UK Top 10 Albums 12-14-13
Olly Murs isn’t the only album that thrills me here, the Rebecca Ferguson sophomore effort will please you. She isn’t Emeli Sande but her song selection is very very strong and her voice splendid
UK Top 10 Singles 12-14-13
Where are the Christmas songs? Only Lily Allen constitutes one and none of the others has hit the top ten yet, where is Susan Boyle, Lucy Spraggan, the Fishwives Choirs (no really) and, er, AC/DC. Cowell is pushing SIX X factor songs, none of which are her.
Hear Ye: what rock nyc is listening to 12-9-13
This is what David Fricke wrote about this terrible song in Rolling Stone: “”It’s about the seeds of dreams, and U2 play it perfectly: down-to-earth, while looking up.’. The truth is, the lyric, apparently taken from Nelson Mandela’s love letters to one of his wives, is asinine and the track is a Church organ in search of a song and not finding it
The Rod Stewart Live 2013 Setlist (Annotated -No, Really)
After winning the coveted best concert of 2011 award right here at rock nyc back, I’ll go going back tomorrow for another look at the great somewhat aging man and in anticipation, took a look at his set list for a TD Bank gig back on December 3rd
Beyonce And Jay Z, The Vegan Poseurs
PETA praises Jay Z and Beyoncé for getting animals off their plates for 22 days and hopes that this great spiritual exercise will open their eyes to the suffering of all animals—including the wonderful ones who are killed not for the table but for a coat, a belt, or a bag.’
rock nyc Calls The Grammys For You
Who Should Win: Taylor Swift deserves it and how, certainly if this is the competition. Maybe, if not Taylor, give it to Daft Punk. I’m not crazy about the competition, but if not Swift at least Daft Punk moved the story forward.
Who Needs A Record Label? A Day To Remember's "Common Courtesy" Sells 92K Copies
But how does this transfer to payroll? Can a band financially survive from record sales without the infamous ‘advance’ ? ADTR never stops touring. If you miss them this go round, fear not!
The Coen Brother's "Inside Llewyn Davis" Reviewed
This is a bad, disappointing, movie. Add to it the audacity of quoting from Robert Altman’s masterpiece “The Long Goodbye” and it is worse, but it is also telling. The Coen’s are a coupla dicks who mistake bad manners for art
Active Viewin': rock nyc's concert picks w-o 12-9-13
Vampire Weekend’s performance on PBS concert and interview “Live From The Artist Den” performance on Tuesday, in one of the best acoustic room in the city, should be absolutely great and that’s a relief. Because Vampire Weekend, who can be inconsistent on stage, weren’t all the good at Barclay Center earlier this year
Wild Flag "Runs Its Course" And More's The Pity
The two thirds of Sleater Kinney super riot grrls band broke up earlier this week. Drummer Janet Weiss said “It was great but I think it just kinda ran its course…It’s hard to have a band when you live five hours apart by plane.”
Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 12-8-13
Farewell – Bob Dylan – From the “Witmark” demos, the Coen’s get most things wrong in “Inside Llewyn Davis” but using this as a goodbye to the folk era? They get that right – A+
Thirteen from ‘13
he provides support to a friend and potential love interest that dies prematurely of cancer. Not the feel good hit of the summer, but the wallop is devastating
Watch 'Tropico', Lana Del Rey's New 30-Minute Clip
May be they die at the end, or this is redemption, ascension, canonization, who knows? They seem to float away to join the John Wayne-Elvis-Marilyn heaven crowd, because this is Los Angeles after all and old stars hang out in the sky above.
The Annotated Rolling Stone Magazine Top 50 Albums Of 2013
Not that anybody asked me, and not that I am in major major contradiction, but Rolling Stone spend another year being relentless average, whiich is better I guess than being relentlessly average and avant garde a la Pitchfork.
Noel Gallagher Gives His Opinion On Everyone In the Music Business And He is Hysterical!
I never miss reading a Gallagher interview, as the guy’s brutal honesty is legendary and has apparently no limits. The interviewer basically asked him about every successful music of this year, and the results are unequal but quite interesting.
The 100 Best Songs of the 1980s
By cherry picking the goodies, we can appreciate what Prince and Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen did for the mainstream, while Husker Du and R.E.M. and the Replacements gave hope to the left of the dial listeners.
Hear ye: What rock nyc is listening to 12-7-13
Explosions – Chanel West Coast – Probably the best song off her mix tape, the beats are awesome, little explosions in the middle of the song, a systematic banging and her tone is agressive enoough for chick hop – B+
In This Moment's "Whore" Music Video Reviewed
“It was genuinely disappointing because to see a woman objectify herself completely for some sort of affirmation or attention is reflective of some awful parenting. Girly, you don’t need to be half naked and a ‘whore’ for men to like you.”
