Underrated is a common enough term for artists we like that don’t end up selling millions of records and becoming household names. I think it is safe to call John Hiatt underrated, however. This is a guy who started out writing songs done by everyone from Three Dog Night (and Hard Labor was a big …
Month: December 2010
Haley Anderson produced this public service announcement for a class in Public Policy. It’s excellent and she is on to something. Domestic violence is by far the most common felony in every jurisdiction in the country (and probably the world) and yet whenever there’s talk of crime rates, crime crackdowns, or getting tough on crime, …
The Dream of the 90s is alive in Portland! This new cable TV series, called Portlandia, starts January 10 and promises either quirky greatness or an epic meta hipster fail. Starring, along with SNL’s Fred Armisen, one-time Portlander Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, author of “Call the Doctor,” one of the great tunes of the 90s, …
I’m a huge fan of Mark Eitzel and his band American Music Club, so to me this 1988 video interview of a beer swilling and hilariously self-deprecating Eitzel is manna from heaven. I’ve probably seen Mark Eitzel play solo about 40 times (seriously). I’ve also seen the twice reformed American Music club about 5 times. …
Prior to and contemporaneous with, Grunge, Seattle was a center for great melodic pop from such luminaries as the Posies, the Young Fresh Fellows, (whose leader Scott McCaughey went on to play in REM for years) Sister Psychic, Flake, Stumpy Joe, Model Rockets, Presidents of the United States of America and numerous others. Out of …
Visual artist and avant-garde musician, Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, has died in a Northern California hospital at the age of 69 from complications arising from multiple sclerosis. The Village Voice gives their brief take here. Entertainment Weekly describes Beefheart’s five best albums here. Rolling Stone’s 1970 cover story on Beefheart can be quite …
[Update 12/21/2010: Committed has won The Sing Off in the final episode aired last night. In the embedded video below, host Nick Lachey announces the winners. Beneath that is the original article.] . [Ed. Note – Manly, gruff, security expert and sports aficionado, Ron Swanson has come to enjoy an NBC show featuring a capella …
Be Counter-Cultural: Practice the Twelve Days of Christmas, by Chris Erdman, Celebrity Guest Blogger
. The Twelve Days of Christmas are largely forgotten today. If they are remembered, they’re remembered as a song about “Lord’s a leaping,” and “partridges in a pear tree.” The Twelve Days, December 25-January 5, are the true Christmas, the Christmas not of preparation for a single holiday, but of opening our hearts increasingly to …
We didn’t go to church much when I was a kid. St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in my hometown was the church we didn’t go to. Still, a few things stick out from the times we showed up. I remember being impressed that the priest was on a first name basis with the Pope—“pray …
. My 4 year-old daughter Alissa screams “I want to waatch teeeeveeee nowwwww!” and I say “You were mean yesterday when I turned the tv off, so no teeeveeee, todaaaayyyy!” and I insist she comes with me to the hardware store to find a 3/8″ compression to 1/2″ pipe adapter hose for the sink, the …
. . The words, Brill Building, are synonymous with songwriting in the way Hollywood is equated with movies or Detroit used to be associated with cars. I received a message yesterday from LA-DSH urging assistance for an upcoming documentary about Colony Records, a unique music store located in that iconic building which was the site …
. For whatever reason a few years ago, I wanted to hear the Edgar Winter Group’s “Free Ride.” Naturally, the first place I checked was YouTube. Yep, lots of videos for “Free Ride.” But wouldn’t you know it, on the first video I pick, there’s a link to Edgar’s brother, Johnny, performing “Mean Town Blues” …
. . It was February 12, 2009 when I started following the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. They are marching through nearly 200 dates this year, did the Obama inauguration back in ’09, been to St. Petersburg, Russia, quite the swoop of engagements and I think the trickle down effect is this: brass bands are now …
. The kids today have such a ribald good time in every video. Youth was never this good-natured or this fun back in the day and I have a hard time believing that it is even now: .
