The opening song and opening single from TMBG's 2nd album, Lincoln, is possibly less goofy than people were expecting.
What I wasn't expecting was the gated guitar riff throughout, which ties the whole song together.
The unusual title comes from a browse of the New York City White Pages. There were literally four pages of "Ng"s. A common Cantonese last name, it is properly pronounced like the end of the word "song", but I have heard it pronounced as they do - which isn't quite the same Ng - and I have heard it pronounced "En-Gee".
There ya go.
Yes, the band is still touring, and yes, they do still play this song. Here they are, performing it two months ago.
The guitar is maybe even more impressive when you see the whole band.
I mentioned back in March that Lights made a nighttime instrumental synthwave record during the pandemic to benefit Black Lives Matter Vancouver. For Canada Day, here is the entire album.
That desciption, by the way, is hers, not mine.
Over the last couple weeks of sleeplessness and learning and darkness and processing I made a nighttime instrumental synthwave record, it’s up at https://t.co/MYSW9C0K4o and all of the proceeds will go to Black Lives Matter Vancouver. pic.twitter.com/UqkZ8FAfqR
Do I really think they're great musicians who know what the hell they're doing and have a serious later-Chili Peppers influence? Yup.
Anyway, this is the title song from their 4th album, released in 2017. It's.... delightful. It really is. It's a bright pop song with rock flavor. Featuring guest vocalist Krisztina Farkas from the band ZUP, it's the songwriting creation of Róbert Bérczesi, who also happens to be the main vocalist and frontman for hiperkarma.
Did you think being in Hungarian was going to stop me from finding a live performance?
Nope.
This acoustic version doesn't lose any of the energy from the original.
Steven Page wrote "Brian Wilson" as a tribute to the recently passed Brian Wilson, and the real Brian Wilson took it as such.
And, as someone who at least fancied himself as being a lot like Brian Wilson - in that he strugged with weight and mental health issues - Page hit the nail on the head.
You can see Page's deep feeling and emotion about the song shine through when performed live. There are no jokes here.
This song started off as a minor hit for Tyler, The Creator in 2017, as it was a single off his excellent album, Flower Boy - an album I did not expect to like as much as I did.
Well, actually, it started off as a song for Zayn Malik, but he didn't want that song, so Tyler kept it for himself.
Well, in 2023, TikTok made this song trend, and it became a bigger minor hit.
Tyler is a unique talent who I quite frankly did not expect to like as much as I do - and has consistently made innovative and original music. This is no exception.
This would be a special edition - because their lead vocalist, Douglas McCarthy, died yesterday at age 58 - which is way too young. He toured with the band until last year, when his health issues (cirrosis from excessive drinking earlier in life, for one) took their toll.
He will be missed,
But we had to do a post today anyway, so this seemed like the best idea, and Nitzer Ebb is a band that I always kind of liked, but didn't think about too much.
And let's talk about the music. Pioneers of the industrial wave of music, the band chose a name that sounded German without actually using German words.... so everyone thought they were German. They weren't. They were from the UK.
This 1986 song is one of my favorites by them. It is both danceable and moshable, which is kind of a tough line to straddle.
Industrial music is kind of a weird genre. It's both poppy electronic dance music and angry, heavy music. Rarely is that made more clear than in this 2023 live show.
Brian Wilson passed away today. He won numerous awards, including two Grammys (on nine nominations)
His masterpiece was Pet Sounds, and this song, which led the album, featured his lead vocals. It might have also led to some of his mental health collapse as he left the touring part of his career behind. His wife - Melinda Ledbetter, who passed away last year - helped him finally get the care he needed and got him making music again - and touring.
A striker typically plays further up the pitch from midfielders and defenders. They are sometime called forwards or attackers. We're talking about football here, by the way - and not American football, but the sport North American English speakers insist upon calling "soccer".
Why the soccer lesson up front?
Because this 1976 song is about a striker.
The song, considered by many to be the greatest ever written about a sport, was considered by Rolling Stone to be one of the 500 greatest songs of all time, a list dominated by English-language songs. This song is very much in Portuguese.
You might have noticed that I called this a "1976" song. It was. It's on his album África Brasil, which is an absolutely incredible album. However, the song rose to fame in 1989, when David Byrne included it on Brazil Classics Vol. 1, and this video made the heavy rotation on VH1.
He was known as Jorge Ben until the late 1980s, and changed his name allegedly because a chunk of the royalties for this song accidentally went to singer George Benson. I don't know if that's true, but if you look at the title of this post, I ain't taking any chances with his royalties.
