I didn’t expect to find this charming bit of Finnish folk in my inbox today, but here is Köyhät Ritarit with some soothing new music.
Rock
[Video] Fleetwood Mac – Hold Me
I’ll bet you didn’t see this coming!
I grew up in the 1980s, where music video was a new art form. One of the first memories I have of MTV is watching, among good new wave ditties, this song. It seemed pompous, boring, and the band looked like they were on a pile of cocaine rather than in a desert. It took about twenty years for me to appreciate the song-craft of Fleetwood Mac.
[Video] Dream Syndicate – Loving the Sinner, Hating the Sin
It seems that The Dream Syndicate, who are local boys in my current neck of the woods, are getting back together again for a series of performances. It’s hard to believe this is about two-and-a-half decades old now. Good for Steve Wynn and company reuniting!
[Video] Mark Nauseef / Miroslav Tadić – The Wind Cries Mary
Two wonderful jazz musicians in Mark Nauseef and Miroslav Tadić do an admirable job tackling the work of Jimi Hendrix.
[Video] Cremadelic – Cherry
Julio Gutiérrez (Cremadelic in this guise) has few side projects which will eventually be featured on these pages. This one is something akin to shoegaze music touching base with IDM.
Neil Young’s next act: music technology entrepreneur
Unlike a great deal of my colleagues, I’m not a vinyl snob. Yes, it sounds wonderful for rock and jazz, but as I enjoy listening to classical and experimental music, I like the idea that I can hear such things with clarity.
That being said, the great Neil Young, himself a fan of technology, has started a service dedicated to audiophiles. PonoMusic (not quite ready for launch yet) is the name of his new venture, and it will be launched on Kickstarter this week.
Upstart Business Journal has more on this wonderful development here.
Lou Reed, R.I.P.
It came as a shock to find out that Lou Reed, a fixture throughout the whole of my musical life, had passed away due to complications from liver failure today. Ben Ratliff of the New York Times wrote a fine obituary today, so in terms of a retrospective, it’s best to leave it to the professionals. However, there’s also a personal component.
I’m not quite sure who made the quote (it’s always attributed to Brian Eno when I try to source it), and it is surely apocryphal, but here it is:
I’m one of those guys. Now, my ‘band’ did nothing but practice, and it was a real pleasure at the time, but for all those bands who heard that first Velvet Underground album, it compelled the listener to go do something. You became an active participant rather than a mere listener.
Though I spent my formative years in Los Angeles, I loathed The Doors and most of the bands from San Francisco (Love was the only one I cared for deeply who were from the West Coast). My heart and mind, musically, at least when it came to Americn music, was firmly planted in New York, with all the debauchery that city was famous for. The Velvets were gritty and hard, unlike their bloated, pretentious, and frankly mediocre fellow musicians out west. We got bands like Blind Melon thanks to The Doors. We ended up with Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division, The Cure, and scores of other substantial bands thanks to Lou, John Cale, and the troupe.
May Lou rest well, and our condolences go to his wife, the composer Laurie Anderson, herself one of the great sages of radical American music.
Sunday mornings won’t quite be the same, will they?
[Video] Tindersticks – Show Me Everything
Stuart A. Staples and band in fine form.
[Video] Goat – Goathead
A new band for me, Goat hail from Sweden and play some very, very strange music that seems rather hard to classify, though it would fit well in scenes where people like groups such as Borbetomagus and, say, Cibo Matto.
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 