Within the last year or so, multimedia artist, Barbara Trentalange, had a baby. Balancing motherhood with creative expression, she completed a series of paintings titled, “Baby Napping Series.” “I started the series because I needed to be quiet around the house while my daughter napped,” says Trentalange. “Since I couldn’t write and play music (which …
. So, there I was at SOFA-Chicago (International Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair) last month exhibiting my work and not selling much when an employee of Ferrin Gallery, Lauren Levato, purchased a small beaded flower of mine. It is possible that I started gushing about the work of my favorite artist Sergei Isupov, who …
. As we enter this holiday season, once again, with so many people unemployed, this year, I am making a committment to buy more local and American made products for gift giving. Some of my favorites are Applets and Cotlets Candy (Wenatchee, WA) Filson Clothing (Seattle) and MagLite flashlights (SoCal). What are your favorites? – …
. I was a Senior in high school and I was picking up the bulk for the Dutchess County News Tribune. It was a frozen, clear dawn with no birds in the trees or sky, quiet and moon bright. I fired up the Ford, scraped off the morning ice and dropped by Margaret Hamilton’s office …
. Driving to the train station the other morning, I had no idea that it was the first day of Hannakuh (Did I spell that right?). I was enlightened by Lin Brehmer, the ever resourceful morning man on Chicago’s finest radio station WXRT, who played this song. At long last an alternative to Adam Sandler’s …
. Please, please, please tell me that you are not ready to be co-opted by the naive and even dangerous view that is being adopted by too many already that the tax cuts/unemployment benefits deal that Pres. Obama just worked out with Republican leaders is somehow a bad deal, that he got rolled, or that …
. . I watched this movie last might. Loved it. Saddam didn’t like the physical act of headbanging because, according to one of the musicians, the movement is similar to when Jews pray. Saddam wanted men to have short hair. The musicians later persevered under Occupied Iraq, but checkpoints, snipers, tanks, unemployment, and overall risk …
. When most Americans think of actress and singer Doris Day (b. 1922), they imagine a virginal sweetheart or wholesome wife and mother – roles she often played in Hollywood and on television during her long career. But any contemporary glance at her legendary comedies with Rock Hudson reveal that the Doris Day of the …
. This is going to sound like they just do make ‘em like that anymore, but they don’t. As I regard one music video after the other, graciously placed on flat screens around the gym so I can rock my heavy lifting, I am plucked by the videos’ endless sea of sameness. Glossy, flat with …
. Tom Jones and Nina Persson of the Cardigans combine like sexual napalm and white tipped matches in this highly stylized rendition of a Talking Heads classic. Tom Jones simply brings it, and does so in a vein popping ventricular ejection. Makes me want to tear off my man panties and throw them at the …
I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are not on Facebook. Some have quit, some never joined. A large portion of them seem to infer that they are too superior to join Facebook, that Facebook is only for “people with no lives” or that Facebook is somehow evil. Facebook is neither good nor …
. This is a nice clip. Aaron Tibeaux Walker. What can I say? Once almost as big as his contemporary, Louis Jordan, and now just as forgotten. A long, long string of r&b chart hits from the mid 40’s through the 50’s. A suave, seemingly effortless vocalist and guitarist, who penned most of his own …
When 5th season American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry sang a brooding cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” in 2006, Idol fans went universally ape shit, calling the arrangement “wildly innovative” and raving about how refreshingly far removed it was from the up-tempo original. What most didn’t realize was that Daughtry’s performance was not …
. One of my favorite videos… not because of it’s excellent image quality (quite obviously NOT) but because it combines my favorite singer, Robert Plant, with one of my favorite bands backing him up, Pearl Jam, in my favorite city and hometown, Chicago, in an iconic club, House of Blues, for a very worthy cause, …
This 1958 Stan Freberg audio file satirizes the overcommercialism of Christmas. It begins with Mr. Scrooge calling a meeting of important “advertising people” to find new ways to tie products to Christmas. One advertiser talks of depicting a more rugged Santa smoking a preferred brand of cigarette. In the ad, Santa has “both sleeves rolled …
. Even when you’ve spent time as a professional rock critic, there are inevitably gaps in your musicology knowledge. And one of the aspects of music I’ve always loved is how musicians pay homage to mentors, inspirations, peers, and lesser-known talents by covering or, better still, collaborating with them, helping them reach a wider audience. …