This week’s earworm: My People, by The Beaches. They’re actually getting more play right now from a song called Blame Brett, which is also very good, but this one got stuck in my head. They sound like an incredibly tight live band; I’d go see them if buying tickets wasn’t such a fucking nightmare. This live mix is great other than the snare drum, which is tuned like a 5-gallon bucket.
Slowdive, a shoegaze band from Back In The Day, broke up after releasing a clasic album in the mid 90’s and reformed themselves about ten years ago. They’ve just released some singles off a forthcoming album, called Everything Is Alive, and I really dig a couple of them. They’re both similar to and different that what came before—alife has all the sonic chemistry that drew me to the band.
And I really like the groove of a tune called the slab, which sounds nothing like their previous work.
Since last week I’ve had most of Van Halen’s Fair Warning stuck in my head. In high school during marching band trips, one of the drumline captains had a mixtape of the best VH songs that he’d play en route to competitions, and Dirty Movies! was a standout. Having fallen down the rabbit hole, I found an isolated guitar track which showcases how technical and complex Eddie’s songwriting was—the secret ingredient that stood him far above his peers at the time, beyond the complex solos. Now I’ve got One Foot Out The Door stuck on repeat.
I just became aware of this part of the Internet Archive: the Great 78 project is an effort to digitize old shellac records that are long out of print. And, of course, a bunch of record labels have decided to file a copyright lawsuit for damages on recordings they most likely don’t even oversee, against profits they haven’t collected, for recordings they haven’t digitized. I’m not a lawyer so I have no idea if this argument holds water, but fuck those guys.
Meanwhile, I love me some big band and early jazz; I’m going to be collecting some new music from here for sure.
(Via PixelEnvy)
RIP, Mr. Reubens. I leave you with the best all-time cover of the Pee-Wee Herman theme, by the Scofflaws:
This tune has been going through my head since the trip back from Rhode Island this weekend. It’s a lesser-known song from one of Coldplay’s later albums but I really dig the beat and the tone.
I never watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and was not aware they made it into a movie, but when they did, a pre-movie “don’t talk during the movie” reel was produced. It was scored by Mastodon, and is predictably hilarious.
Skip ahead to 1:00 for the best part.
This week’s earworm: Noel Gallagher’s High-Flying Birds, Council Skies. I always thought he had a better voice than his brother, and he’s more talented as well. I really like the melody to this song.
WOW. A long lost Steely Dan track from the Gaucho sessions was recently unearthed from the archives of the album’s studio engineer, released by his daughters who found it on a cassette while they were preparing a documentary on his life. The story goes that an assistant engineer accidentally erased the mix, and they tried to recreate it using a mix of lesser quality, but Fagen axed it. Gaucho isn’t the best Steely Dan album but it’s one of my favorites—it hits right at the age when I was really beginning to listen to music, and I knew there was something different about this band, from the way they wrote lyrics to how they arranged the songs. This song is pretty good; it would fit on Gaucho easily, probably on the second side.
This week’s earworm is the Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary. I remember dimly liking some of the Cult’s songs back in the day, and I went so far as to buy a copy of Sonic Temple on CD in ’89, but quickly realized I only liked two of the songs on the disc. This song rips though.