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Wed, 19 Jan 2005 |
Stephen Collins / Stephen Collins | |
I know that taking potshots at actors who put out albums is easy.
I should be ashamed of myself.
But c'mon! The guy is the lead actor on the most unrealistic, most conservative show on television, a program so deserving of contempt it can only be enjoyed with tongue in cheek, preferably by reading the episode recaps on Television Without Pity. And his singing has all the nuance of his acting; has there ever been a more lifeless rendition of Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (By the way, does that last sentence need two question marks? One for the song title and the second to make my statement a question?) It's not that Mr. Collins can't carry a tune; he clearly can. He just doesn't seem to have any particular destination in mind. According to Amazon, Mr. Collins is a triple threat, with two novels to his name in addition to his acting and singing triumphs. That puts him one up on David Hasselhoff. Then again, Mr. Collins can't claim to have unified a nation. He can't, can he? |
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Fri, 07 Jan 2005 |
Starland Vocal Band / Starland Vocal Band | |
It will come as no surprise when I tell you that I was a tragically
unhip teenager, and that I didn't get any better as I got older.
Yes, it's true; as proof I admit to owning a copy of the Starland
Vocal Band's album. I am consoled only a little by the fact that
I wasn't the only one to fall under their spell. In 1976, this
lighter than air pop quartet received a Grammy as Best New Artist.
They even had their own show on CBS, which disappeared as quickly as
the band itself. And what greater arbiter of taste do we need than
Homer Simpson, who is revealed in the
Round
Springfield episode to have been so enamored of the band (or
so drunk out of his mind) as to have their logo tattooed on his
arm?
The band is best known, to the degree they're known at all, for their chart topping Afternoon Delight, perhaps the most cheerful and upbeat ode to the humble nooner ever penned. The only other track I remember from this album is an a capella rendition of Paul Simon's American Tune. Listening to it now, I can only assume that it was the song that impressed me. If I have any younger readers, perhaps you can use this album as a response to your forty- or fiftysomething parents' complaints about the crap music you listen to. As Homer himself said, "Starland Vocal Band? They suck!" |
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[ Category: Pop | 2 comments | Link ] |
Wed, 05 Jan 2005 |
Les Annees Petula / Petula Clark | |
Some songs take me right back to my childhood. And some singers of
course, Petula Clark among them. I couldn't have been much more than
ten when I first heard
Downtown
on my tinny little transistor radio, the one that looked like a
Marlboro cigarette box. (Clever bit of marketing there, which was,
fortunately enough, lost on me.) Downtown was followed a few
weeks later by
I
Know a Place. And then
My
Love the following year, probably my favorite of her hits.
Even after all these decades they still have the power to reverse
time, if only for 3:05 at a time.
These aren't the original recordings by the way, which is probably just as well. I have an early CD of Ms. Clark's hits. And the sound is just what you'd expect from old monaural analogue tape. No, the performances on this album are of more recent vintage. And only half the tracks are in English; the rest are en français. Not surprising, since a little Google research reveals that this is in fact an album called Les Annees Petula, which my mediocre to lousy high school french translates as The Petula Years. Why Apple felt the need to retitle it escapes me. And if they had to, couldn't they have come up with something better than Best of Petula Clark? But I digress. The performances are good. And if you're as old as me (and what are the odds of that?), you'll enjoy a hobble down memory lane. At the same time as wondering how we all got so old and Petula Clark didn't. |
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Wed, 01 Dec 2004 |
Mickey and Other Love Songs / The Best Of Toni Basil | |
There have been lots of one hit wonders, right? Lots of songwriters
with one good song in them, that for whatever reason holds your
attention. And then they never come up with anything nearly so good
and eventually become fodder for one of those "where are they now"
specials on VH1. And then there's Toni Basil. Her one hit is pretty
awful, although I suppose we could argue that it's awful in a
memorable way. And it did give us one of "Weird Al"'s better song
parodies, with Mickey transformed into Ricky (Ricardo).
Heck, the video of that song makes up for the relentless pointlessness
(or should that be pointless relentlessness) of Mickey.
But a whole album of Mickey clones? To think of all the albums that could be using the server space this dreck is taking up. Surely an hour of silence would be better. Don't you wish Apple provided per-artist sales figures? |
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Fri, 12 Nov 2004 |
Stardust... The Great American Songbook, Vol III / Rod Stewart | |
I guess it's nice that Rod Stewart can find work now that he's
passé as a rocker. But I'm kind of bemused by his success with
these albums of old standards. Why would somebody want to listen to
Stewart's hoarse croak, when they could enjoy
Harry
Connick, Jr. or
Michael
Feinstein. Or go back to people who made these songs famous in
the first place; why Stewart's version of
What
a Wonderful World when you can have
Louis
Armstrong?
Or am I just being old and cranky? Is it a good thing to have Stewart introduce these songs to a new generation who may eventually discover other, more tuneful performers? And speaking of old and cranky, does anybody else think the cover of this album make Stewart look like an extremely nimble half man/half woman? Don't those legs look like they're emerging from his torso? Just me, huh? |
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Thu, 04 Nov 2004 |
The Very Best of the Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) Band | |
Do you miss the early days of the web? The web was a different place
back in '95 or so, before ecommerce and the dotcom boom and bust. It
was a place to enjoy; not very useful but a whole lot of fun. I
remember my daily visits to Mirsky's Worst of the Web, where
primitive and incompetent websites were skewered and made fun of.
