Every movie has a soundtrack. And let’s be honest – most of them are as unmemorable as … well, as the movies themselves. At its best, though, the music captures the spiritual essence of the auteur‘s vision, interacting with the film in ways that are simply transcendent. One plus one equals infinity, and it’s impossible to ever conceive of song
Read moreSweet hell, what was I thinking when I came up with this entry I mean, it isn’t that I can’t think of songs, it’s just that there are several people I consider best friends: people who have been close to me at various points in my life, people I have relied on, shared good times, survived the bad. People whose
Read moreI imagine most of us have loved. And lost. I also imagine that most of us look back, on occasion, and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Some years ago I made what I still regard as the worst mistake of my life. When it went to hell it didn’t destroy the whole world, it didn’t leave me any
Read moreIn a way, this is kind of a trick question. If you’re doing it right, a song doesn’t last nearly long enough. So when I was creating 30-Day Song Challenge, the Sequel, maybe I should have designated day 13 for your favorite make-out album. In any case, this may be the single easiest day of either the original challenge or
Read moreIf you’ve been following the series, you may have noticed that instead of simply offering up a song that fits the criteria (“a song you love from the ’00s”), I’m trying to write about songs that are in some way definitive. Maybe it was something that typified a dominant movement, or perhaps it was a tune that marked an important
Read moreFor a long time – basically, from the British Invasion through the end of the ’80s – there was a great deal of shared history between the rock of America and the UK. What was happening on one side of the pond made its way in short order to the other side, and this was generally a good thing. But
Read moreI’ve always thought that Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” was just about as perfect a pop song as it is possible to write. The story captivates. The tune itself is so intuitive that it feels like it has been inside me my whole life, waiting for an artist to set it free. As for the performance and production,
Read moreI remember a conversation with an old girlfriend back in the late 1990s. We were talking about the sounds of the times, I guess you’d say, and I commented that the decade had been dominated by a lot of pretty rebellious music. Grunge, Punk, Industrial – everybody was well and truly pissed off, it seemed. The music of my youth
Read moreI’ve never much cared for the musical genre broadly known as Americana, and lately I’ve been thinking about why this is. I suppose it’s acceptable to say hey, I’ve listened to a lot of these artists and most of them just kinda bore me, but that seems unsatisfactory for a guy who thinks about music like I do. After some
Read moreI know I threatened yesterday to play some more Sam Cooke for my 1960s entry, but I’m trying to spread the love around and prop as many great artists as I can, so how about some Van Morrison instead?
Read moreI’ve always been convinced that the greatest R&B singer who ever lived was Sam Cooke. I know, that’s a massive claim and there are plenty of Otis fans (and Aretha fans, and fans of many other incredible artists) who’ll argue the point. And hey, if they do, then I can take pride in the fact that I started a great
Read moreMy guess is that “Radar Love” is going to get a lot of love in this category, and it’s easy to understand why. Still, as I have explained before, I’m a simply country boy. So let’s see how many dueling lead guitarists Molly Hatchet can line up across the front of the stage for the solo to “Flirtin’ with Disaster.”
Read moreThe summer of 1986 has lodged itself in the pleasure centers of my brain, although a hard look at the details makes me wonder why. Yeah, I was working in what passed for a cool job for a kid who’d recently graduated from college (copy and production manager at a rock radio station, albeit one that paid me less than
Read moreYesterday’s song was tough, but today? This is easy. There are a lot of great sunny day songs out there, but I don’t know that anybody has ever quite captured the magic like Scot Sax. So dial up the smiles, folks – here’s Bachelor Number One and “I Am the Summertime.”
Read moreI didn’t realize how hard this one was going to be when I slotted it into the challenge. I just spent the last hour and a half sifting through my iTunes, playing, sampling, searching. Checking to see what was available on YouTube. Deciding, undeciding. So many choices – The Samples, Garbage, Queensryche, REM, Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, The Pinetops, on
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lullaby pit 