Study

I’ve never been one for lyricless music.  The words to a song are more important to me than the actual music.  Often the first thing I connect with when looking for new music is a phrase or word that seems to say something I like.  And I realize I’m not unique in this respect, I [...]

Flash Post 6

Here are two links to recent finds of mine on eMusic.com, which I would recommend to the right people, who would be, in turn, in the right frame of mind:
This Is Metal’s Most Covered Moments of the 80s – Particular favorite tracks are  “Fallen Angel” performed by Bret Michaels (of Poison), [...]

80s

Woke up to a cold, grey, rain falling onto my morning. Needed something to beat back the gloom.  Searched through the tunes.  Found what I needed, feel free to sing along:
“Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world!  Took the midnight train going anywhere…”
This amused me so much I put together an 80s [...]

Mood Music

When I was younger I made the argument that music could not change someone’s mood. Now that I am older and realize that once again, I was wrong. This morning, I was in a fine mood. I had a bit of a lie-in as I did not have to work until this [...]

Music, eMusic

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends told me about a new(ish) music download service they were using called eMusic. I took their advice and signed up for the trial version and then immediately upgraded to a full account, which gives me 90 tracks per month for $20 per month. (Do [...]

Dance You Mad Crazy Fools

Madonna’s “Hung Up” came over the speakers as I was doing a bit of housekeeping this morning.
Now, while I am not a great fan of Madonna’s, I will be the first to admit that the woman can put a dance track together like almost no one else, and this is a great example.  So, there [...]

My Current Favorite Sad Song

Rufus Wainwright does an excellent cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2″ on the soundtrack to the biography / performance film “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man”.
This particular song is one of Cohen’s more poetic sets of lyrics set to sparse accompaniment, as per Cohen’s usual style. The song is a love poem that [...]

Covered

Coldplay is one of those bands that I thought were promising, but I just did not have the time to check them out when they were rising.  Now, they are a big, established, million selling rockband and I still have not had time to check them out beyond the occasional song or two.
Much to my [...]

Metal

“…and that girl in the front of the room, so close and yet so far, she never seemed to notice that silly, school-boy crush wasn’t just pretend…”
“Do you like Circus?”  The girl’s voice distracted me from my attempts to make the clock run faster through sheer willpower.
I looked over at her.  “Sure.  I guess so.  [...]

Incesticide

It’s amazing how some things just get stuck in one’s head. Well, not stuck. More like put away in the mental equivalent of a kitchen drawer and forgotten about. For years even.
I came up against this today when trying to explain the word insecticide to my students. We had been discussing [...]

Stadium Arcadium

 
This album sounds like the Chili Peppers finally let John Frusciante off his leash.  It just rocks.  Well, the first disc does anyway, the second disc is much slower, full of ballads and love songs that we're not too used to hearing from the Chili Peppers.  Where before we may have gotten one or two [...]

Tarbelly and Featherfoot

"Featherfoot walked right past Tarbelly into the kitchen where she made and ate three sandwhiches, drank a pot of coffee and a bottle of Absolut vodka. All the while, Tarbelly stood in the door…"
Some songs just stick in your head.
I was around seventeen or eighteen when the first Sweet Relief album came out. [...]

The First Line is the Hardest

“Honey don’t walk out, I’m too drunk to follow.”
That has got to be one of the best opening lines, in any story, ever. This one comes from Tom Petty’s song “Rebels”, off the Southern Accents album.  (One of his best and one of my go to albums when I’m looking for inspiration.)
I have trouble writing [...]

Frustration

I get my swear on in this post. You’ve been warned.
A year or so ago, I got this great punk compilation called “Springman to the Rescue” from Springman Records. One of the tracks was absolutely killer. Well, several tracks were killer, but one in praticular, called “I Want Some Pussy Yo” by [...]

Coney Island Baby

You know, man, when I was a young man in high school
you believe in or not I wanted to play football for the coach
Italy was rolling by outside the train window, backlit by moonlight and Lou Reed was singing in my headphones. I was alone [...]