Bob Dylan is back this month with Rough and Rowdy Ways, his first collection of original material in eight years. I’ve listened to it just once so far, enough to know it’s a very strong collection.
Perhaps in honor of that new release, the Random iTunes Fairy decided to dip back into Dylan’s previous album, 2017’s Triplicate, a three-disc tour through the Great American Songbook, and Dylan’s third straight album spent covering standards.
I love when the Random iTunes Fairy dials up a song I’m sure I must have featured on the blog before, a song I truly love, and it turns out I’ve never written about it.
‘We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)’ is the sixth song I’ve featured from Peter Gabriel’s excellent 1986 album, So, an album that has only nine songs in total. It’s a largely instrumental cut but for some background chanting of the title phrase and a brief outro by Gabriel.
While Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre were honing the West Coast sound over in Los Angeles, the Wu-Tang Clan pioneered a hardcore rap sound that led to the East Coast Renaissance. Artists such as Nas, Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. drew inspiration from their work.
Wu-Tang’s debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), was produced by band leader RZA, who mashed up clips from kung-fu movies, old soul tracks, and dirty drum beats, creating a street-smart soundscape over which the band’s nine members could spit their rhymes.
These Decades weeks usually offer one of three kinds of artists. You have the big names that I just never got into (see Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana), the artists I’ve heard of but never really heard (see Kate Bush), and then my favorite: the ones who are completely new to me.
The third group, in turn, breaks down into two more groups. The ones I was just as well never hearing, and the ones I really like.
Kirsty MacColl is the latter.
I strive to appreciate music and movies across many different genres, but everything has its limits. I can name a dozen or so horror films I really love, for example, but most turn me off completely.
When it comes to music, I’ve always had blind spots for heavy metal and rap. Rap is like horror, where I can pick and choose the bright spots. But metal is a non-starter. That displeasure extends to metal’s gentler cousin, grunge, which is one reason I’m a little out of step with the music of the early 90s.
Meet Me In Montauk 