Best Coast's Tennis Match Video For 'This Lonely Morning'
The whole thing seems to have been filmed on a budget string, somewhere on a local tennis court in a Los Angeles backyard and the highest cost of the video may have been the many tennis balls sharpied for the circumstance.
Kanye West Sued For Anti-Semitism
Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connection as oil people.’ As usual, the first thing I did notice is that the statement doesn’t make sense,… Did Bush convert to Judaism? Or did Obama lose all his Jewish connections?
BBC's 2014 Longlist Of Breakthrough Stars
Every year the BBC present the world with their picks of 2014’s breakthrough stars and every year they get one right and a couple rightish. And every year I read through em and have heard a couple of em before and never hear of most of em again. I know Chance The Rapper and Ella Eyre, and am glad to meet Chloe Howl and George Ezra.
Hear Ye: what rock nyc is listening to 12-6-13
Glitter And Gold – Rebecca Ferguson – If you don’t include 1D, Rebecca is the best chance at an artistically valid TV song contest celebrity since Kelly Clarkson, and if that seems gerrymandering for the singer, give this ballad a listen – B+
Elton John At Madison Square Garden, Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 Reviewed
I don’t think John can help himself; fronting a full swing full scale rock and roll band, he has no problem pounding the drums into submission. It is such hard work with all sense of fun or camp for that matter, long time gone, that it is a storm warning: why feel if you can over feel.
Cat Power At The El Rey Theater, Monday December 2nd 2013
But, tell me, which other performer sees his or her performance interrupted just after the third song by a torrent of flowers delivered by fans, and followed by an effusive demonstration of love with gifts, books arriving on stage as if it was Christmas three weeks in advance?
Rhonda's Top 100 Songs Of The 1970s
Putting together this list was MUCH harder than I expected. This was the decade when I went to both high school and college and began a career in the music biz, and music was a constant. So I focused on the songs that really meant something to me over the years versus what seemed historically “important.”
Jay Z Back On Tour 2013-2014, Here's The Annotated Set List
Yes folks, he is back and on tour as a solo act for the first time in FOUR YEARS. Sounds incredible, right? Especially since I’ve seen Jay Z on stage some five times in the past four years! Well, that’s New York for you
Morrissey B Side To Lou Reed Tribute Song
Morrissey had stated, “He has been there all of my life. He will always be pressed to my heart. Thank God for those, like Lou, who move within their own laws, otherwise imagine how dull the world would be.”
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Elvis Presley Style
I love the idea of seeing musicians artifacts so to speak, I’m just not a fan of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wait, you can actually just go to Graceland if you wanted to see Presley’s stuff. Memphis is amazing!
Jay Z And Beyoncé Going Vegan For 22 Days
The term spiritual had such a bad connotation for me as people put so much behind the term. Jay Z, you aren’t going to find God or Buddha or achieve a higher level of consciousness when turning vegan, you are just going to be healthier and do something very good for the earth.
US Top 10 Albums 12-14-13
Sometimes you look at the charts and you say, ‘who are these people? I haven’t heard of one of them.” And other times you look at the charts and you say “Who are these people? Well, I know every single one like the back of my hand and they all suck”. 2013 has been a lousy year for music and this is a disgraceful chart.
US Top 10 US Albums 12-14-13
the Garth Brooks Walmart only 6 CD, 2 DVD box set, with four albums of Brooks covers, his greatest hits album from 2007 and a live special that aired on CBS on DVD. Whatever future CDs have, it will be something like this
Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 12-5-13
I Woke Up Dreaming – Lydia Lunch – A great image though the song itself is the subterranean sound of things crashing around your ears same as it was; No New York lives, on this live album from a year ago – B
Jonathan Richman, Three Links Center, Dallas, Texas, December 1st, 2013 Reviewed
The years have been kind to Richman – he looks much younger than his sixty two years, He appears to be in good health, and has lost no vocal range. Somewhat surprisingly, his music continues to find a younger audience – twenty-somethings outnumbered greybeards
Flatsound's "i love you, i need you, i miss you" Video Reviewed
“”Since you’ve been gone, I’ve stayed up ’till dawn, just sitting and growing a beard. I’ll shave it off, and start again, so I’ll look the same as when you left.” The droning noises behind his words fit perfectly. It captures the white noise feeling of loss, how it envelops all around you and threatens to be all you hear.”
HMV Will Not Sell Lostprophets' Music But Sells Charles Mason's Albums?
