Saturday Music: Amy Rigby

August 26, 2006 – 7:03 pm

Amy Rigby’s one of the best musicians you haven’t heard, and she has a recent compilation out that’s a great introduction to her music.
Rigby writes about what it’s like to be single, middle aged, and raising a kid. Her song The Good Girls is a thumping lament about the women who work two full-time jobs, [...]

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On the Death of the Record Store

July 26, 2006 – 11:13 pm

Sasha Frere-Jones: I am guessing, unscientifically, that the internets is a much less terrifying place for people to shop—you don’t have to apologize for wanting a Ralph Towner record, or for missing one of the Sub Pop 7-inches, or for not understanding why Papoose is such a big deal. [ via Lori Selke ]

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Clash Cover Day

June 12, 2006 – 8:55 pm

Cyn picked up a copy of Charlie Does Surf, an album of Clash covers, at the surf show at the Hotel Utah last weekend. I loved RNA’s version of Spanish Bombs.
Today’s Salon Audiofile linked an Arabic cover of Rock the Casbah by Rachid Taha.
And there’s a project to record covers of every track on Sandinista! [...]

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Nashville Peaches

June 4, 2006 – 9:18 pm

Cyn and I went up to the City today to see a “battle of the surf bands show” at the Hotel Utah. We brought back a stack of CDs from the selection the bands were selling. One of them, Pollo Del Mar’s Year of the Rooster, had a cover of Frank Zappa’s jazz-rock anthem Peaches [...]

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Happy May Day

May 1, 2006 – 8:03 pm

A joyful version of The Internationale, by Soul Flower Mononoke Summit.

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Neko Case Interview

April 15, 2006 – 1:07 pm

[ via Darcy James Argue ] Neko Case on auto-tune and other dirty secrets of pop music.

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Bridge Out

March 5, 2006 – 11:16 pm

We were singing karaoke at a friend’s party last night, making our way through Crocodile Rock when we realize the song has no bridge. Are there other Top 40 pop songs that broke rules about song structure?
Also, half of the people singing with us had not heard of Cheap Trick’s Surrender. Disturbing.

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WolframTones

November 16, 2005 – 12:37 am

I’ve been playing with WolframTones tonight, after finding out about them from Kathryn Cramer.
These are little musical compositions created by running a one-dimensional cellular automata, then taking a slice, rotating the slice, and mapping a musical scale to the result.
You tweak the result by playing with the generator’s initial conditions, changing the instruments, tempo, and [...]

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A Short History of the Amen Break

November 1, 2005 – 10:55 pm

[ via Scott Reynen ] A short history of the Amen Break: six seconds of drumming from 1969 now heard everywhere.

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iTunes Sharing at Work

October 29, 2005 – 2:12 pm

[ via Lee Iverson ] Georgia Tech study of iTunes sharing in workplaces: people used their sharing to project an identity. However, when the boss looked in on the sharing, people ‘clammed up.’

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The Return of Kate Bush

October 19, 2005 – 10:46 pm

Move over Tori Amos and Maaya Sakamoto, the original pop music heartthrob of the geeks, Kate Bush, has returned with a new single about—Elvis?

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Jane Child: Don’t Wanna Fall in Love

October 12, 2005 – 11:00 am

A bit of great pop fluff from 1990 one-hit wonder Jane Child. I’m a sucker for those synth arpeggios.

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Baby’s got Hack (cough)

October 11, 2005 – 2:14 pm

Catherynne M. Valente’s Baby’s Got Hack is to Sir Mixalot, what Rent was to La Bohème. What’s with that obsession with beautiful, yet doomed women and TB?

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Blaspheming Elvis

September 26, 2005 – 9:23 pm

A couple of podcasts of note:

Coverville had a special, hour-long show for Elvis Costello’s birthday back at the end of August.
I like Blur’s version of Oliver’s Army, and the Bangles’ poppy cover of Tear Off Your Own Head.

Jennifer Pelland has a story on Escape Pod, The Burning Bush: funny, and sacrilegious, but not obscene.
Jennifer’s a [...]

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20 Most Underrated Rock Albums

July 12, 2005 – 12:00 am

Okay, I’m strange, but at least someone else thinks Tin Machine was underrated.

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