I didn’t spend much time with the new music this week. Between that and a family development, this week’s selections will lean to the old.

“I Wasn’t Thinking at All” – Cold Irons Band
Jason Isbell released the first single from his upcoming album this week. It didn’t jump out at me. Coincidentally, I also heard this track this week, which definitely has an Isbell-like vibe to it. Bonus points: these dudes aren’t from Alabama like Isbell, or even Nashville. They’re Australian!

“More” – Rachel Bobbitt
A totally lovely track that fits right into one of my sweet spots.

“Such Great Heights” – The Postal Service
This song, and the album it came from, just celebrated its 20th anniversary. This was a huge moment in our corner of the music world, as alt-rock was dying and indie was rising. With the ascent of indie came MP3 blogs, “blog rock,” indie rock becoming the darling of the advertising world, and music that was further disconnected from terrestrial radio. You can hear all the promise of that moment in this song. It was my #23 song of the decade.

“Cynical Girl” – Marshall Crenshaw
Last week Stereogum had a long feature on Crenshaw. In it he talked about reclaiming control of his music and determining if and how they are available on streaming services. I didn’t realize it, but several of his songs that I love are no longer available on Spotify, although it sounds like he will put them back on once he has full rights to them. Seemed like a good moment to share one of his classics, and remind you all of his genius, while I still can.

“Bloodbuzz Ohio” – The National
Hey, a song about Ohio by a Cincinnati band.

“Teenage Wasteland” – Wussy
Hey, a song by a Cincinnati band.

“WKRP in Cincinatti”
Hey, a song about the Queen City.

Special Prince Video Section

Nearly nine years ago I shared a link to a video of a monumental performance: Prince and his band playing “Purple Rain” live for the first time on August 3, 1983. It was an amazing video, complete with comments from one of the sound engineers who helped to record it. Watching, you could see Prince experimenting with a song that was not yet fully formed. What made it so great was that much of the music that was recorded that night served as the basis for the album version of “Purple Rain.”

That video lasted a week or two before Prince had it taken down. I hadn’t tried to look for it since his death, but recently found it again. Even better, I found the second video, which is the entire performance from that night. It is worth noting that this was the first time Wendy Melvoin ever played live with The Revolution. She was 19 years old. And some of the notes she played that night ended up on one of the biggest albums of all time. Can you imagine?

The only bummer with the second video is, for some reason, the lyrics are stripped out of “Purple Rain.” So you can skip through it since you’ve already seen that in the first vid.