Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 11/5: The Beatles, “Now and Then”
Forty-six years ago John Lennon sat down at his piano, turned on his tape recorder and played a song he was working on that wasn’t quite complete. Last week, after decades of musical massaging, “Now and Then” finally got an official release as the final Beatles song. It’s incorrect to call it a “new” Beatles […]
Song of the Day 11/3: Kate Bush, “Hounds of Love”
El Somnambulo posted yesterday about WXPN’s year-end countdown being devoted to female artists this year. So is this year’s class at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, being inducted tonight in Brooklyn. There are three, count ’em, three women among the seven honorees: Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow and Kate Bush. Elliott and Crow are […]
Song of the Day 11/12: Eva Cassidy, “Autumn Leaves”
Who looks at fallen leaves and thinks of lost love instead of hours of raking and bagging? A guy without a lawn, that’s who. Iconic lyricist Johnny Mercer spent most of his life in New York and Hollywood, so I doubt he ever heard a gas-powered leaf blower. But then Mercer wasn’t working from scratch. […]
Song of the Day 11/1: The Jaynetts, “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses”
El Somnambulo’s fave tunes for October includes a psychedelic cover of this 1963 girl-group nugget by the Jaynetts, who are considered a one-hit wonder but didn’t really exist at all. The Jaynetts and the song were both the brainchildren of an A&R man for Chess Records named Abner Spector, who wrote and produced a hit […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023
Observing conservatives over the decades, I’ve noticed they usually fall into the same trap: They believe their own bullshit or, in the parlance of our times, they get high on their own supply. They delude themselves that their policies are popular and act on that conviction, then seem surprised at the backlash. That’s probably why […]
Song of the Day 10/31: Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers, “Monster Mash”
Yes, you’ve heard it a million times. Everybody’s heard it a million times, and lots of them know some of the lines, even if they’re too young to know that “mash” was short for the “mashed potato,” a national dance craze back in 1962. Bobby Pickett, who died in 2007, was an aspiring actor who […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023
Replacing soft-MAGA Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House with hard-MAGA Mike Johnson is somehow Bad News for Progressives among those who see everything as bad news for progressives, but I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. This guy is a true Christofascist freak – Amanda Marcotte writes about his Satanic panic over a […]
Song of the Day 10/30: Reba McEntire, “Turn on the Radio”
This year saw an odd trend in the agritainment business: Reba McEntire-themed corn mazes. Corn mazes are a seasonal money-maker for small farmers who market the farm along with its crops, and they’ve been around long enough that a business has sprung up around them. I suppose if you have to come up with a […]
DL Open Thread Monday, Oct. 30, 2023
Israel’s assault on Gaza has entered the there’s-no-excuse-for-this stage. One indication of how bad it is: Desperate Gazans broke into UN aid centers and looted their already insufficient food supplies. Calls for a cease-fire continue to come from everywhere but the Biden administration. And it’s not just in Gaza. As Lucian Truscott IV notes, armed […]
Song of the Day 10/29: Milli Vanilli, “Girl You Know It’s True”
You can tell the ’90s are having their day in the nostalgia-industrial complex – there’s a new documentary out about Milli Vanilli, the dance-pop duo who had to give up their Grammy Award when it was revealed that they were lip-synching and dancing to vocals recorded by other singers. I remember seeing the act at […]
Song of the Day 10/27: The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back”
So I was at a wedding a couple of weekends ago and – old fogey alert! – when the music started it was like a rave had broken out. The DJ segued one record into another ad infinitum, all with the same monotonous robo-beat while the bridal party – were nine bridesmaids really necessary? – […]
Song of the Day 10/26: The Rolling Stones, “Start Me Up”
I don’t want to make a big thing of it, but Joe Biden is the same age as Keith Richards, and nobody is telling the venerable guitarist to hang it up. The indestructible Stone might look like the picture of Dorian Gray, but he stopped by the Jimmy Fallon show the other night after the […]
Song of the Day 10/25: The B-52s, “Dry County”
For Andrew C, by request. The B-52s were scheduled to play a White House state dinner tonight but had their performance called off at the last minute. Jill Biden was called upon to explain, “While we had initially planned for the legendary B-52s to perform their iconic dance and party music, we are now in […]
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