevens gig for the first time in decades.
On a big album, this is a huge glorious melodic ruckus and it is so big that it changed Cursive’s life and made them stars, it is like chamber music in the middle of the Battle Of Britain and at ten minutes I wish it was longer – A
Dylan has fought against our expectations and it has lead him, as a live performer I mean, down some dead end streets and back alleys. But at 73 years old he can manage our expectations and if you care and if you want to care and if it matters, you can leave your baggage behind and enjoy a vibrant important artist performing living, breathing pop music.
Susan has taken the rock and roll idiom and created a world without doors, without escape, often without hope, except for one door, one possibility, her searing voice and an electric guitars, hard hit drums and anchor bass, she offers the escape route.
We’ve heard that Frank has been stymied by ongoing homophobia that has caused the hip hop community not to use one of the great sound guys in modern pop, and after claiming he was gonna quit the biz, Ocean changed his mind and offered up this new piece of music, a somewhat awesome piece of wobbly bass stuff along with a spoken word piece
A nosebleed for $72 and a quick check out of Spotify hater Jason Aldean dirt road thing watcha and sexually ambiguous Kenny Chesney for whom I heard a terrific rumour where he is transgendered which probably isn’t true but would be awful cool if it was.
“Damon and Adele had a chat about her new album and they could work together in future. He has produced and written brilliant pop songs for Gorillaz and slower material for acts such as Bobby Womack. He has advice to give from 25 years in the business.”
Wolf isn’t howling, he sounds like the whistle on a train. The beat is a monotonic wheels on rails going on and on and on, it doesn’t move forward, it moves in place and Wolf is like he is observing, part of the trip, for a moment, part of the larger world surrounding the train.
A child beater and a Nazi collaborator and they are still ten times better than most of our rock stars! Of course, the second half of that isn’t really true and maybe the first half will be revealed to be inaccurate soon. The thing is, just putting the voices to the side, folks don’t have this much star power any more – B+
I don’t expect a sci fi dystopia to have much reality as such, but I do expect it to have an internal reality and this has none, hell “The Giver” was better. No dialogue, no action, no beauty, so surprises (except in the enormous, plot driven mistakes being made), Vivian Leigh is doing cartwheels.
You may remember my friend JJ McCabe from last year’s JJ McCabe And Fallen Angel power pop masterstroke Presenting. Surely the best of the genre (just give another listen to the horns on “Gimme More” and the guitar on “Uuu”) in 2013 and well worth checking out, so I guess the two Beatles tracks aren’t a shocker at all on the . Ice JJ Fish on the other hand…
For seven years Kevin has managed to keep Bridgetown Records running, quite an achievement in itself, time to support the guy with your hard earned bread. Or you can just stream it on his website here. So now instead of whining, now it’s your turn here to support the arts.
Maybe ten years ago, I had a good friend (can’t remember her name) who was dating one of the members of Rye Coalition and invited me to have lunch with him and we sat around for a coupla hours where he old me he story of this quasi Led Zep metal punk bands rise and fall.
Wow, here is something we shoulda given thanks for, Simple Minds and Susan Said both big at the top, one of 1D’s greatest moment, Eminem testifying, Homeboy Sandman art rapping, Selena heartbroken, and Marshall Crenshaw still knocking em out of the park.
Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars – An amazing simulation of soul and funk and James Brown, unyielding replication of what it means to have funkadelia in your soul but so what if it isn’t the real thing, it still sounds good – B+
But like Bono sang once: Thank God it’s them instead of you and what you wanna do is take pleasure in your good luck. You won the world lottery, stop whinging and get stuffed. Look at it this way: it is your responsibility to give Thanks by enjoying what you’re giving thanks for.
Now that I’ve finished plagiarizing Gigwise, here is the great German he is referring to the late great Klaus Nomi, who I met maybe three times and was very strange and then I saw him with Bowie on SNL and was sick with jealousy. And the stage attack by Moz
Home – Naughty Boy, Sam Evans – Woah, a little early for Sam Smith homages though Naughty Boy is one of the first of the Rudimental-Disclosure school of EDM pop songs out of the gate – B+
Four is the fourth # 1 by 1D and the last by the old system where Billboard only used sales (Alyson Camus wrote about it here) and it could be worse: sold nearly 400K and a good album. Every 16500 streams equals one album as far as Billboard goes and you can do the math but it comes to $0.015 per stream, Spotify pays $0.06
Let’s be clear, “Blank Space” has made a superstar even bigger, simply the greatest pop star around today: it crosses over every boundary, it is the epitome of a master pop song. It isn’t a question of if you don’t like it to each there own, it is a matter of if you don’t like it you have something missing in your pop genes and hereby banned from commenting on modern music.
