Favorite Songs Of 2012: #18
“Peacemaker” – Jesca Hoop Massive. That’s the word that pops into my head each time I listen to this song. It is huge, punching you in the mouth and demanding your attention. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t turn it off or skip to the next track. But why would you? It’s freaking brilliant. Hoop’s genius is combing vaguely…
Favorite Songs Of 2012: #19
“October” – The Helio Sequence Echoing early U2, this Portland duo offered a gorgeous set of atmospheric pop on their Negotiations album. This track fits the month it is named after perfectly. Warm, with a hint of a chill in the background. A reminder that no matter how perfect things may seem, there is always something just below the surface…
Favorite Songs Of 2012: #20
“Star Machine” – Bob Mould Last summer was was the summer of Mould. In July, all three Sugar albums got the remaster/rerelease treatment and I spent a couple weeks wallowing in Mould’s epic, mid-90s pop. It came as a surprise six weeks later when he dropped a new solo album, a nifty recreation of the classic Sugar sound. Like another…
Favorite Songs Of 2012
I wonder how many songs I listened to this year. Thing is, despite using multiple tools to track what I listen to and how often I do so, I purge so many tracks after sampling them a time or two, that I would imagine the majority of the songs I screen are buried deep in a virtual pit of 1s…
Quien Es Más Macho
Sometimes the most important questions do not get asked. Or at least they’re asked by the wrong people, never get answered, and fade away. Yesterday, as I knocked out dishes and laundry, I listened to the American Top 40 rerun of the week. It was from September 1985. Good times for me, back then. In my first month of high…
Five Favorite Albums Revisited
To continue my recent music nostalgia jag, the fifth anniversary of me posting my favorite albums of all time list just passed. Seems like a good time to revisit the list and see if anything has changed. As a quick refresher, here were the Top 5, Honorable Mentions, and Super Honorable Mention from August 2007. 1a – London Calling –…
My Musical Youth
On occasion a memory from the past will trigger something in my brain and I’ll fall into a deeper hole of nostalgia. That’s been the case recently concerning summer music from the 1980s. The trigger, this time, was two separate American Top 40s I listened to on recent Sundays.1 One was from 1984, and was loaded with Prince, Bruce, Tina,…
This Is Interesting
Def Leppard is rerecording their back catalog because of an argument with Universal over the digital distribution rights of their original songs. Despite being the slickest of the 80s hairbands, it took some effort. ”You just don’t go in and say, ‘Hey guys, let’s record it,’ and it’s done in three minutes,” Elliott notes. “We had to study those songs,…
On Owning Music
Ahh, more Gen X navel gazing about the changes in the music world. I’m sorry, I can’t avoid reading these pieces, linking to them, or adding some comments of my own. I think most of that is because this profound change in the technology of music has come right at the time my generation shifted into true adulthood: the getting…
Depp Being Depp
I’ve been slowly working my way through the most excellent Joe Strummer documentary The Future Is Unwritten. If you’re a fan of the punk rock prophet, or just a fan of music in general, I highly recommend it. The film features audio from the late Strummer cut with interviews with people he was close to through his life. Family members,…