This week, TV theme songs. Greatest American Hero I can’t really remember this show all that well, but I sure remember the song. The Littlest Hobo To meet my cancon requirements. [Also: another shower favourite] … for my international readers, Littlest Hobo was a Lassie-esque show about a dog that wandered around Southern Ontario, solved [...]
The eighties were a difficult time for the human race: so lost, so confused. This confusion came out in the music, in the dancing, in the haircuts, and most especially in the rock videos. But throughout those dark days, we were always learning new things, learning old things… learning to spell, for instance. This week, [...]
In the year 2000, I split up with my girlfriend, and was going to move to New York City in six months, for a new job. I was twenty-six, and I spent many evenings of those six months hanging out, and occasionally dancing into the wee hours at a bar called Blizzarts, owned by my [...]
Montreal jazz legend Oscar Peterson died this week. Oscar Peterson & Count Basie: Slow Blues (198? ?) Brilliant, as Oscar and the Count compete to see who can leave more space for the other genius to fill the room with music; and you have to love the spooning pianos. Oscar Peterson: Noreen’s Nocturne (1969) Oscar [...]
Kim Carnes: Bette Davis Eyes (1981) This one held up pretty well, I’d say. Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks): Dreams (1977) From the incomparable Stevie Nicks. (Ike &) Tina Turner: Medley (1966?) This must have just blown the socks off of the kids in this studio. Tina got more gravelly, and more divaish in later life, [...]
Whatever you want to say about the sixties, looking back it was a time of the kind of change I don’t think we’ve seen since. All that came before was called into question, and things that came after were different on a scale that has not been approached again. Sometime around 1980, we went into [...]
This week, in celebration of the launch of earideas.com, (and the earideas audio challenge) songs about lifting off. Peter Schilling: Major Tom (1983) So of course the real song to put here is Bowie’s Space Oddity, where Major Tom first made his appearance. But the Schilling reinterpretation was a big favourite of mine as a [...]
Some of the great tracks from the kid’s show. NOTE: I just put up fridaymixedtape.com … for those of you who don’t want to have to wade through the rest of my yammering, and just want pure music video goodness. Sesame Street: Lowercase N If I had a rock band, I would cover this song [...]
Bring on the funk. Stevie Wonder: Superstition (1972) One of the best openings in rock n roll. (And check out Stevie playing this tune on Sesame Street) Curtis Mayfield: Freddie’s Dead (1972) A very jazzed out version of Freddie’s Dead from the all-Mayfield soundtrack to the blacksploitation classic, Superfly. James Brown: Get Up (I Feel [...]
Some tunes about books. The Cure: Killing an Arab (1979/80) Amazing footage of the pre-make-up-and-crazy-hair Cure, in an intimate live show, singing a raw and moving version of the tune, based on Albert Camus’ existential/absurdist book, L’Etranger (the Stranger). This song is not an anti-arab song, it’s a song about Camus’ Mersault, a young pied [...]