I was reminded of this song when a rerun of House MD showed this to be the good doctor's ringtone. If you've a mighty good man in your life, or you are one, this is dedicated to you.
And our sister site Newstalgia presents a full concert on Saturday nights, tonight J. Geils Band, Augusta, Georgia, 1975.
No, this is not an early April Fool's joke. Nicole Belle and I have chatted before about how Phineas and Ferb is one of the funniest shows on tee vee, and this is the number one most requested song from the show in a recent online poll. (I would have chosen Destroyed Dreams for its amazing Bollywood parody but that's me.) It's impressive that a half-hour kid's cartoon has a full-length song incorporated into the plot of every episode. And there's a reason this show re-airs at 9:30 at night...for the grownups, dude.
Live from Lincoln Center, New Year's Eve, December 31, 2005.
I did an LNMC last year featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and their Academy Award-winning song from the movie, Once.
Hansard (late of The Frames) and Irglova have formed a new band, The Swell Season, and their album, Strict Joy, was released in October of this year.
Here they are singing an acoustic version of Feeling the Pull and a studio version of Low Rising, both from Strict Joy.
Ever watch a movie and go "Meh" but absolutely fell in love with the soundtrack?
I happened to catch the Steve Carell vehicle "Dan in Real Life" last week on cable. When I'm working, I tend to keep the TV on as background noise (occupational hazard of being from a big family and having kids--silence is distracting). Normally, I tune it out, but I found myself completely entranced by Sondre Lerche's music. It was quirky, charming and really deserved a much better movie than the one in which it was featured.
Wish I could recommend the movie, but I do strongly recommend the soundtrack.
Any other movie soundtrack knock you out?
Two major distinguishing factors that make Eddie Harris an innovator had to do with his teacher at DuSable High School in Chicago, and his use of the Varitone Saxophone. It’s a pickup for saxophone. If you look closely at the video, you’ll see he’s got a line going from his instrument to a black box, and that he fiddles with it from time to time. This was a now defunct piece of technology invented by H & A Selmer, Inc., in an attempt to give the saxophone the same versatility as other electrified instruments.
His teacher was Walter Dyett was the kind of music teacher many serious musicians would love to have. Many of his students were successful professional musicians: Gene Ammons, Nat "King" Cole, Bo Diddley, Dorothy Donegan (and Dorothy Donegan again), Julian Priester.
Which old standards (players or pieces) have your ear?
Note: Our sister site Newstalgia has Backstage Weekend with Massive Attack - Live at the Phoenix Festival 1996.
"I Try." Such a terrific song.
Whatcha listening to this weekend?
Pomplamoose (it means "grapefruit" in French) is a Bay Area indie jazz-pop band and is compromised made up of Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, who do what they call VideoSongs.
For those who don't know, a VideoSong is a new medium with (as Jack puts it) two rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).
The unsigned band is fast picking up steam through social media. This is only one of their many interesting covers, but they have lots of cool, original music, too. (Oh, and they do a cover of a Gordon's Jewelers ad, which is amazing because in so many ways, they remind me of the late, lamented Huffamoose - whose name also ends in "moose" and had their song "I Want To Buy You A Ring" used in a jewelry commercial!) Like, synchronicity, man.
Does the world need a second coming of Kate Bush? I have no idea, but I'll take the second coming of anything if it can make a record as good as Bat for Lashes' Two Suns, which will close out the year on the top of my best of '09 list if some unseen masterpiece doesn't fly out of nowhere in the next seven weeks.
"Siren Song" (here's the studio version, which truth be told has an edge that's hard to capture playing live on the radio in Santa Monica at nine in the morning, as Bat for Lashes, nee Natasha Khan, does in this clip), is a subdued yet menacing terror with perfectly bare lyrics, and all without ever developing a steady beat. An artist this capable = someone we'll still be talking about ten years down the road.
A wispy voiced girl can't swing a guitar around New York City without getting compared to Cat Power, as Rebecca Schiffman inevitably does by anyone who doesn't get that her whimsical tunes are way more fun. "The Rabbit Habit" belongs in the canon of great songs of a certain subject matter like "Pump It Up", "She-Bop" and "Longview". You know what I'm talking about.
LNMC's 50 State Strategy is C&L's ongoing series to showcase a top act from every state in the union, alphabetically by state. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com. Next up: North Carolina.
Hip hop jazz and toasting from Toronto. Who knew? I kid, I kid. They’re actually very polite.
My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style
I love the fusion of jazz and hip hop. Both are dynamic styles, whose artists make up new rules as they go along. Hip hop looked to jazz for funky hooks, break beats and themes to create tonal beat driven backdrops for rhymes.
In the 60s, a wave of bossa nova and cha-cha raced through the states and this was reflected in old standards being ‘Latinized’ and in new compositions, based on Latin rhythms.
‘Soul Bossa Nova’ by Quincy Jones, was one such composition. Quincy Jones conducted a lineup for the 1962 ‘Big Band Bossa Nova’ album that featured ‘Soul Bossa Nova,’ which included Phil Woods, alto sax; Paul Gonsalves, tenor sax; Clark Terry playing trumpet and flugelhorn; Rahsaan Roland Kirk, present on flute and alto flute; Jerome Richardson on flute, alto flute, and woodwinds; Lalo Schifrin on piano (you may have heard some of his other work here); Jim Hall, guitar; Chris White, Bass; Rudy Collins, drums; and Jack Del Rio, Carlos Gomez, and Jose Paula, all contributing to the percussion section.
This'll melt ya, honey.
I ran that Sam and Dave clip from this same show featuring the "Stax/Volt Revue" on tour in Europe -- which meant that the house band was Booker T. and the MG's and the Mar-Keys -- a little earlier, but as good as Sam and Dave might have been, they paled in comparison to Otis Redding, who immediately followed them. He was The Man. This was his closing song. Whew. Seven months after this, Redding died in a plane crash. It was one of the great losses to music.
This song by Swedish/American triumvirate Miike Snow (it's the name of the band, and yes there are two I's in Miike) is all the rage with the kids these days and I feel like much less of a coot than I did in my last post for merely knowing it and posting it here.
Like much of today's music, this song broke wide open as a result of placements on television shows (mainly Gossip Girl), which after a few years of being the best source of income for songwriters and musicians (one spin on a popular television show nets the same as thousands of albums sold) is now become the best way to get exposure as well. When such fortune befalls a quality track like "Animal", it catches fire.
Don't hate on this Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert collaboration that's in the works:
Talk about a Fame Monster. As details about Adam Lambert's debut album continue to slowly leak out like the helium from Balloon Boy's spaceship, the "American Idol" runner-up dropped a glitter bomb early Tuesday morning (October 20) when he revealed that he's been working with Lady Gaga.
"Yes it's true: I spent yesterday in the studio w the insanely talented and creative Lady Gaga recording a song that she wrote! I love her," Lambert tweeted.
I'm a big defender of both of these oft-maligned 2009 success stories and am excited to hear what they came up with, as well as the rest of Lambert's upcoming album Entertainment, which will have tracks by top tunesmiths Max Martin and Linda Perry.
