Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 5/7: Spirit, “Nature’s Way”
While the ongoing destruction of the American republic dominates the news, the ongoing destruction of the Earth’s ecosystem struggles for attention, as evidenced by last week’s UN report that one million species are at risk of extinction, which hit the news cycle and sank like a cinder block. We’ve can’t even claim ignorance. We’ve known […]
Song of the Day 5/6: Chicago Transit Authority, “I’m a Man”
Chicago Transit Authority, or Chicago as the band became known after the real CTA threatened a lawsuit, is remembered mostly as a soft-rock purveyor of sappy adult-contemporary material, because that’s all the band had left after the death of guitarist Terry Kath in 1978. On their early albums, Kath’s searing guitar gave Chicago a hard-rock […]
Song of the Day 5/5: Trout Fishing in America, “Pico de Gallo”
I chose this song for today because it mentions Cinco de Mayo, but I was just looking for an excuse. I’ve loved it ever since I heard it on WXPN’s “Kids’ Corner” in the early ’90s — not just for its humor, which I appreciated after listening to years of uninspired kids’ music, but because […]
Song of the Day 5/4: Pete Seeger, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”
H/t to RE Vanella, who pointed out that yesterday would have been Pete Seeger’s 100th birthday. In addition to playing a key role in the 20th century folk music revival, the Seeger composition that has aged best is his adaptation of a passage in Ecclesiastes set to a simple, plaintive melody. Most of Seeger’s overtly […]
Song of the Day 5/3: Johnny Winter And, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”
Everybody knows the various Rick Derringer versions of his rock standard, but its first appearance on vinyl (that’s all we had back then, kids) came on “Johnny Winter And,” the original name of which was “Johnny Winter and the McCoys,” the band Derringer (then Rick Zehringer, his birth name) fronted in its “Hang on Sloopy” […]
Song of the Day 5/2: Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth/Mr. Soul”
Back in the ’60s it took a long time for the older generation to realize that rock and roll was, as the saying goes, here to stay. As late as 1967, when this “Hollywood Palace” show was recorded, TV was still treating the new music as a passing fad. Those crazy kids with their shaggy […]
Song of the Day 5/1: The Hold Steady, “Sequestered in Memphis”
In El Somnambulo’s roundup of his favorite tunes from April, he wondered if Craig Finn was the Raymond Carver of songwriters. I’m not sure about that. I might go with John Samson of the Weakerthans for that sobriquet. He’s an actual professor of English Lit and writes the kind of lyrics that come from slightly […]
Song of the Day 4/30: The Click Five, “Just the Girl”
The Click Five was a power pop band founded in the mid-aughts in Boston, where most of them attended the Berklee School of Music. They scored a hit right out of the box with this tune penned by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. Power pop isn’t a cool genre to begin with, but the […]
Song of the Day 4/29: Wildwood Kin, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution”
I love covers that expand the original. I love harmonizing girl groups. And I love Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” as deconstructed and re-imagined by British indie folk-pop trio Wildwood Kin. They really are kin — sisters Beth and Emillie Key and their cousin Meghann Loney. Most of their material is original, and normally […]
This, Exactly
David Akadjian’s post at Daily Kos splits the arrow in the bull’s eye with this explanation of why Democrats might as well do the right thing instead of looking for the magic formula that will get Republicans and the media to stop demonizing them.
Song of the Day 4/28: The Wood Brothers, “I Got Loaded”
Another video by the New Orleans outfit that put musicians in the back of mule-drawn carriages in the French Quarter for acoustic sets on wheels. This time it’s the Wood Brothers with the perfect tune for a Sunday morning, or maybe early afternoon, canter down Royal Street. Bassist Chris Wood is the same guy who […]
Song of the Day 4/27: Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Look Out Mama”
I don’t know what Our Man in New Orleans has on his agenda, but he’d be a fool to pass up a chance to see this homegrown Crescent City band fronted by a Puerto Rican singer and guitarist from the Bronx. Alynda Segarra grew up a punk kid but, as you can hear, New Orleans […]
Grassley Makes Carper Look Spry
Delaware’s Tom Carper isn’t the only doddering old geezer blocking up the halls of the Senate. Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley showed what happens when an aged, out-of-touch political lifer holds a town hall and gets confronted by a constituent with a pointed question: Why are you threatening my life by voting seven times to repeal […]
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