11 June 2013

11 June 2013 - Tilly and the Wall - Reckless

When Tilly and the Wall's first album Wild Like Children came out in 2004, I knew I had to check it out. The Omaha indie poppers had a lot of buzz at the time due their record being the first release on Team Love Records (co-founded by Connor Oberst of Bright Eyes). Oh, and instead of having a drummer, they had a tap dancer. Sign me up! Here's a fun video from that debut.

10 June 2013

10 June 2013 - The Association - Never My Love

This is quite possibly the most beautiful song ever written and performed.

From 1967, here are The Association, with a pure and simple tribute to undying love and patience.   But as simple as the lyrics are, the song is very musically dense, with multipart harmonies throughout and a six piece band.  I encourage you to listen more than once.



What I love about this band is that, nearly 50 years later, they're still together and still playing this song.  They've lost a little bit in the voices - age will do that to you - but not much, and the harmonies are still there. This performance is from 2012.

07 June 2013

7 June 2013 - Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid

About a year ago, I made the statement that Garbage owes a huge debt of gratitude to Curve. I stand by that statement.

But we're not talking about Curve today.  We're talking about Garbage, which started off as a great studio experiment, featured three great producers (Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, Butch Vig) from the American Midwest and an attractive, charismatic female lead vocalist playing fuzzy rock music.

But they became more than that.  They became Shirley Manson's band of hitmakers in their own right.  That woman has fantastic stage presence. They became identified as musicians, not as producers.  And they sound great, don't they?



Even all these years later, they still sound great.  And Shirley Manson still has the strong stage presence.

06 June 2013

6 June 2013 - Siouxsie and the Banshees - Cities in Dust

It's time for some more 80s Thursday goodness. Here's a classic Siouxsie and the Banshees video from 1986's Tinderbox. I'd like to say this is the first song of theirs I heard, but they didn't exactly hit my teenage radar until I saw the Peek-A-Boo video a few years later.

05 June 2013

5 June 2013 - Run DMC - King of Rock

Sure, they didn't know music history so well ("there's three of us but we're not the Beatles"?!  Of course, John Lennon was dead by this time...)  They might have smack talked a whole lot of sucker MCs.  They might have gone through two needles on every jam they played.

But Run DMC were hip hop pioneers - the first consistent hitmakers of the genre - the first to bring actual instruments and not just turntables into their music - the first to popularize adidas - the first to use Larry "Bud" Melman in a music video - and with good reason.  Run - Joseph Simmons - and DMC - Darryl McDaniels - played off each others' rhymes with seamless ease.  And they had a fair amount of anger in their music, too.  Hip hop before Run DMC was happy, and talking about how they were the best MCs, and dancing.  Until Run DMC started calling out sucker MCs.

04 June 2013

4 June 2013 - Selena Gomez - Come & Get It

After seeing the commercial for ABC's new guilty pleasure drama Mistresses about 8,000 times yesterday, I got this Selena Gomez song completely stuck in my head. So I thought, oh hell, if this ain't a Wicked Guilty Pleasures post I don't know what is. Guilty Pleasure tunes and TV. Perfect! And then Tony went and posted Selena Gomez playing her bestie's song I Knew You Were Trouble today at Totally Covered...I was going to scrap this post, but then I thought, awww heck let's make it Selena Gomez Day at the blogs.

03 June 2013

3 June 2013 - Baby Animals - Painless & Rush You & Email

Remember the MTV Buzz Bin from the early 90's?  I do.

That's where I discovered this hard rocking Aussie band.  Of course, when I saw their Buzz Bin video, it was this one, which isn't all that hard-rockin' at all.  But the song grew on me.  It was catchy.  It wasn't exactly like everything else on the radio.  And Suze DeMarchi - the lead vocalist - had a compelling and husky voice.



So I went and bought their CD, and put it in.  And this was track 1.  Thankfully, it was also the 2nd single.  What a great, hard-rocking song!  This is still, to this day, one of my favorite songs.



Of course, with label pressures, along with Suze's budding romance with and eventual marriage to Nuno Bettencourt, the band broke up.  But, eventually, they got back together.... and did an acoustic album of all their hits.  Including this hard rocking song.  And it worked at the slower tempo.  Here is the band performing it back in 2010.



Of course, they didn't take the edge off of everything.  Here is "Painless" from a show in 2013.



We would be doing the band a disservice if we neglected to mention that they have a new album out.  This is Not The End is available now. The first single is the compelling "Email", and we hope you enjoy it.