Category: Music

Check out this awesome news clip about the Sex Pistols from NBC’s Today Show. It was filmed on or around January 5, 1978 in Atlanta… the date of the Pistols first show on their American tour. The sarcasm of the reporters is absolutely stunning; you’d never see reporting this slanted in the news today. The clip is pretty long (7:28), but it’s worth it, I swear!

A couple of other points:

1) This show happened just over 30 years ago. In fact, had I posted this just three days ago, I would have hit the anniversary exactly.

2) Access Atlanta has a cool write up about the show here.

3) The linked article quotes Atlanta music legend Jeff Calder. Jeff owns Wax N Facts Records in Little 5 Points and is also in the legendary Atlanta band Swimming Pool Qs. I gave Jeff lots of money when I was a young hipster.

4) Jeff is also working with my MySpace buddy Lisa King on her new music CD. You can visit Lisa’s band’s site by clicking here.

5) I got the link for the video (which spawned everything you’ve read in this post) from this site… which is written by a guy that hosts a show on WREK and lives in… Duluth, Georgia. The world really is a small place.

6) James Bolton was right… Jane Pauley was hot back in the day.

Ladies and gentlemen… Conway Twitty!

You remember Shane McGowan, right? Lead singer of The Pogues… sings that “Fairytale of New York” tune which is quite popular this time of year… one of Kate Moss’ good friends? You know – THAT guy? We always knew he was a drunk and not very attractive to begin with, but MY GOD has this man gone downhill or what?

And what’s with his teeth?

Shiver.

British singer Kirsty MacColl died seven years ago today. Some say she died in a tragic accident; others say that she was murdered. Read the section on her death at Wikipedia and decide for yourself.

In any case, the world lost an incredible talent that day. MacColl’s hits included the rockabilly romp “There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”, the 60s inspired “They Don’t Know” (made popular in the U.S by Tracey Ullman’s cover), her enchanting cover of Billy Bragg’s “A New England”, and, of course, her single “Fairytale of New York” with The Pogues – which has topped VH-1 UK’s “Greatest Christmas Song” chart three years in a row. The song also came in at number 1 in The Hits “The Nations Favourite Christmas Song” countdown in the UK, number 11 in Channel 4’s “100 Greatest Christmas Moments”, Number 27 on VH-1 UK’s “Greatest Songs Never To Make Number One”, number 23 on VH-1 UK’s “Greatest Lyrics” list, Number 83 in Q Magazines “100 Greatest Ever Songs”, and number 84 on BBC Radio 2’s “Top 100 Greatest Songs of All Time” poll.

You are missed, Kirsty!

“You never forget your first time”… or so the old saying goes. There was a thread in the DVD Talk forums the other day asking readers what their first album and\or CD purchase was. I took the topic and ran with it – here’s my response:

My first single: “King Tut” by Steve Martin. Yep – there’s no accounting for taste sometimes.

My first 8-track: Crusin’ by the Village People. I probably got it in 1977, when I was 6. My mom had a ’77 Lincoln, and the car was still pretty new when I got the tape, so that’s how I date it. Anyway, I was blissfully unaware of the whole “gay” thing. I just thought it was fun, poppy music. And if you think about it, to a six year old, there really isn’t much of a difference, on an intellectual level, between Barney and the Village People.

My first album: Duran Duran by Duran Duran. Interestingly, the band was almost completely unknown in the US at the time – late December of 1981. I was almost 11 years old back then. I went to an Atlanta-area mall with my grandmother so she could return\exchange some unwanted Christmas presents. There was a Record Bar store next door to the Piccadilly Cafeteria where we had dinner, and I talked her in to letting me go in. I looked around for a few minutes and found a British copy of Duran Duran’s first album – the original first album, mind you, not the 1983 U.S. re-release – in the bargain bin for $5.99. It looked cool, and I begged her to buy it for me. She did, and my love affair with Brit New Wave was born.

My first cassette: I have no idea, although two K-Tel cassettes stick out as being possible “firsts”: Hooked on Classics and some K-Tel’s Best of 1981 tape with Sheena Easton (“Morning Train”), Melissa Manchester (“You Should Hear How She Talks About You”… uuuugh!) and Steel Breeze (“You Don’t Want Me Anymore”). I honestly don’t remember cassettes that well, because: a) I went through them like tap water (I know I had at least 4 copies of Never Mind The Bullocks on cassette) and b) some neighborhood kid stole all my tapes back in 1983. Actually, if blank tapes count, then my first tape might have been blank. My Dad bought a cassette recorder, and I got my Mom to buy me some blank tapes. I made some fake radio shows, took the recorder into the woods to record nature sounds… and eventually hooked it up as a storage device for my Apple ][ computer. Saving computer programs to cassette tape? God, I’m old!

My first 12″ Single: “Rio” by Duran Duran. This one’s kind of funny, actually. I had no idea that 12″ singles even existed, so one day I walked into my local Turtles Record Store (damn, I am old!) and saw this mysterious British record. It was large, like an album, but it only seemed to have 3 songs on it. And one of them was almost 6 minutes long! What the hell? Was this some new Duran Duran album? Did the British version of the Rio album only have 3 songs on it? If so, why did the American version have 9 songs? And why did the American album have a nice cardboard sleeve while this one had a cheap paper sleeve? Wait – the songs are played at 45rpm? Why was this record only $3.99? It just didn’t make any sense at all! I ended up buying it – my extreme confusion notwithstanding. I soon became friends with a guy named Don who had just opened “Skip’s Records” in a nearby strip mall. He explained that 12″ singles were played by DJs at nightclubs and they had these versions of songs called “remixes” on them. He also explained that although his name was Don, his Dad had fronted the money for the record store and his name was Skip, hence “Skip’s Records”. Don was a helpful guy.

