Back on the stationary bike listening to my Shuffle, the Junior Vasquez and Dolly Parton version of "Peace Train" came on, and it occurred to me that that song, more than Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" or any other, is the song of the recently concluded election. It's a hopeful, progressive, even utopian song written by a folk singer who subsequently converted to Islam and sung by a country
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Last weekend, I watched a DVD of Phish's It festival. In it, the keyboardist, a dead ringer for Spinal Tap's drummer (the one actually with the band for the tour mockumented by the movie), says that their jams often need to go on for five, ten, and even fifteen minutes to get to music that would never be discovered otherwise. And though I have nothing against experimentation, I don't think t...
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Because my iPod Shuffle told you I was. In the course of a half hour workout, it gave me two Pet Shop Boys songs and one by Madonna, though these were interspersed with songs from Phish, Kevin Drew, Tom Waits, and Drive-By Truckers. Still, there's something more than metrosexual about riding a stationary bike in the fitness center of a large media company in Midtown Manhattan with Neil Tennant o
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In tomorrow's New York Times Book Review, Michael Azerrad reviews Dan Kennedy's Rock On. It sounds like an interesting book, but the review repeats a couple of pieces of received wisdom that are in danger of becoming accepted fact without ever quite being true.First, there's this:The time frame is circa 2003, when illegal file sharing was starting to dent the bottom line; fatally, the industry pl
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Have you heard the new Vampire Weekend album? I happened to get a copy, and it's catchy as hell. On the one hand, they sound pretty flawlessly African, but on the other hand, their lyrics, full of references to sites around the Northeast, make it pretty clear that they're not from Africa. "Walcott," probably the most infectious song on an album full of infectious songs and my early pick for son
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Having now been "alerted to the existence of Drive-By Truckers":http://mog.com/morgannels/blog_post/144467, I've been going through their back catalog. I tried The Dirty South next, and was especially impressed with "Where the Devil Don't Stay." Then I got Southern Rock Opera, which seems to be their magnum opus. I can't decide whether the openness with which they wear their Lynyrd Skynyrd wors
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In the end, music succeeds or fails on how it makes us feel. There's a moment in the "recent Bob Dylan DVD":http://mog.com/emscee/blog_post/126655, The Other Side of the Mirror, which chronicles his performances at the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 through 1965, where you can see his appeal change from intellectual visceral. It's during a daytime acoustic performance of "Love Minus Zero/No Lim
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On a recent "R3-30 Podcast":http://www.cbcradio3.com/podcast/r330/, I came across "Portico's":http://www.porticonation.com/ "Sincerely," which I believe to be the most sadistic pop song ever recorded. I think these lyrics are the pith of the savagery:bq. I'm gonna hurt you, darlingbq. So much so that you'll lay awake nightsbq. Thinking of times you were near meIt reads like the boasts of a boxer,
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"Like emscee":http://mog.com/emscee/blog_post/133126 (in fact, with emscee, and with "DeeDee":http://mog.com/deedee as well) I saw Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll":http://www.rocknrolltheplay.com/ over the pre-Christmas weekend. And as emscee says, it's as excellent a production as you're likely to see on Broadway, I might even go so far as to say ever. It's the most personal and deeply felt of St
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"Emscee":http://mog.com/emscee articulately "laments":http://mog.com/emscee/blog_post/102604 the state of the music industry and its apparent inability to even properly remake a junky pop song. Not that I would gainsay him anyway, given his considerable wisdom and the fact that he has been a first-hand witness to the events he describes, but I do think he's right, as far as he goes. And "Cosmo":
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