Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 5/28: Iron Butterfly, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida”
Doug Ingle, who wrote, sang and played organ on “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Iron Butterfly’s iconic 1968 hit, died last week at age 78. Ingle was the last surviving member of the lineup that recorded it. The 17-minute title track took up one entire side of the band’s second album and was a lot better known back in […]
Song of the Day 5/27: Richard Sherman, “Feed the Birds”
Richard Sherman, who died last week at 95, penned the lyrics to hundreds of Disney songs from 1960 to 1973 while he and his composer brother, Robert, were employed as staff songwriters for the studio. They churned out the songs for more than a dozen films, both animated and live-action, while also finding time to […]
Song of the Day 5/24: Amy Winehouse, “Love Is a Losing Game”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona We’ve heard a whole lot about Amy Winehouse’s troubled behavior before she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27. It sounds like we learn more than we need to about her personal relationships in the new biographical movie “Back to Black.” But you know what would good to […]
Song of the Day 5/23: Paul Simon, “Graceland”
For supermarket tabloids, Elvis is the gift that keeps on giving, even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years. A headline the Weekly World News might have invented declared that Graceland, Presley’s Memphis mansion-turned-tourist attraction, was up for public auction. A finance company claimed Lisa Marie Presley died with an unpaid loan of $3.8 […]
Song of the Day 5/22: Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”
Theme music for the heat dome over Mexico that’s causing monkeys to fall dead from the trees. Black Francis wrote “Monkey Gone to Heaven” about the environment 35 years ago, before we even knew about global warming (thanks, Exxon!), so his examples of degradation are ocean dumping and the ozone layer. The latter part of […]
Song of the Day 5/20: King Willonius, “Beach Blonde Bad Built Butch Body”
It’s not exactly life imitating art, more like reality imitating reality TV, but the Catfightin’ Congresswomen of Washington could be the hottest new show in the capital. In last week’s episode, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Domestic Longhair) told Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Abyssinian) that Crockett couldn’t see through her false eyelashes. Crockett responded by referencing a […]
Song of the Day 5/19: Dolly Parton, “9 to 5”
Dabney Coleman, who died last week at 92, was best known for playing arrogant, venal characters in movies and television, especially during the ’80s, when he starred in the sitcoms “Buffalo Bill” and “The Slap Maxwell Story” and the movies “Tootsie” and the one mentioned at the top of every obit, “9 to 5.” Though […]
Song of the Day 5/17: Childish Gambino, “Redbone”
Actor Donald Glover has been busy the last several years, notably by playing Lando Calrissian in a Star Wars prequel and starring in an Amazon Prime series, a remake of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” that Glover created himself. His hip-hop alter ego, Childish Gambino, had rarely surfaced after the unfortunately timed album dubbed “3.15.20” was […]
Song of the Day 5/16: Louis Prima, “I Wanna Be Like You”
The sad spectacle of Trump’s gaggle of suckups convening outside his trial in New York – in matching outfits, no less – made me think of this tune from Disney’s 1967 animated “Jungle Book.” The Disney people had to pitch the idea to Prima, who responded, “You want to make a monkey out of me? […]
Song of the Day 5/15: David Sanborn, “Hideaway”
Alto saxophonist David Sanborn’s music is usually categorized as smooth jazz, much to his chagrin. Sanborn, who died Sunday at age 78, released 25 albums leading his own band, incorporating rock, R&B and gospel into with the jazz, but no matter, you’ll find them filed under Jazz, Smooth. They don’t even care that Sanborn’s playing […]
Song of the Day 5/13: Baby Lasagna, “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”
Eurovision, the international song contest, rarely makes the news in America, but it’s a big deal in Europe, a sort of a musical Olympics that pits one musical act from each of two dozen or so participating countries, most of them European. They’ve been holding it since 1956, and it’s grown into a live TV […]
Song of the Day 5/12: Pixies, “Where Is My Mind?”
This is a question two presidential candidates who aren’t Joe Biden should be asking themselves. They could use this tune as a soundtrack. Black Francis said the song was inspired by a scuba dive in the Caribbean, but movies have been using it for years to signal a character’s inability to recognize reality. It was […]
Song of the Day 5/10: Redd Kross, “Candy Coloured Catastrophe”
El Somnambulo left this one off his list of his favorite new tunes of April, maybe because he didn’t get a chance to hear it – it dropped April 29. Or maybe because he’s not a big fan of Redd Kross, formed as a punk band in Hawthorne, Calif., in the late ’70s by brothers […]
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