Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 10/10: Link Wray & His Ray Men, “Rumble”
In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, let’s put a dime in history’s jukebox to play the only instrumental ever banned by American radio stations. Link Wray, a Shawnee from North Carolina, changed rock guitar forever in 1958 when he strummed some power chords and poked a pencil through the speaker cone on his amp to […]
Song of the Day 10/7: Cab Calloway, “Have You Ever Met That Funny Reefer Man”
Cab Calloway recorded this in 1932, before cannabis was banned nationwide. Joe Biden didn’t undo that 1937 all by himself yesterday, but pardoning everyone convicted of simple possession is widely seen as a big step towards legalization. You can tell because stocks in marijuana companies went quite a bit higher.
Song of the Day 10/6: Sinéad O’Connor, “All Apologies”
With all the attention to mental health these days, it would seem like a perfect time for a critical re-evaluation of Sinéad O’Connor, whose public behavior had people calling her crazy when Britney Spears was still in the Mickey Mouse Club. “Nothing Compares,” the new documentary on O’Connor’s rise and fall, covers O’Connor’s early history, […]
Song of the Day 10/5: Loretta Lynn, “The Pill”
It’s hard for those born later to understand the profound change the oral contraceptive pill brought to society in 1960. Some Christian conservatives haven’t gotten over it yet. Loretta Lynn, who died yesterday at 90, was a conservative Christian, but in 1972 she recorded this paean to The Pill, and she sang from personal experience […]
Song of the Day 10/4: Jean-Luc Ponty, “New Country”
Maybe you recognize his name from his time playing with Frank Zappa and Elton John 50 years ago. Or maybe you heard him with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, or Chick Correa, or Bela Fleck, or on his LPs and gigs with Stanley Clarke and Al DiMeola. Jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty sure has gotten around, spreading […]
Song of the Day 10/1: Lizzo, “About Damn Time”
I have to admit that before this latest right-wing freak out I had very little idea of who Lizzo was. I heard her name enough to know she was famous, but what little I’d heard of her music didn’t make a deep impression. I like dance music just fine, but at my age I don’t […]
Song of the Day 9/30: The Zombies, “Time of the Season”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona You could say the Zombies saved their best song for the end. Actually, past the end. The British band had already broken up when “Time of the Season” came out in 1969. Nobody had paid much attention to the song or the few other tunes that been been released from […]
Song of the Day 9/29: Bob Dylan, “High Water (For Charley Patton)”
I know people in Naples, Fla. I feel even sorrier for them than usual today. Most blues songs about high water trace back to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, but Bob Dylan has contributed his share to the canon, from “Down in the Flood” on the Basement Tapes to this tune from 2001’s “Love […]
Song of the Day 9/28: Michael Martin Murphey, “Geronimo’s Cadillac”
As the link in today’s open thread illustrates, we never do right by native Americans, even though we’ve admitted the injustices for a long time now. For example, it was almost exactly 50 years ago when this title track and lead single from Michael Murphey’s debut LP reached the charts. Murphey wrote the song after […]
Song of the Day 9/27: The Beatles, “Back in the USSR”
One one level it’s just a parody of American exceptionalism as espoused by Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys. But it doesn’t seem so funny when Russia flexes its military muscle. At least that’s how some people felt when this appeared as the first track on the double-LP White Album, released in November 1968 — […]
Song of the Day 9/26: Paul McCartney, “My Brave Face”
Paul McCartney scored a couple of big hits in the ’80s with other artists, but his duets with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson weren’t musical collaborations. McCartney wrote “Ebony and Ivory” and asked Wonder to sing it with him. Jackson wrote “The Girl Is Mine.” In 1987 McCartney’s manager suggested he get together with Elvis […]
Song of the Day 9/25: The Righteous Brothers, “Unchained Melody”
According to its publisher, this song has been recorded more than 1,500 times by nearly 700 different artists. Most listeners agree that Bobby Hatfield of the Righteous Brothers sang the definitive version, and most people nowadays are familiar with the song recorded for a 1965 LP. That became a No. 4 hit despite starting out […]
Song of the Day 9/23: Modern English, “I Melt With You”
Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons to bail himself out of the war he needlessly started. That strikes me as similar to a man who’s freezing to death deciding to set himself on fire, but it has frightened a lot people. We’ll have to see if the sentiment adds to the stockpile of […]
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