April 2014

  • There’s just something about April, and springtime in general. No other month just feels so comfortable, and affectionate. I mean how can you not be moved when you see all this life just blossoming around, or notice days getting longer, and the whole environment just warming you up from the cold chills of winter. Even…

  • Talk about another big FU. Lou Reed released in 1975 Metal Machine Music, perhaps one of the most abrasive and biggest loads of aural poo you’ll ever hear. I’ve heard good noise, Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra or Glenn Branca’s The Ascension, but that album was proper garbage. My pick of the day, comes from his Coney…

  • Its Flight Time baby. I abso- positive- ly love when artists say a big FU to what fans and critics expect of them. John Cale did it with his solo records, Rod Stewart did it in his post-Faces albums, Miles did it nearly every other album… However, my pick of the day “Where Are We…

  • Before Al Green became the Reverend Al Green he released the Belle Album in 1977. Lots of things were looming against him around that time: disco’s rise, his kind of soul being relegated to quiet storm radio hours, and he just losing the plot on what kind of music to make. This track “Loving You”…

  • My pick for the day is a track off Donovan’s “A Gift From a Flower to a Garden” album. As a listener whose normally so averse to twee music…I always have to admit a profound love for Donovan’s music because it stays just this side of that line. This double album was released to wide…

  • I have to throw out this backstory first. I think it explains a lot of the appeal that this funk track has. The original composer of “Ai No Corrida” is a guy called Chas (or Chaz) Jankel. Chas was this skinny, geeky English kid who was really into dance music but had nowhere to turn…

  • This is more an ode to the slide guitar than anything. You hear it sighing in George Harrison’s music, grooving in King Sunny Ade’s, and kickin’ in Little Feat’s. “Tu m’As Déçu Chouchou” is a track from one of African soukous great’s Docteur Nico (hailing from Congo, where Franco another guitar great comes from) and…

  • Oh! The power of boogie rock. If, I’m a doe-eyed sucker for anything, its a good rock boogie. I don’t know why boogie rock has that power over me, as much I fight it I can’t. What’s boogie if not just a well chosen riff hypnotically repeated with cool shit going on around it? Status…

  • Now ain’t this some bs. I was so prepared to link to this track from the Searchers on Spotify. Apparently, Sire really f’ed up the rights for the album this song, Love’s Melody, came from. Anyway, we’re doing it live. Now, talk about a redemption story! 20 or 15 years after releasing their most popular…

  • Man, Ole Blue Eyes. It took me a long time to warm up to him. Now I can’t help but appreciate the man. This track called Dindi is off the “Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim” album. This widely known hard-ass from NJ, when he lets his facade down, is really a sensitive and flawed…

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