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| What you're about to read is a collection of pointers to some of the music I've discovered on the iTunes Music Store, music I like enough that I want to share it. If you're an iPod owner and an iTunes fan (and if you aren't, what are you doing here?), maybe you'll find something new. Click on any of the CD covers to bounce over to the store and sample a few tracks. And then maybe stop by my other blog for a few well chosen words (and maybe a random snark or two). | 
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| Have some music to recommend? I can always use a few pointers. Use the comments link at the bottom of the page. | ||||||
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Fri, 05 Oct 2007 |
| Bird Nest On the Ground / Doyle Bramhall | |
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Some songs just shouldn't be covered; they're so closely associated
with one artist that it's just not worth trying to reinvent them. And
even if you could, just to prove you could, you'll never give them the
kind of life and soul they had in their more famous version.
Elvis is the quintessential example. Has anybody taken a classic
Elvis song and turned it into anything more than an homage or a
parody? It shouldn't even be attempted.
Okay, that's a gross overstatement. (Mostly.) But it's a tribute to Doyle Bramhill that his version of His Latest Flame doesn't make me long for Elvis. It's that good, as is his totally bluesy take on Johnny Nash's classic I Can See Clearly Now. Gotta love a guy who'll take those kind of risks, and then make them pay off. |
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| [ Category: Blues | 1 comment | Link ] | |
Mon, 08 Aug 2005 |
| At the Piano / David Bennett Cohen | |
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My freshman year at college was spent in the dorms, eight story brick
monstrosities made even more monstrous by Rochester weather. During
warmer weather, some wit liked to play this one selection by
Country
Joe & the Fish, I believe from the Woodstock
soundtrack. Loudly. So the entire quad could hear. If you're old
enough, you know the track I mean. "Gimme an F!", Country Joe
would yell. And the audience would yell back. "Gimme a U!"
And so on. I guess it seemed funny and revolutionary at the time.
I mention this only because David Bennett Cohen was the original keyboardist for Country Joe & the Fish. Who are not the subject of this album, I'm pleased to say; I'm less interested in shouted obscenities than I was at eighteen. No, At the Piano celebrates New Orleans blues. And so do I; this is great fun, high energy playing. And not a four letter word to be found. I guess we all have to grow up some time. Which some of us do better than others. |
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| [ Category: Blues | 1 comment | Link ] | |
Sun, 10 Oct 2004 |
| Read My Lips / Lou Ann Barton | |
| Blues? The iTMS thinks this belongs in Blues? Maybe they know best. But to me, Read My Lips is pure Rock & Roll. But not your modern corporate Rock, oh no. What we have here is a throwback to the days when Rock & Roll was something new and exciting and subversive. It's like we've found the Missing Link, the genetic connection between classic Blues and 50s Rock, before beach movies and the British Invasion. Before it all became respectable. |
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| [ Category: Blues | Add a comment | Link ] | |
Take me home: 
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