Posts tagged music
The new Best Coast album is pretty good but I really wish I could watch them play it with 10 other freaked out people in the Beverly Center Bloomingdales like I saw them two years ago. Still one of the most surreal shows ever.
Blake Babies “Temptation Eyes” video featured on 120 Minutes, 1991
Cover of a song by The Grass Roots.
Look how great Juliana Hatfield is at covering songs. She has a new album of covers coming out that you can pledge to here.
If someone asked me today what my religious affiliation was I would answer “Springsteen”. Born in the U.S.A. came out the year I was born and at some point the tape was introduced to my red Sony Walkman and Raffi was summarily told to get lost. The A-side of the tape wore out I believe because I kept rewinding it to hear the title track over and over. A choice that lacks nuance and sophistication but I was only 3 or so, obviously today my favorite song on the album is ‘I’m Going Down’ by a mile.
The purpose of a Springsteen tour in 2012 is more closely aligned with why a new band goes on tour than why other more nostalgic acts of his era go on tour. Clearly this attitude has caused what some would call some missteps and certainly some questionable styles and attempts at relevancy in his current era. Looking back at a picture of Bruce from the 80s or 90s creates the same laughter and cringing that looking back at anyone’s photos from that era. He is a man of searching and of the people and that honesty creates mistakes.
Those mistakes and that honesty are what makes a new album a cultural event and a tour another attempt to dig deep and search for something only a large gathering of people can create. Going to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is to understand that together something special just might happen.
Springsteen best encapsulates not only my vision of America but also my attitude towards life, challenge, despair and joy. This song will probably be set to end of season montages for sports teams and college graduation classes for years to come. Most artists usually achieve a song with universal emotion like that by forcing themselves outside their norm (i.e. Green Day’s ‘Good Riddance’) but ‘Wrecking Ball’ is merely Bruce performing the simple exercise of writing about what it has meant to play his songs to massive crowds in his hometown. The idea is simple but the execution is extraordinary.
The Ticketmaster free version of Watch the Throne does not list Kanye as an artist after itunes import. I imagine he’d be totally okay with that and not see it as a big deal at all. I can imagine him saying “No big deal, it’s just an id3 tag maaaaan.”
Tv Girl - Benny and the Jetts
One of the best tracks of the summer by leaps and bounds. Run to Bandcamp to download the whole EP for free. http://tvgirl.bandcamp.com/
Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner completes one of the most forgotten and difficult trials of a rock band, the “acoustic version”. This take of ‘Holy Holy’ gets the job done quite well.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Body
I sure hope teenagers are listening to this band and taking it way too seriously. I know I would have/am despite age.
Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue (Live Tel Aviv, Israel 2011-06-20)
Want to know what Bob Dylan sounded like in Israel less than 7 days ago? This version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ is a great impassioned take, that is for lack of a better word more “accessible” than a lot of his recent live takes on classics. The most striking thing though is that Dylan is continuing to stretch and search inside his songs, which is what drives so many away from his live shows, and into the arms of those artists willing to be nostalgic. He is never satisfied, he never completely nails a performance, and once he has it as perfect as it can be, he darts in the other direction, working toward the next mystery.
Now this is what I wanted to find when in England, a nation of happy, misanthropic, Smiths fans standing in the rain. I will be back in a few weeks, and hope to find all the people in this video, especially you Morrissey, let’s go shoplifting at Harrod’s or something.
