My workplace has been crazier than usual the past several weeks. Major projects are launching, the news has been particularly active and I recently received a promotion.
But as my professional life improves, my blog writing suffers. I bet if this blog didn’t have a built-in daily deadline, I would have let it slide long ago. It would look like so many blogs out there, suspended in time on some random date like a town abandoned after a zombie apocalypse.
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.
