I can’t post a Michael Penn song on this blog without bemoaning his prolonged absence from the music scene.
Today’s track is a bit of Beatles-esque filler from his most recent album, Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947. That record came out in 2005 — yes, eight years ago!
That’s not a hiatus… that’s retirement.
I don’t love everything Jack White does — he sometimes gets a bit too loud for my taste — but I nevertheless consider myself a fan.
He so clearly loves and respects musical tradition, from the blues rock that is his greatest influence to country, bluegrass and folk. He reminds me of Elvis Costello in that way. You have to dig a guy who names both Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan as inspirations and covers Burt Bacharach.
Last week I featured a band described by critics as “post-rock” and wondered what exactly that meant. Today I bring you a song by a band called Savages, who have been described as “post-punk.”
From what I can gather, post-punk is basically pretentious punk, or to put it less judgmentally, punk with a little more thought behind the art.
I occasionally look at YouTube’s list of most-watched video clips of all-time just to see where the country is headed.
Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ holds onto the crown, and has now been viewed more than 1.5 BILLION times. To top that off, an alternate version of the song performed with Korean pop star Hyuna now sits in the 20th spot with an additional 343 million views. That takes “one-hit wonder” into a new stratosphere.
My old pal Brad Paisley has been in the news a lot the past week or so, and not in a good way.
A track on his new album, Wheelhouse, called ‘Accidental Racist’ has been vilified as racist itself, or at the very least tone deaf about race relations.
The track, a duet between Paisley and rapper LL Cool J, is an imagined conversation between a “Skynrd fan” with a confederate flag on his T-shirt and a black Starbucks employee who (presumably on his off hours) wears a do-rag, sagging pants and gold chains.
Meet Me In Montauk 