I grew up in the 1960s, but the music that filled my home was more Beatles and Johnny Cash and less folk music. The only folk music that I did hear was from the Smothers Brothers and a couple of songs from the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. So all the songs on the soundtrack to Inside Llewyn Davis were new to me. It was something of a surprised to find that they were all real songs, even the fairly silly Please Mr Kennedy, though they have all been altered in subtle and not so subtle ways. So…
Category: music
American Top 40 ~from my glory days of 1978
Ah, those were the good old days One of the local Oldies radio stations has started playing reruns of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. They were playing one from June 17, 1978 and it was likely one that I listened to when it first aired all those years ago. This was back when the Top 40 was an amazing mix of styles and artists, before music charts became so specialized that virtually anyone who releases a single will end up with a number one somewhere. I caught the top twenty or so songs of the broadcast, and I was surprised…
Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
While doing a bit of ritual cleaning I came across a stack of old LPs. Double Fantasy was among them. This is one of a handful of albums I bought new when it came out. I was never as big a music fan as I could have been. Oh, I love music, but I tend to love it after it’s been around for a while. For example, I was really into the Beatles when John Lennon was murdered. Like most Beatles fans, I was never very fond of Yoko Ono. As far as his Asian women went, I always thought…
Susan Boyle and The Beatles
Singing sensation Susan Boyle has a No. 1 album in the United States and the U.K. simultaneously for the second time in a year — a feat not achieved for more than 40 years. Her record label, Sony, says she is the first woman to reach the milestone achieved previously by the Beatles in 1969 and The Monkees in 1967.-AP My little brother was really into music stats at one time. He bought Billboard magazine and keep up with the Top 40, Top 100, and Top 200 charts. Back then there were only a handful of charts to worry about. …
Katzenjammer’s Le Pop
Klezmer (from Yiddish כּלי־זמיר) is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre consists largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations-Wikipedia My main experience of Klezmer is from Fiddler on the Roof and The Who’s Teenage Wasteland. I have listened to a bit of random Klezmer online from time to time. So I was a bit surprised when I ran across Katzenjammer‘s Tea With Cinnamon from their album Le Pop. There is a bit of Klezmer here-makes me want to dance with a wine…
Ticket To Ride: Inside the Beatles’ 1964 Tour
I fell in love with The Beatles almost ten years after they had broken up. I never knew real Beatlemania, but I did know the music and it was the Beatles that helped me fall in love with the idea of London. Larry Kane was reporter who followed The Beatles around on the 1964 and 1965 US concert tours and Ticket To Ride is his recollection of those glory days. He says that he is still asked on a regular basis, so, what where The Beatles really like? I listened to the audio book version of Ticket to Ride and…
Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook
It used to be pretty commonplace for singers to record someone’s songbook-back in the day people like the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer had a certain style and were at least as well known as the performers singing the songs. There are still Songbook albums being made, the likes of Rod Steward and Bettye LaVette are keeping the tradition going. But I tend to like the older songbooks myself. One of my all time favorite songbooks is The Cole Porter Songbook sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Songs like Anything Goes, Love for Sale, Always True To You In My Way,…
Disco
Back in the dark ages of my youth, Disco was King. They still make the occasional good Disco song today, but they don’t call them disco. The fact that The Village People are still touring says that I’m not the only one who likes this outdated style of music. But then, can any music really be outdated? Well, maybe those first few years of Rap would best be forgotten, but otherwise, music is forever. Well, I’d like to say that I had one of those white disco suits and a giant poster of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever on…
Songza
Back when I was in High School New Wave music was all the rage and there was a New Wave version of the Rolling Stone’s Mother’s Little Helper. This was a song that I heard a handful of times and than never heard again. Until I found Songza the other day. A quick Google let me find out that this Rolling Stone cover was preformed by a group called Polyphonic Size. I still like this song. The clipped words and techno sound fit nicely with the old lyrics. Ok, so this isn’t exactly like finding an old Beatles recording in…
Boris Karloff and The Monster Mash
“Monster Mash” is a 1962 novelty song by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett. Boris Karloff the man who became famous for being Frankenstein’s Monster, was the star of over 200 films according to IMDB. Such movies as The Man Who Changed His Mind and The Man They Could Not Hang are not well known today, but hey, when your an actor ten bucks is ten bucks. I always liked the Frankenstein films. I even liked the Abbott and Costello films which featured a number of monsters from Universal. Boris Karloff was one of those actors it was easy for other to make…