Sara's a gem. Her version of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is better than Elton John's in my book. I could take it or leave, it whatever, but hers gave me chills and I felt like I finally understood the song. Of course, now I've oversold it but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozd2ja7mAgM She also made an appearances earlier this year on Anderson Cooper's grief podcast, "All
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I'll be intentionally vague to avoid even mild spoilers, but I love the shift in perspective when the guy wades out and finds the message, which makes him realize that the other guy's fandom isn't about him or how amazing he is, but is really about something deeper and more enduring.
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I really enjoy Carney's films and love that every one of them is about music, or at least explores music as a catalyst for human relationships. I remember watching Begin Again and enjoying it, but have no memory of the specifics. Time for a re-watch, I guess. Oddly, the only one of his films I haven't seen is Once! I plan to remedy that soon. My favorite of his is Sing Street. It's a shame
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Don't forget Dare's "Out of the Silence" and John Waite's "Temple Bar". I like Mike Shipley and was sad to hear he had passed, compounded by the manner of it. Didn't know he was Australian until recently. Yes, Mutt cast a long shadow over his career, but that's the double-edged sword that gave him prominence and opportunity while also confining him within a certain soun
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A classy lady and national treasure. Godspeed.
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Huh. Never heard of it over here. Don't need plot details, just give me an idea - what's the vibe? What do you like about it.
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Widow's Bay is a rollicking good time (has a whopping 19 Emmy nominations, not that I place a ton of credence on that). Deftly blends horror and comedy. Check it out. There's others, but I've forgotten.
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I'm a sucker for the Lep sound, and high-tech melodic rock in general (Stage Doll's "Get a Life", etc), but oof, this is just abysmal to my ears. It's such a watered-down copy of a copy that terms like "derivative" don't begin to cover it. There isn't a shred of anything original, fresh, or creative in there. It's retro dinosaur music done badly. Like Peter, I'm puzzle
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I hear ya, but I think it's all down to execution. If you're super on the nose, like Bryan Adams' latest track basically calling out Trump's rhetoric, it gets old fast. But if you're more nuanced and are diving into, say, how challenging today's world is, that could work (e.g., Suicide Life from 30 years ago has a social consciousness). So I hope he means "almost political" in a broa
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After reading the Bad English thread below, I googled John Waite just to see if he was up to anything. Turns out, he's releasing his first album of new material in 15 years this September - at age 73! There's still not a ton of info out there other than the title, but I did find some interview bits: “Maybe I’m making up for lost time,” he said. “I want to leave something that’s somet
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I dove into Andrew's four interviews with Waite and just kinda compiled what he had to say about Bad English and his relationship to the band members. It seems like he didn't want to do the commercial arena rock thing, preferring... he doesn't mention a style, but I guess darker, moodier, more "honest" music? But I feel like he's an unreliable narrator because he's the one bringing
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Terrible news... love Hansard. P.S. This got me thinking about Once, which in turn led me to Sing Street from the same director. Underwatched gem, and probably my favorite of John Carney's films: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sing_street
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So I went back to Andrew's interview with Ricky Phillips, which I vaguely remembered from the late 90s and, interestingly, he portrays it as Waite & Cain trying to dominate the direction for the rest of the group, which caused a split with Schon and the others. But then Waite and Cain seem to have had their own power struggle? Either way, it was about clashing visions. And he does bring u
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I thought it was the opposite - that Waite was bringing in outside writers like his friend Diane Warren to do syrupy ballads (e.g., the worst track on Backlash in my book is The Time Alone With You) while the rest of the band wanted to participate more and have more energetic tracks. Is that not right? I really like Waite, but he has always struck me as a bit of a prima donna. Pretty set in hi
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Wow, thanks for the awesome intel! I was raised in Mexico City from the age of two and think of myself as Mexican (lived there for 28 years), but it's harder to stay connected to all the goings-on when you mostly go back for family visits and such. Will definitely check out El Club de Rock n Roll when I return this fall, and will check out La Barranca too. Familiar with Santa Sabina, of
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Patrick Willems has an excellent hour-long video essay on this very question and goes through the entire history of the music video to now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQB2mvUvROw
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Just gave three songs a spin after reading the praise here and am pleasantly surprised they're still churning out good material, in their 80s, no less. Haven't been back home to Mexico City in a bit but visiting again soon - they still got Mixup? Cause after Tower Records, et al disappeared, I think that was about it (other than a handful of minor indie shops like Roma Records).
