My 2020 summer family trip to Hawai was postponed due to the pandemic, but we were lucky enough to reschedule it for this month. So, fully vaccinated and the opposite of homesick, we’re setting off on a 2-week island getaway.
The last time I went to Hawaii, in 2016, I posted two weeks of music from the region, so I’m going a different direction this time. For the next two weeks I will present, without comment, scenes from some of my favorite movie musicals.
Enjoy!
Few things are more comforting on a lazy summer morning than the sound of Tom Petty delivering a lighthearted country ballad.
‘House of Stone’ is a deep cut from the self-titled 2008 debut album by Mudcrutch, a band Petty formed in 1970 as a teenager. They played live gigs in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida, up through southern Georgia, but disbanded a few years later without recording an album. Petty and some Mudcrutch members went on to form the Heartbreakers and the rest is history.
Shockingly, this is the first Beastie Boys song featured on this blog in the 13 years I’ve been posting daily. Not that I’m a big fan or anything, but it’s hard to believe they haven’t popped up on a Random Weekend before now, or that I didn’t find room for one of their hits.
The band’s 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, was certainly a hit. It sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and became the first rap album in history to reach #1 on the Billboard 200. The first rap single to reach #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 was Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby,’ meaning white dudes own both of those milestones. Go figure.
A few weeks back, when I started rolling out blog posts on new music releases, one of the first albums I featured was Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club. I was happy to have a new album by one of my favorite artists.
Well, it looks like I’m going to get another one. Since I posted that song, Del Rey dropped three new songs online and said they are from an upcoming album titled Blue Bannisters that will likely drop in July. This is some Taylor Swift folklore/evermore-level shit.
I got a nice surprise in my inbox the other day when a Ticketmaster email delivered the news that Toad the Wet Sprocket would be playing a show in Fort Lauderdale this October.
I quickly snatched up the general admission tickets for me and my wife, and we chuckled at the thought of packing together with a bunch of other aging Gen-Xers to watch one of our favorite 90s bands.
Meet Me In Montauk 