Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 10/10: Marvin Gaye, “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby”
This was Marvin Gaye’s follow-up single to his No. 1 smash “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and like that song it was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong — but not for that purpose. The tune was first released on a 1966 Temptation album, but was never released as a single. Whitfield retooled it […]
DL Open Thread Sunday, October 10, 2021
Sit down for this one: Donald Trump lied about how much money his DC hotel brought in. It ran in the red, of course — this is a guy who figured out how to lose money running casinos — and lost $70 million, despite L’il Donnie Two Scoops accepting $3.7 million from foreign governments. This […]
Song of the Day 10/9: Alan Kalter, “Send in the Clowns” [Updated]
OK, I can take a hint. Until I play some Sondheim I won’t be forgiven for polluting the blog with Andrew Lloyd Webber. So, in the spirit of El Som’s “stealth Sondheim,” here’s his best-known tune performed by someone you wouldn’t expect — Alan Kalter, the announcer on David Letterman’s late-night show for 20 years, […]
Song of the Day 10/8: Laurie Anderson, “Language Is a Virus”
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington wanted to mount a Laurie Anderson career retrospective. She wasn’t interested, but she agreed to put together a new multi-media show instead. So through next July 31, you can see “The Weather,” billed as her largest-ever U.S. installation. The Hirshhorn is part of the Smithsonian, so admission […]
Song of the Day 10/7: Edwin Starr, “25 Miles”
Speaking from experience, I think this is a metaphor. I think they were days, not miles, and it wasn’t his feet that were hurting so bad. This 1968 release was Edwin Starr’s first hit for Motown, reaching No. 6, after Berry Gordy bought the Ric-Tic label and all its artists’ contracts. He had a much […]
DL Open Thread Thursday, October 7, 2021
If you’re paying close attention to the latest Debt Limit Ceiling Crisis, well, I pity you — you’re an all-day sucker. Last I checked Republicans were offering to move the standoff to December, but frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck. It will happen or it won’t, and nothing you or I do will make […]
Song of the Day 10/5: Eddy Grant, “Electric Avenue”
Has anybody in history lost in court more often than Donald Trump? He was at it again last week, when a judge ruled against his effort to dismiss a lawsuit brought against him by Guyanese-British singer-songwriter Eddy Grant over Trump’s use of “Electric Avenue” in a campaign ad. Such cases typically get settled, usually with […]
Song of the Day 10/4: Happy Mondays, “Step On”
I think Jason requested some Happy Mondays, so here’s the band’s biggest hit, from 1990’s “Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches,” considered one of the landmark albums of the Madchester scene of the late ’80s/early ’90s. For those who’ve forgotten, those were the days of rave culture, which began in Chicago but quickly spread, establishing its […]
Song of the Day 10/3: Elaine Paige, “Memory”
Stephanie Grisham’s tell-all tome about her time in the Trump White House contains lots of anecdotes that would be dismissed out of hand if they were about anyone other than Trump. They usually contain more than a kernel of truth, of course — for example, nobody doubts that Trump would go into towering rage tantrums. […]
DL Open Thread Sunday, October 3, 2021
My theory about why conservatives behave the way they do — they’re inferior and they know it — isn’t original to me. Angie Maxwell, an academic at the University of Arkansas, wrote an entire book about it, “The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness,” and explained in an interview how […]
Song of the Day 10/1: Gilbert O’Sullivan, “Alone Again (Naturally)”
I mentioned this song yesterday, comparing its opening verse to Paul Westerberg’s original version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” because the protagonists of both songs start their soliloquies by announcing they’re going to throw themselves off a tower. Sadly, Westerberg’s paean to despair never enjoyed the kind of commercial success that Raymond Edward “Gilbert” O’Sullivan achieved […]
Song of the Day 9/30: The Replacements, “Can’t Hardly Wait”
Listening back to the Replacements, which I do fairly frequently, I’m struck by how far out of their way the band had to go to prevent Paul Westerberg’s punchy, melodic songs from becoming hits. Years of drunken performances and other self-sabotaging behavior — indie cred in those days required not just indifference toward but active […]
DL Open Thread Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021
Are the media invested in ending American democracy? Sure seems that way to a lot of people, including Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, who’s hopping mad that the Eastman memo, laying out how Mike Pence could have thrown the election to Trump on Jan. 6, has gotten almost no attention from the mainstream media. […]
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