From the album Rockferry
I heard this song on my radio and I thought it was a great modern update to the female R&B singers stylings of the 60s. Imagine my surprise to find this Welsh woman in her early 20s who looks like she'd be more likely to be Disney's latest pop star, than a R&B songwriter.
Because I used to work at a record company I still get tons of demos from aspiring artists. It makes no sense because "used to" means "now I'm a blogger and I don't do music biz anymore." Most of the demos aren't very good and I rarely pass them along to John or Blue Gal, let alone put them on LNMC. Today, however, a guy in Montana, Patrick Dwyer, sent me this simple performance YouTube he made of himself singing a Patty Griffin classic, Heavenly Day. What do you think? Should I send this guy to meet some A&R guys?
A few months ago the Late Night Music Club debuted Jason Joseph's first single, "One Man." A friend of ours did his own very powerful Obama-oriented video for it. Today Jason sent us the official video-- simple, stark and extremely effective. (You might recall that Jason also did a fantastic clip for Blue America's campaign for Regina Thomas in Georgia.)
Break Up The Concrete is the new album-- the first since Artemis released the mostly unheraldedLoose Screw six years ago-- from The Pretenders. I love it. So many great references to Dylan! And, like most Pretenders' albums I love it because of Chrissie's songwriting. And yet, tonight we're listening to one of the two songs on the album, the other being "Rosalee," not written by Chrissie. Actually this isn't even officially on the regular album. It's a bonus track offered by a certain unnamed big box retailer for CDs sold in their store. And, fittingly, it's a song, "Both Sides Of Goodbye," by Hank Williams, Jr. Fortunately Chrissie chose Willie Nelson to sing it with her.
The Click Song
I've always loved international music, thanks to my parents and this is one of the first artists I was introduced to as a little girl.
RIP, Mama Afrika. South Africa may not have let you return, but the angels have called you home.
Layla was the big hit off this record, but this is my favorite track.
"Have You Ever Loved a Woman."
Duane Allman was good, but Clapton smokes on this cut.
"I Confess" from 1982. The Beat is still touring, by the way...
Lost in the shuffle between New York's old school hip-hop artists and the new L.A. "Gangsta" scene, 1987 brought us this righteous rap of a man giving up the thug life to go legit. Rakim's rhymes are backed by one of the hardest beats imaginable, sprinkled with samples including Bogie, Don Pardo and Ofra Haza; it's a veritable smorgasbord of sound!
(Extra love from me if you can name all of the samples used on this track. Or even just one or two! )
This album changed music.
From her upcoming CD, Our Bright Future, available in the US on November 11th
The secret to Roy Orbison's amazing, four-octave, nuclear-yodel voice is that it didn't produce "sound" as we humans understand it. It produced "Royvicles" -- discrete packets of sound that can propagate through the pellucid medium scientists call "the Orbisphere".
Which is why Roy Orbison is the only one human in history whose voice is audible in space.
And now, three-and-a-half minutes of seemingly fluffy/bouncy/goodfeel from the freshly post-Watergate year of 1975 that I've always suspected was not-very-obliquely referring to Richard Nixon and John Dean (among others), the "Saturday Night Massacre" and, when played backwards, Charo.