7/11 – Beyonce -Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast wrote “Beyoncé just made her very own “Hokey Pokey.” Resistance is futile.” what a great line… This is a fabulous dance wildly track, as good as anything except “XO” and a must for the office party! – A
It got me thinking of protest songs for the people of Ferguson. I have somewhat liberal friends who agree with the verdict but I don’t. In the end of the Police Force is 98% white and the population of Ferguson is 98% black, this is, to put it simply, apartheid
The concert was on November 20 2014 and featured Marshall with Neill MacColl on guitar, Henrik Irgens on bass, and Michael Blair, who came over from Stockholm and played drums. Michael introduced Neil, Kirsty’s half-brother and Ewan’s son, to Crenshaw, and the two totally hit it off
“That’s Lennon’s class difficulty he had. He’s a working-class lad. I’m sure he had that same fight withGeorge Martin because he was afraid that he was betraying his class. I know I’m going to get into hot water if I get into this but I have controversial opinions about him”
With streaming services, you can play your mp3s on the streaming service but only at the place where you’ve downloaded, you can’t take it with you. You can take it with you on Itunes, you can save your record collection on Itunes, but you can’t play your streaming files
All these twee folkies are the UK equivalent of Jack Johnson, maybe a little more serious and a little better, but equally irritating. I am seriously dreading Vance Joy opening for Swift and this guy is just about as good though this song buiklds up nicely – B
This is Simple Minds best album in decades, a big sounding soulful hard rock album with bounce, hard drums, echoey modern but not electronic deep production and songs songs songs. Start with “Midnight Walking”, skip to the title track and then start looking. A contender for album of the year -ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
“Move Now” is the 5th of 6, and not a teaser for an album. Actually, the EPs ARE the album: once the 6th one has run it’s course there’ll be an album containing the best stuff from the EP series, possibly a new song, definitely a couple remixes, etc. That’s the actual plan right now.”
The rockers on the ten track album, the fiddly dee “Home Run King” were little gems, no less than the gorgeous steel guitar on “Lonely Saturday”. It sounds like Gene is channeling Jim Reeves. The album is an aching beautiful and sad thing. The live album sounds a helluva lot like the Hot Burritos brother, and it has a country soulfulness and swing the Eagles never came close to
I must admit to feeling out of step with modern rock critics (older, younger and inbetween), the problem with his list is its complete indifference to what people actually listen to. Its terrible unpopness.
Seeds – TV On The Radio – the backing track sounds like JAMC only without guitars, it vibrates on this first rate ballad, the entire album is a wonderful thing. Given the time, it could be emerge as one of the very best of the year – A
Inspired use of Rare Earth’s “I Just Want To Celebrate” anchors this terrific horns aplenty party track off the soundtrack to the latest Madagascar movie. The sight of 100s of penguins tap dancing to this track will leave you… well, it will probably leave you queasy but the track is still a goodie – B+
The real interest here is, of course, the negotiation to get it on Spotify. Daniel needed something big to make up for losing Tay and Bey gave it to him. Im telling you, all the action is in the boardrooms…Beyonce Platinum Edition – A
“Cold Roses” was glorious country folk, “Dear Chicago” blues pop, “The Door” as great as anything in his repertoire, “Lucky Now” a case made for Ashes And Fire… the set less had momentum and more was steadily perfect with horrendous interruptions
Johnny Sincere – Deadbeat Poets – Nice rock and roller, old fashioned in a positive way. The piano, when it comes out of the mix from time to time is very Jamey Johnson. A clever one song rock opera takes you back to 1963 and keeps you there – B+
We lost the great director Mike Nichols, the man behind “The Graduate”, “Carnal Knowledge” and “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf” at the movies and just two I really loved from Broadway “The Play That I wrote” and “Spamalot”. David Ruffin, the temptations lead singer’s kid brother and Motown singer who had a smash with “What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted” also died . On a personal level, rock nyc’s Edward Huerta wife Misty died at the age of forty
I have no problem with 1D selling a mindboggling 142K units, I have a problem with the UK’s penchant for lousy faux-opera like this abysmal album in at # 10. what they like about it, I can’t tell you. I blame BBC 4. Don’t let the eyelashes fool ya, Jenkins is the spawn of Satan
I have two songs this year I’d include in the “A++ List” -one is “Blank Space”. But at the top? This insanely lousy song should be taken out and shot and dawn. Turn it off and listen to Chipmunk contemporary Wretch 32, the excellent rapper from the London projects.
Closest Thing To You I’m Gonna Find – Butch Walker – Walker’s best song was also the best song by anyone Saturday night, a lost love song wrapped in the glow of geography with a killer guitar break and a very smart lyric – A