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Hey mate - Not going to do a point by point retort here. I'm honestly a little bored now and we'll surely bore everyone else past the initial layers of discussion (if we haven't already). I could source my figures for you, etc, but it's clear to me that much of our disagreement is ideological in nature. If you believe that saying Amazon should pay some tax, as opposed to the zero they pay
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Cheers - treat yourself to a cookie for reading all that. And maybe treat yourself to Disclosure Day too, I hear it may cheer you up...
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Brutal and very sad. Glad he has family looking after him... hoping he gets the care he needs in this chapter of his life.
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You're going to quibble with IRS figures, mate? Sure, some years it's 38, others it's 42, but the most recent figure is 40%. By all means, don't read my long-ass shit - I sure don't blame anyone whose eyes glazed over! Long-winded and off-topic as hell. But the whole point was demostrating why using that statistic to defend the status quo is misleading bullshit, so my response to simply repea
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Disagree with your premise. It assumes the issue is binary: either we do corporate welfare and socialism for the rich via government capture or we lose all investment and crash our economy. This is the narrative that oligarchs and corporations who enjoy the status quo bring up out of self-interest, but there is a world of daylight between those two states. For the record, I am not an anti
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Damn it all, I have a busy week and was trying to avoid posting in Adolfo's thread below, but there's simply too much bullshit in it at this point and I can't resist. I'm not going to bother typing a bunch for it to sink to the bottom, so I'm starting a new post. You may want to grab a drink. Don't have time for a TLDR rant? Fair enough! It's sad when you're being robbed blind, but downrig
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Hmm. I had written this off entirely after listening to the previews (as evidenced by my post a few weeks ago), but I guess I should give it a chance after all... I find that my musical tastes often overlap with Thinny's, and I have a sense that Rocknut's not the sort to just like any old thing (I was gonna say "hard to please", but that sounds negative), so I'll give this a fair shot a
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Thanks for this! I always appreciate your retrospectives on overlooked gems and today's served as a reminder that I don't really know The Outfield all that well despite really liking them. I basically just had two albums, the big one, Play Deep, and Rockeye, which I bought by happenstance at a used record store in the early aughts. But everything else is wide open for me. Checking out VOB righ
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So Keith Urban has a new album out next month, "Flow State", and it's, um, yacht rock. Make that yacht rock covers with one original track. I generally applaud experimentation, even when it's a well-intentioned failure, and unlike some of you, I was okay with some of Keith's electronic country rock fusions. But these snoozers are so devoid of any catchiness, tension, or hooks that I
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Bryan Cole. Vaguely recall when he released a solo album I never heard.
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Okay, I got my hands on the Mushroom version and did a side-by-side listen. I was wrong and Machinehead was right - the Geffen mix is superior. However, I still like the musical choices/instrumentation from the original more. So the choice is to either listen to the superior mix or lose the little details and instruments that I prefer.
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It's odd to realize that for decades, you've been discussing an album with other people who you think have the exact same album, but in a sense, it's not - and I'm not talking about the mix. Just all these little details I'm catching, like the high guitar wail just before the first chorus of Do or Die that's just not there in my version. I'll have a closer listen to the whole thing when I get
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I bought Freight Train Heart on CD eons ago. I've spun the tracks a lot over the years and am really familiar with them. I like owning things, doing my own edits, etc, so I mostly use Spotify to discover new artists/bands. But I was out just now and decided to play the album on a whim. I first noticed is that the order was a little different (e.g., Lessons in Love was track 9 here instead of #
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