Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 2/23: Screaming Trees, “Nearly Lost You”
While rock’s Jurassic generation keeps grinding on — look, another tour by 79-year-old Paul McCartney! — its more recent Cretaceous Period relics are dying out. Mark Lanegan, frontman for Screaming Trees and collaborator with Queens of the Stone Age, died at 57 at his home in rural Ireland. No cause of death was given, but […]
Song of the Day 2/22: Bill Evans, “Peace Piece”
I don’t know all that much about the situation in the Ukraine, and if you’re honest about it neither do you. I just think that the fewer innocent people who die over all this, the better. Bill Evans was so fucking great that he just sat at the piano after a recording session for his […]
Black Opry Revue Preview: Part One
We’re bringing these incredible artists to the Arden Gild Hall this Saturday. In conjunction with Black History Month, and presented in partnership with the Delaware Division Of The Arts and radio station WXPN. (Up-to-date vax cards and masks required.) You can get tickets right here. But first, how about a taste of three of the […]
Song of the Day 2/21: The Presidents of the United States of America, “Lump”
The second-biggest hit for the only band fit to play on Presidents Day, a No. 1 hit on the Modern Rock chart in 1995. They got the record’s sound by playing two guitars with a total of five strings between them, instruments frontman/composer/bassist Chris Ballew and guitarist Dave Dederer called them a “basitar” (two strings) […]
Song of the Day 2/20: The Association, “Windy”
Here’s a symptom of climate change you don’t hear about much in the States: destructive hurricane-force winter winds of more than 120 mph. There’s plenty of video to prove it. Suffice it to say this didn’t used to happen. Though they’re not much heard today, The Association was all the rage in the days of […]
Song of the Day 2/18: Cat Stevens, “Wild World”
Cat Stevens’ first Top 40 single as a performer wasn’t his biggest hit — it only reached No. 11, but it’s his most-covered by a wide margin. So far the song has been recorded by more than 100 artists, by talents ranging from Bette Midler to Garth Brooks. But its popularity with other singers isn’t […]
Song of the Day 2/16: C.W. McCall, “Convoy”
For conservatives, bad ideas never die, they just get recycled ad nauseam. So when a few dumbfuck truckers decide they’ve had enough of this mask-wearing, vaccine-taking reality, they retreat to the same dumb response their pappies and grandpappies did when faced with problems that, given their limited intellects, they couldn’t possibly understand. This was a […]
Song of the Day 2/15: Randy Rainbow, “The Tango: Vaccine”
It had been nearly nine months since Randy Rainbow’s last musical parody video before he dropped this one on the unsuspecting internet last week. I was concerned that, like earlier comedians who hitched their stars to a president — JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader is the poster boy for this — Rainbow wouldn’t be able to […]
Song of the Day 2/14: Randy Newman, “Falling in Love”
If you wanted to commission a love song for a late-’80s rom-com, is Randy Newman the guy you’d turn to? As his girlfriend asks in the video, “What’s the matter? Phil Collins busy?” He probably was, so they hired Newman, and even got him to act in a promotional video for the song. I’ve never […]
Song of the Day 2/13: Marillion, “Gazpacho”
I admit I never thought I’d actually find a song called “Gazpacho,” but when Congressdope Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed her thoughts about the gazpacho police — I understand they only take cold cases — I looked for one out of due diligence. Here it is, though unlike Trout Fishing in America’s “Pico de Gallo,” it’s […]
Song of the Day 2/12: Weezer, “Hash Pipe”
Very little American media output crosses the Atlantic, the obsessions of right-wing agit-prop shops like Fox even less than the rest. But enough spam email has slipped through for me to learn that these rube-fleecers are claiming the Biden administration is handing out free crack pipes, as if anyone has used a crack pipe in […]
Song of the Day 2/11: Hot Chocolate, “Brother Louie”
Hot Chocolate was a British soul band best known for their 1975 international hit “You Sexy Thing,” a disco standard that reached No. 3 in the US. But it was another band that became a one-hit wonder with this tune by the band’s songwriting team of singer Errol Brown and bassist Tony Wilson. The band […]
Song of the Day 2/10: Todd Rundgren, “Dust in the Wind”
First off, no, this isn’t the Kansas tune. It predates it by six years. Fifty years ago this month, then 23-year-old Todd Rundgren released what’s widely regarded as his magnum opus, the double LP “Something/Anything?” For the first three sides of the album Rundgren, already an experienced producer, not only wrote and sang all the […]
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