Spitball Army

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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List time! Here are my favored music releases for the year so far, with a proviso: though these records have been introduced to me during the first half of 2009, they were not necessarily released in 2009. As always, please share your lists and thoughts in the comments below, as I (and other readers here) am always on the lookout for something new and good to tickle my eardrums.

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I had recently watched Surfing Hollow Days by Bruce Brown, and was struck by how similar in format this Warren Miller film was to Brown’s film(s)…and wonder if Miller has ever stated how Brown’s movies have influenced him.

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In 1988, A&M Records released an album entitled Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films.  Popular musical artists of the day – the majority of them “independent” – covered songs from the early animated and live-action features of the Disney Studios, under the producer’s wand held by Hal Willner.  One of the tracks was “Castle […]

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The Golden Age of American Popular Music: The Jazz Hits from the Hot 100 1958-1966;
Whale Rider;
readthewords.com

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Who says you need to be able to carry a tune in order to get a song across to an audience? It certainly wasn’t a necessary prerequisite for 93-year-old Eileen Hall, who delivered The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” in the film Young @ Heart. In fact, her British-accented rendition of the lyrics leans more toward the “spoken” than toward the “sung.”

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“If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.”

So goes the line from the well-worn song “New York, New York.” And, apparently, the inverse rule applies, as well. The last of the giant music retail stores in New York City shuttered completely yesterday, according to this morning’s New York Times.

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Patterson Hood will release Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) on 23 June 2009 on Ruth St. Records. The second solo record from the leader of the Drive-By Truckers follows 2004’s Killers and Stars.

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BJ posts a status update: BJ doesn’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.

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When I first heard “Alicia Ross,” my initial impulse was to play it over again immediately.  I did.  Then I played it again.  The narrative voice in the lyrics was so strong that I wondered if it was perhaps based on a true story.  A quick googling of “Alicia+Ross” gave me a series of websites, including […]

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