I may be 40+ but that song made me feel as though I was 25 years younger. Decided to interview my in-laws’ friends, falling within the Silent Generation and a few scattered Baby Boomers, to see if they had a favorite song and if it brought back special memories
After telling Margaret Mullen, no, I wouldn’t go with her, and then changing my mind and discovering the tickets were too expensive (two hundred buck range) maybe two weeks late I checked for a single and picked it up at a hundred bucks. That is tix to see Sting and Paul Simon together at MSG on March 6th, 2014.
On the phone a coupla days ago I asked Marie what she was listening to and in response she sent me her most played list off her Ipod. “When I want to play music where I know I’m gonna love every song, I play this”, she explained. “These are the songs I never get tired of.”
Here at rock nyc we do what we always do when we want to get close to somebody. We check out their IPOD (or do I mean Spotify lists) in the hopes we might gleam some insights into the leader of the Civil Rights movement.
As punk music croaked commercially in the U.S. in the late ‘70s, its safer kid sister, “new wave,” was introduced as an alternative marketing term. What exactly was “new wave”? Everything that had a beat and wasn’t metal was thrown into that category at one point
You surely remember the life changing first article of this series, which chronicled Arkansas based artists including Johnny Cash, Louis Jordan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and, for symmetry’s sake, twelve other acts. In this second, and regretfully final, article on this subject, we survive scalding grits, salute ersatz Samoans, and share a bit too much information at the outhouse
His favorite songs of all time and in return we have spotified it and all I have to say is, limited stuff. No country, no Broadway, no Polka… But plenty as in oodles of early 80s hardcore. I bet Thurston is fun at parties. Still this is “favorites” not best.
If you are traveling through Arkansas or live in Arkansas or want to pretend that you are in Arkansas, you’d like to have some local music to enjoy. Sure, you could spin some tunes that mention Little Rock, but you would rather listen to artists with true Arkansas roots
I am about as miserable as you’d expect and suffering from a terrible cold, all in all my I would be hard pressed to be much further down. The frigid temperature suits my mood (not to mention my writing abilities the past couple of days).
Santa is looking over my shoulder and tutting or nodding his head in appreciation because, just before he flys off to give all the good girls and boys gifts, he is picking up our list to help with some of the more famous among us and rock nyc is here to help…
In the spirit of the season rock nyc has decided for one post only to bury the hatchet with the loathsome Coldplay… I mean lovely Coldplay and find ten positive things about the wretched ponces.
My facebook feed has been filled all day with friends wishing Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen a happy 65th birthday. Let’s use this auspicious occasion to pay tribute to the band that was melodic, aggressive, sarcastic, witty, and, at their best, played with an unrivaled kinetic energy.
On Thursday afternoons, rock nyc has its“Good Cry” meeting, where we discuss our lost loves, crushed dreams, and any terminal illnesses we might have. I once excitedly started the meeting by stating that my son had aced his college final in International Relations and Helen Bach backhanded me from Manhattan to Brooklyn. My jaw hurt, but the pizza was still good
The rock Christmas album I remember best is A Very Special Christmas, which celebrated its 25th anniversary a couple of years ago. Everyone was playing it on Christmas 1987, even my mother-in-law.
let’s say, you are one of the lucky ones, well, it doesn’t matter because if you have nothing to be sad about, devastated about, your brain won’t let you rest. You’ll make one up. Yes, and if it gets really really bad and it can, it will, it does, it can leave you an emotional and physical wreck, insane with grief, you can die, you can be alone, you can kill yourself. Life doesn’t care.
Ah, the 1980s…foremost was the effect that the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher had on British bands, epitomised most obviously by the Specials’ “Ghost Town” and less obviously by a slew of other songs
Paramount Records was the Wisconsin based early 20th century record company who filed a niche race records whole in musical recordings with names you should recognize even if, like me, you don’t know that much about race records of the 1920s.
1950s – Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley – the American songbook and the King Of Rock and Roll, and really, if there is a changing of the guards in 1956 it is between these two men. Incidentally, a sign of the time but neither wrote their own material.
I’m gonna go along with English TV who had a show wherein ordinary folks like you and me voted for our fave Presley tracks. As my friend Ted Cogswell noted, many of these wouldn’t be among my top songs but I don’t actively dislike any of them. I mean, it is Elvis, what’s not to like?
Reflecting the diversity of the era, there are entries by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Muddy Waters, and Hank Williams. Elvis Presley deservedly owned the era commercially and artistically, but one Charles Edward Anderson Berry could play a guitar just like a ringing the bell.
I plan to mine Morrissey’s “Autobiography” for every post I can get and through the first 50 pages, documented every song he mentioned! So with no further ado, the first 10 songs that formed a Smith!
The Board of Directors at rock nyc typically restricts these lists to 25 songs, but I pushed this list to thirty so I wouldn’t have to artificially limit the number of Hank Williams entries. I have enough to explain to St. Peter without adding that oversight to my resume. OK, let’s start drinking and cheating, 1950s style.
It’s 2:30A and I am wide awake. What I really want to do is go back to sleep but I know myself too well. I’ll lay here for an hour or so and not fall asleep until about 4A which typically would be okay but I really want to go to the gym and Spin at 5:30A
The Walt Disney Dumbo song “Baby Of Mine” is sung by Betty Noyes and is a rarity of sorts, Thom Yorke’s song for his son “Sail to The Moon” (“maybe you’ll be President but know right from wrong”) though I’m sure if my dad had sung it to me I would have been terrified all night.
Added Katy Perry because my heart rate elevated too quickly and Roar does not have as many BPMs as some of the other songs. Removed Van Halen Running With the Devil because it just did not work with the rest of the mix. Added I’m on Fire at the end because I needed a cool down song.
Substitute – The Who – Before all the heaviness of Tommy or even A Quick One, or even “My Generation”, there was the distilled fury of this teenage misogy and displacement. Freud would have a lot to say.
Just out of the army, back in the charts, this is Presley, not an album artist, best album: it has the breadth of masterpiece, blues, pop, rock and roll, hits and deep cuts, It sprawls its way on to the charts and Presley, in an alternative universe, was using this as a gate to a future and not a goal post.
