Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 6/9: Billy Preston, “That’s the Way God Planned It”
This song, one of the best fusions of rock and gospel ever written, became famous from Preston’s roof-raising performance at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, but the original album release in 1969 deserves some love, too, considering the all-star band that backs him on the recording. Preston met the Beatles during the band’s […]
Song of the Day 6/7: Dr. John, “Iko Iko” and “Such a Night” in SCTV’s “Polynesiantown”
In all his long career, through his more than two dozen albums and endless session work, Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack Jr., who died Thursday at 77, made his strongest public impression in the early ’70s as Dr. John the Night Tripper, a voodoo-inspired New Orleans pianist and singer (he took up piano after a bullet […]
Song of the Day 6/6: Weezer ft. Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
Weezer is finding new life as a cover band for iconic songs of the ’80s. They hit the charts with their recording of Toto’s “Africa” and released a whole LP of covers, “The Teal Album,” in January (to vicious reviews from some critics who either didn’t get or didn’t like the joke), including a nearly […]
Song of the Day 6/5: XTC, “King for a Day”
While Donald Trump is in England having monarch envy, the lads of XTC had his sort pegged back in the Thatcher era. “King for a Day,” which appears on the band’s 1989 album “Oranges and Lemons, was written and sung by bassist Colin Moulding, the less prolific of the band’s two songwriters (guitarist Andy Partridge […]
Song of the Day 6/4: The Kinks, “Sunny Afternoon”
The Kinks had a string of hits during the original British Invasion that became instant garage-rock classics. “Sunny Afternoon,” released in the summer of 1966, continued Ray Davies’ move toward more sophisticated music and socially conscious lyrics that had begun with “Well Respected Man” the year before. It also demonstrated his strong music-hall leanings. Davies […]
Song of the Day 6/3: 13th Floor Elevators, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Roky Erickson, one of rock’s most famous burnout cases, died Friday in Texas. Erickson’s 13th Floor Elevators, formed when he was still a teenager, pioneered psychedelic rock (and championed psychedelics) until Erickson had a psychotic break and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He was institutionalized for three years and subjected to electroshock therapy, breaking up the […]
Democratic Party = Morons Inc.
The most depressing aspect of watching the slow-motion self-pwning of the Democratic Party is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s plenty of data out there to show that all those gut feelings about running to the center is a strategy that no longer works. The most convincing, if the hardest to understand, […]
Song of the Day 6/2: Charles Bradley, “Lucifer”
Two posthumous singles by the late Charles Bradley, the Screaming Eagle of Soul, have been released in the past month. They were recorded in late 2016, shortly after Bradley learned he had stomach cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. He died less than a year later. Bradley, who had little education, usually wrote by ad-libbing vocals […]
Song of the Day 6/1: Paul Simon, “Mother and Child Reunion”
Ever since “Graceland” Paul Simon has been scorned over his penchant for what’s now called cultural appropriation. But time was he wasn’t universally condemned for traveling abroad to tap into foreign musical traditions. Back in the day musicians celebrated the broader exposure. “Mother and Child Reunion,” for example, helped introduce reggae to a broad U.S. […]
Why Chasing Lost Democrats Is a Fool’s Errand
Simply put, because that’s not where the votes are. Those voters tend to be older, a pool shrinking faster than the Aral Sea. Pew Research Center has released a report that found younger generations outvoted Boomers again in 2018, after doing so for the first time in 2016. Those younger voters were also the reason […]
Song of the Day 5/31: Leon Redbone, “Diddy Wah Diddy”
Leon Redbone died Thursday. As best anyone could tell, he was 69. Most people first saw him on TV in the mid-’70s, maybe on Saturday Night Live or the Tonight Show. He usually came on with the briefest of introductions, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by, say, a single clarinet, a droll, mysterious man out of […]
Song of the Day 5/30: Wilson Pickett, “Hey Jude”
This is not only one of the best R&B covers of a pop song you’ll ever hear, the guitar by Duane Allman is credited with giving birth to the entire Southern Rock genre. Wilson Pickett recorded it at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, where Allman was working as a session guitarist. It was Allman who […]
Song of the Day 5/29: The Isley Brothers, “Summer Breeze”
Used to be that R&B acts would cover mainstream pop hits routinely, often improving them in the process. You can’t find a better example than what the Isley Brothers did with this Seals and Crofts hit. They slowed it from mid-tempo to ballad, dressed it in Ron Isley’s passionate vocals and Ernie’s expressive electric guitar […]
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