Alright, here goes…
Welcome to my favorite song, circa 1983. I got the Business As Usual Album for Christmas ’82 and proceeded to play it daily for the next 8 months or so. Oddly enough, despite regular radio and MTV airplay, this song never charted in the US, because it was never released as a single — which was the criteria at the time. Men At Work – “Be Good Johnny.”
Apple has done it again — found an obscure bit of music for their latest commercial (for the new iPod Nano) which is so damned infectious, I have to go hunting. A while back, it was “New Soul” by Yael Naim, an Israeli. This time around, the track is from a Swedish pop singer — and ironically, it’s a song that bashes the complacency of acquisition-minded suburbanites. Miss Li – “Bourgeois Shangri-La.”
I’d never heard the band Metric before, but stumbled across this track. They were described as part of the whole Indie neo-New Wave thing, which is what drew me to listen. I was rewarded by some really tight instrumentation and brilliantly cutting lyrics: Metric – “Gold Guns Girls.”
Another absolutely *brilliant* mashup by DJ Moule — this time mixing “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith, “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Block Rockin’ Beats” by the Chemical Brothers. My jaw, it drops. DJ Moule – “Give This Way.”
Yesterday was Paul Hardcastle’s 52nd birthday. Back in 1985 (when he was 28), he gave us one of the best electro tracks ever recorded (and a big part of my initiation into electronic and sample-based music): Paul Hardcastle – “19.”
Was thinking a bit about Titan AE earlier in the week, wondering if it might have done better as a live-action film. Not sure — but as a starship-nerd, I have to admit that I love the sequence of the main character piloting the ship through the gas clouds, accompanied by this track: The Urge – “It’s My Time To Fly.”
In honor of the ass-screaming drop in temperatures and the snow seen across large parts of the country this week, a track that I think is a better version than the original it covers: The Bangles – “Hazy Shade of Winter.”
…and, speaking of winter: Next Friday, I’ll be posting the annual Friday Music XMas Collection (complete, as usual, with cover art) for your holiday pleasure.
Enjoy, and see you then.