Best of 2011

It's on its way... and I think it's a list with a few surprises on it... including a last minute choice for album of the year!

Watch this space!

Happy Chanukah

I just wanted to say a quick Happy Chanukah!  What better way to celebrate than in song (...and no not Adam Sandler's "Hanukah Song.")  I thought something from three nice Jewish boys from Manhattan would be suffice.

Song In My Head

One of the more unique things about the legendary post-punk band The Fall is their willingness to do cover songs. They've released nearly 30 studio albums, and virtually every one includes a cover song. The one that's in my head today is "There's a Ghost in My House", originally done by Motown's R. Dean Taylor in 1966 and popular in Northern Soul clubs. Here's The Fall version from 1987, which peaked at #30 on the UK charts.

Forgotten Songs

There's a lot of lousy music lists out there... you know, the 100 best guitarists of all time, or the 500 best songs from the 1990s. (Really? Were there 500 good songs in the 1990s?) But I recently read a pretty creative list in a magazine published by the folks who bring us NME and Uncut of the 500 Lost Songs You Need To Hear Now.

Rather than counting down 500 songs in some contrived way, the lengthy list is broken down into sub-categories, for example "Soul" and "Punk" and "Krautrock" and so forth. But there's also subcategories encompassing specific artists -- like #191 to #182, all reserved for Blur. ("Young and Lovely" tops the Blur sub-list, and I can't disagree. You can really hear the band take a huge creative step forward with the songcraft of that tune.)

Other notables: At #340, it's Wire's "Outdoor Miner" from 1979, a song that was pretty much on the soundtrack to my live circa 1995. And somewhere between 252 and 281, The Clash make the list for "This is England", which is a phenomenal song despite being on the universally panned Cut the Crap LP.

Matisyahu Shaved!

Ok, so it's not quite like Atlas Shrugged. But the world's only Hasidic reggae superstar is now clean-shaven. However, he says he's just as religious as ever.

For memory's sake, here's his 2005 breakthrough tune "King Without a Crown".

Song In My Head

"Spanish bombs, yo tequierro y finito Yote querda, oh mi corazon"

Ice Cube, Design Icon

Here's a little-known fact about Ice Cube: He studied architectural drafting. Yep, he never thought he'd make it as a rapper so he was preparing for a fallback career. And that's just one nugget out of an interview he did with the New York Times as part of a film he appeared in about mid-century designers Charles and Ray Eames. Check it out here.