Wire – Mind Hive
As a band, Wire has outlived a few of my friends. Their iconic late 70s releases Pink Flag and Chairs Missing are like aged celebrities who maintain their beauty without putty knives and needles. Their newest release Mind Hive is their seventeenth. The highest compliment you can pay a Wire record is to say that you love some of it. Their masterpieces were intentionally scattershot attempts to cram a lot into an LP. For the fans who...
Thom Yorke & Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead Playing No Surprises – KROQ Radio (2003)
One of the few bands that could remix their own tracks with children’s instruments and make them sound better.
Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne et al
Leonard Cohen, the solo performer, was revered as a writer more than a performer. This makes sense as his greatest hits were covered by others who gained success from his songwriting. In the ’60s, Judy Collins covered his song, “Suzanne,” and it garnered attention for the fledgling Cohen. Much later, Collins’ was interviewed by Bill Moyers about this song. The reference point (for us) was a 1976 performance...
Goodbye to The Fall’s Mark E Smith
In 1988, as a kid with a fresh CD of “I Am Kurious Oranj,” I was not the toast of the party. I remember playing it for friends. No one was into it.* Christgau loved it apparently but that didn’t amount to anything (despite the VV’s popularity in that era). My favorite records have always been alienating. When I was 10, I played this LP for my grandparents and it, appropriately so, horrified them. A few years...
14 Years of Heartbeats
The Knife’s “Heartbeats” is 15 years old now. Not soon after its release, fellow Swedish musician José González released an acoustic version, setting the stage (along with Gary Jules’ version of “Mad World”) for a genre of pop song renderings that challenge the success of their source material. José’s Version The Knife In case you haven’t heard it recently, here’s the...
Recent Comments