Okay, that part hasn't changed, although what qualifies as primitive
certainly has.
Anyway, I miss the pure joy of discovery, of not knowing what new amusement lay beyond the next link. I miss the randomness. And it's with that in mind that I occasionally type a word or phrase into iTMS and see what pops out. Like typing James Bond and discovering the architype for the brass band in the quirky British film Brassed Off. The Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) Band has been performing since 1917, so they've had time to get their act together. And although I found them through a James Bond Medley, their repertoire includes both classical and contemporary selections. From William Tell to the Lone Ranger, as it were. I like brass bands. And I like movie music. And I like at least some classical. So I'm feeling pretty happy about this particular search. Wonder how the next one'll go. |
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Fri, 15 Oct 2004 |
Call Off the Search / Katie Melua | |
Must every young vocalist be compared to
Norah
Jones? I really wonder, especially after reading yet another
reviewer comparing a new and splendid singer to Ms. Jones and
finding her wanting. What ought to matter is for performers to find a
style and material that suit them.
Katie Melua hasn't quite done that here, although some of the results are memorable. I was particularly taken with The Closest Thing to Crazy, an iTMS freebie a while back. It's the kind of song that gives me little shivers, as Ms. Melua sings "How can happiness feel so wrong? How can misery feel so sweet?" in a voice that echoes with pain and longing. And if nothing else on the album reaches that level of emotion (a cover of I Think It's Going to Rain Today is good but not exceptional), they're a pleasant enough listening experience. I can't wait for her to find a full album's worth of performances that match her potential. |
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[ Category: Pop | 1 comment | Link ] |
Wed, 13 Oct 2004 |
Wolves at My Door / Annie Moscow | |
Part of the fun of the iTMS is the chance to play stream of
consciousness games and see where they lead. In yesterday's selection
I mentioned Natacha Atlas's cover of From Russia With Love,
which is unavailable at the store. But a bunch of other versions are
available, both traditional versions like
Matt
Monro's original and goofier versions by
Kenny
Ball & His Jazzmen and a Jamaican band called
Roland
Alphonso & Soul Vendors. The latter came from a disc of ska
tracks, including a marvelous cover of
Guns
of Navarone by The Skatalites. But it was the Kenny Ball
collection that had the real prize, a cover of an old Russian folk
tune I remember from my childhood. They called it
Midnight
in Moscow, although I remember it as Moscow Nights.
That got me thinking. So I told the iTMS to search for Moscow. And among the results were several other versions of the song, under both names. And some classic movie recordings by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. And a disc by a woman named Annie Moscow. Which I might have ignored, if one of the tracks hadn't been entitled Buy the Bitch a Cadillac. How could I resist that? A couple of minutes later I had another album downloading to my iPod. Ms. Moscow has the gentle voice of a classic folk singer and lyrics that are rather more direct. A sweet delivery of a snarky message; just what I was looking for. Or would have been, if I'd been doing more than just poking around aimlessly. |
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Mon, 11 Oct 2004 |
I Don't Know What I'm Doing / Brad Sucks | |
There's just so much to love about this album. Start with
the title and the artist's nom de whatever. (What's the
musical equivalent of a plume?) Then move on to the knowledge
that there's no record label involved, so Brad collects 2/3 of the
pennies you spend on his work here. Or better still, go to his
website at www.bradsucks.net
and buy a CD for half the iTMS price. Or just download it for free;
this is a guy who's happy to know you're listening.
While it may indeed be true that Sven Rox, Brad most definitely doesn't suck. Heck, he might even be worth paying for. |
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Sat, 09 Oct 2004 |
Worlds On Fire - Single / Sarah McLachlan | |
A music video with a message. One that matters. | |
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Mon, 04 Oct 2004 |
Beautiful Obscene / Diana Anaid | |
I have a couple of rituals for Apple's New Music Tuesdays. One
involves scanning all the new stuff on the front page and in a couple
of selected genres; the other is a download of the week's free
track. The latter have been a bit of a bust so far; nothing's
really my taste. Until now, that is, with the offering of Diana Anaid's
Last
Thing as the freebie.
And it's not just the song, although that's plenty; there's also her
wonderfully palindromic name. I haven't run into one of those since
Stanley Yelnats in
Holes.
But enough about her name. The rest of the album is pretty good. And it left me with an amusing quandry: with a total of eleven tracks including the free one, should I just download the rest of the tracks at .99 each or waste a full nine cents on the entire album. Being lazy, I tried the latter. But the Music Store had other ideas; it warned me about having duplicate tracks. So in spite of my best efforts, Apple's store missed out on a little extra profit this week. |
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Fri, 17 Sep 2004 |
ABBA: Gold - Greatest Hits / ABBA | |
My first blog entry; is there anything more daunting than a blank
page in a new notebook? And to make matters worse, my first entry is
about my first purchase from Apple's iTunes Music
Store.1 Worse because that first purchase
was atypical in a bunch of ways. For one, I was unsure about the whole
online music deal, at least where it concerned actually
paying for music. For another, I immediately went and burned
a CD of my purchase, something I stopped doing immediately afterward.
And for a third, this was the last time I bought music I already
knew. This was a case of wanting to try out the system, so I bought
something I didn't own but knew I'd enjoy, at least as part of the
large collection of stuff in rotation on my iPod. And what can I say?
ABBA still works for me, at least in small doses.
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