I have never bought anything from Manson, not even listened to his music, his awful crimes are a complete turn off for me, and I am sorry about this idealistic discourse about the separation between the art and the artist, there is just a limit I can’t cross sometimes. We all have our own limits on what we can tolerate from an artis
Barbra Streisand's "Back To Brooklyn" Reviewed
Barbra might want to tells us about being mother natures guardian or treasuring every minute, it doesn’t mean much, and we are not there for platitudes, but but to hear her sing “Some Other Time”, we understand instinctively what it means to pass through the world on borrowed time.
Miley Cyrus And Katy Perry Go Gold
Prism is a sad and sorry album and going gold in six weeks won’t do it (it took Eminem two weeks to go platinum). Katy Perry has a problem and where goes Perry goes Miley. Look at it this way: Eminem sold more in a week than Miley and Katy sold in a combined 14 weeks.
How Can An Artistic Form That Lives On Repetition Survive Without It
So if we can’t get from Industrial Beats to Britney Spears or from classical dark strings to Disney soundtracks, if thew time to get difficult music stops, how does music evolve? If we won’t give music time, what will happen to music?
Lady Gaga Japanese Silicone Dolls
The Gaga dolls also have an amazing feature that probably doesn’t come with regular love dolls: by pressing your ear to their chest you can listen to Gaga’s songs and secret messages. These rubber things are expected to be used to advertise the singer’s new album, but can you imagine what will happen to them afterwards?
YouTube Read Their Own Research, Cancel Two Billion Hits!
The advertising community is dead meat when it comes to online buying, since it is very very easy to fake your numbers of readers, indeed there are companies where you can essentially buy clicks on a cost per click basis. If you are buying it at 10 cents and selling it at a dollar the numbers speak for themselves
Hear ye: what rock nyc is listening to 12-4-13
Heaven On Earth – Boston – Sure, they miss Brad Delp but they still got the melodies and those big ol’ guitars and it makes a melodic roar of a sound; maybe Tom can do this forever (or every eleven years) – A-
Be Here Now: New Album Releases Snapshot Review 12-3-13
Four songs and not bad at all the guitar solo on the title track is a thing of deep beauty and the song keeps shifting gear from deep pop to sideslip jazz and back But the highlight is Marshall’s cover of Bobby Fuller’s “Never To Be Forgotten” two tracks later. On Spotify, so I guess even the great can’t fight technology – A-
Bright Eyes "A Christmas Album" Reviewed
What Bright Eyes understands absolute these timeless songs is that they bring with them their own memories and 12 years after they are recorded, they bring with them the memories of memories; like the memories of childhood and lost loves.
Not With The Band: Enough With That God's Chorus Of Crickets
You’re gonna say science always ruins everything! Did we need to spoil this for everyone, people were so happy to believe it was a divine intervention of mother nature! I hardly revealed anything because the info was there, on the page, but people were posting and reposting the thing without even checking the other links
Why Did Peaches Geldof Have To Delete Her Tweet?
The only rational is to protect the babies. The babies least concern is that their identity be revealed. Their names can be changed if need be their mothers killed by fire perhaps. Other than that any sort of protection of women as mentally deficient as to offer their children to a ‘rock star’ is absurd
Billboard Chart 1996, When Things Were Rotten
Seventeen years ago music was pretty lame. When songs like “Macarena” rule the airwaves its brutal to say the least. The top 10 songs were so bad that theyre nearly unidentifiable.
Golden Slumbers: Recent Deaths In The Music Community 12-3-13
Bootsey X – Aka Robert Mulrooney, legendary Detroit rocker who performed with original punk rockers the Mutants and almost famous the Ramrods before forming his own Bootsey X And The Lovemasters, dubbed Iggy Pop fronting James Brown And His Famous Flames here. A lesson in the limitations and lack thereof in loving rock and roll.
People Are Actually Mad At This Mastodon's Thanksgiving T-shirt?
The fact that they had to explain the purpose of the drawing ruins the whole thing, they shouldn’t have written anything to justify themselves and let stupid people stuck with their one-level interpretation of things, these same people must completely miss what good art is about. There are some pretty sick and awful comments in this page!
Sneak Peaks: New Album Releases 12-3-13
Well now, this really sucks. There is little doubt Spears isn’t up for anything that important at this juncture of her care and there is nothing else remotely close to cool. I guess I would have to go with Boston just because, well, they are Boston after all,
Hear Ye: what rock nyc is listening to 12-3-13
Cool Zombie – Adam Ant – Extraordinary song of drawl and whinge with the sort of clashing images that has you wonder what is going on, perhaps a reference to all the mood altering drugs Ant has used to try and level himself off – A-