My first CD: it’s kind of hard to say. I got a CD player from my parents for Christmas in 1985, and my uncle and grandparents got me CDs of Duran Duran, Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger as presents so I’d have something to play on it. So those were my first discs… but I think The Cure’s Staring at the Sea was the first CD I actually bought myself. Wait… Staring at the Sea was the CD, right? And Standing On a Beach was the cassette? Or was it the other way ’round? Bah – stupid Cure making things all difficult!

And while we’re at it:

My first concert: My parents took me to see The Beach Boys at Lanierland Music Park in the late summer of 1983. It wasn’t my choice, but it ended up being kind of cool ‘cos Dennis Wilson died a few months later. The first concert I actually chose to go to was Men At Work, also in 1983, at the old Omni in Atlanta. I still have the ticket stub – it was only $11.50 per ticket! I remember being miserable before the show because I was going to get braces in a week or two and so the orthodontist had put spacers in my mouth earlier that day. I remember my mom taking me to some fast food place at the Omni International before the show. I remember almost crying while eating ‘cos my mouth hurt so bad! But as soon as “the Men” came on stage, it was all forgotten! What a great show that was!

Ahhhhh… good times!

OK, between The Last Town Chorus, Mazzy Star and Carla Bruni, you might think that all I ever listen to is mellow music sung by waify chicks. I assure you that that’s not the case… but I did want to turn you on to this tune. It’s a cover of Sting’s “Fields of Gold” by Eva Cassidy.

Eva Cassidy was born in Washington D.C. on February 2, 1963. Although she could sing just about anything – her repertoire included jazz, blues, folk, gospel and pop – Eva had a hard time getting noticed outside the Washington D.C. area. Her first band was called Easy Street, and they performed mainly at weddings, corporate parties and area pubs. She then got a singing gig at Wild World (Six Flags) in Maryland, then went on to sing in D.C.-area bands such as The Honeybees and Characters Without Names (later called Method Actor). During most of the 80s, Eva had to work side jobs to pay the bills, such as being a plant propagator at a nursery and as a furniture painter in Maryland.

Eva’s luck began to change in 1992. D.C. jazz legend Chuck Brown got a hold of a cassette tape of Eva singing and was enchanted. This quickly led to Eva doing a duet album with Brown, and record companies began scrambling to sign her up. Sadly (for us), all these labels wanted to whittle Eva down to a single genre, something she flat-out refused to do. So she recorded a single here, a duet there until January 1996, when she recorded Live at Blues Alley. Eva wasn’t happy with the album, as she had a cold the night the album was recorded.

Sadly, she wouldn’t have time to record much more: in July of 1996, she noticed a pain in her hip, which she attributed to the awkward stances she had to take whilst painting some murals. When the pain didn’t go away and, in fact, got worse, she went to her doctor, who diagnosed her with melanoma. She would be dead in 4 months time. At her final performance in September 1996, Eva took the stage with the aid of a walker, sang “What A Wonderful World”, and was then taken to Johns Hopkins, which she never left. She died on November 2, 1996.

Knowing that makes her version of “Fields of Gold” just that much sadder. It’s a haunting thing, and it exemplifies what was best about Eva Cassidy: the ability to cut through the treacle and get to the heart of a song. If you hate “melismatic masturbation” – the annoying tendency of singers like Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera to run up and down the scales simply because they can – then you’ll love Eva Cassidy. Her music is, in fact, the exact opposite of that. Have a listen:

[audio:fieldsofgold.mp3]

Eva’s posthumous career has been huge in the UK. In 2001, the compilation album Songbird  (from which “Fields of Gold” is taken) reached #1 after the BBC show Top Of The Pops 2 aired a video of Eva performing “Over The Rainbow” at Blues Alley. “Over The Rainbow” became the most requested video ever shown of Top Of The Pops 2 despite the fact it was just a homemade video made by someone in the audience. A book about Eva’s life – also called Songbird – sold over 100,000 copies in the UK. And, in 2003, another compilation album called American Tune became Eva’s third consecutive posthumous #1 album in the UK – a feat that even Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix couldn’t do.

God bless, Eva. Your beautiful voice haunts us still!

Growing up in the 80s, I was a fan of David Bowie. This was due, in large part, to the hits of his “Let’s Dance” album: “China Girl”, “Let’s Dance”, and (of course) “Modern Love”. This past summer, one of the cable networks – A&E, I think – did a retrospective on Princess Diana on the 10-year anniversary of her death. The commercials advertising the special featured a lot of slow-motion video of Diana with a haunting version of “Modern Love” playing in the background. I did a little Internet digging and found out that the band that did the song is called The Last Town Chorus, from Brooklyn, New York. With a little more digging I was able to find the song itself, which I’ll share with you in this post.

The only consistent member of the band is vocalist\steel guitarist Megan Hickey. Like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Hickey seems to play with all kinds of musicians under the “Last Town Chorus” moniker. But that’s neither here nor there. Hickey takes Bowie’s pop-dance tune and turns in into a slow, atmospheric tune. It’s almost as if Mazzy Star covered the song… but not quite. It’s hardly a “happy” take on the song, but although it’s “slow” that doesn’t mean that it’s “sad” either. Just slow and pretty! Have a listen and decide for yourself:

[audio:last_town.mp3]