Jorge Ben Jor is WELL into his 80s.
He STILL performs. Here he is - aged 84, two years ago - performing the song, and playing the lead guitar, and bringing the energy! But also, this is 11 songs into his set! And he kept going!!!!
They're a great, GREAT live band from Melbourne, Australia who have started to reach an international audience with their raucous, loud, energetic style. Their third album, Cartoon Darkness, was met with universal acclaim, and deservedly so - it's fun and not like anything else being released.
On the day that album was released, they also released what would end up being the second single - this clever song that is actually one of their quieter ones. Give 'em a go!
Although the band was formed in and based in Melbourne, half the band now calls Los Angelas home, so it was a short flight over no oceans to get to the KEXP studios in Seattle to perform this song live.
And, as I am writing this - and I didn't write this ahead of time. It was written this morning - this performance is from this March but the video was literally posted an hour ago - so you get to see it RIGHT when it's released.
See what I mean about them being a great live band?
Future Islands is a power-pop group that eschews the guitar and replaces it with solid synth.
This song, from their 4th album Singles, was the consensus best single of 2014, and I totally get it. It's strong yet beautiful, forceful and emotional.
It's a great song.
Their debut television performance of the song in 2014 was on The Late Show With David Letterman, and let's be honest, I posted this song for THIS performance.
It's legendary.... if not for just the dancing, or Sam Herring's death metal growls.
But also, don't they have the look of a band that, well, any of us could be in? They're just normal guys.
Lionel Richie's 1983 album Can't Slow Down yielded five US Top 10 hits - all five of them also hits worldwide. Four of them were blandish 80's pop songs that you likely know. One was a county-pop masterpiece.
"Stuck on You". written by Richie, was the 4th single from the album, and it was very different. It would be also his first trip to the US Country Music charts - which is just wild.
It's a very sweet love song, and the best thing on Can't Slow Down.
So when he performed the song more than 30 years later - and not only sang but played piano - it's not a shock that music fans from all walks know the words.
But also, Lionel Richie is probably better known by the kids today as an American Idol judge.... and he joined his other two judges on the season finale this year to reprise a song that sounds more country than most modern counrty music.
I was always a little afraid to give Australian artist Courtney Barnett a try. I can't give you a good reason why. I think her debut album - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit - was so universally acclaimed that I was intimidated to even give it a try.
I need not have been. As part of my 1000-albums-in-a-year project, I listened to that album.
That album is one of the best I have ever heard, and certainly the best I've heard so far on my list. This fun song was a highlight for me.
In a first for this blog....
The way a music video usually works is - the artist is lip-syncing and the studio version of the song is dubbed over top - and they certainly did the dubbing for this video...... but it wasn't a lip-sync. She REALLY performed the song, and posted the original recording as well.
Shockingly, Barnett and her band have performed this song A LOT, and they all sound impeccable and pretty much the same....
Except for this one, an acoustic version by just her, which is somehow just as thrilling.
This was the biggest hit by the Cocteau Twins - making the top 30 in the UK in 1984 - and brought them on import to the US - leading to the release of their first US album, a compilation called The Pink Opaque.
It's a beautiful, ethereal song.
I very much understated this song's beauty.
The vocal performance in this song is considered to be one of the best of all time.
And here's Elizabeth Fraser, singing it live like it's nothing.
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Pastelle LeBlanc, and she was a folk singer. She started a band with her sister and her husband called Vishtèn. They performed great folk music and promoted the niche Acadian culture they grew up in in New Brunswick.
Then Pastelle got breast cancer and died at age 42.
Rather than roll over, the two remaining members took some of their recordings - yes, Pastelle appears on this and she is CLEARLY playing accordion here, and co-wrote the song with her sister and her husband - and turned them into a collaboration and a tribute - Expansion - as part of a project called Vishtèn Connexions, which I guess makes it distinct, but also it isn't.
So as a lot of you know, I am working on a different musical project that is involving me listening to 1000 albums in a year, and I'm going to do something with it, too.
This post is about the best of the first 50 albums so far, and that is The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. I have to admit - Chappell Roan is an artist I did not get. She makes music for an audience that does not include me, or so I thought. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Well, this is the third post of a song from that album, and so I decided to give the whole album a listen..... and the songs, in context, are so much better. It tells a story, and a good one.
This song opens the album, and I swear I thought when it started that it was written by Taylor Swift.....
One day recently, the Spotify DJ decided it was the right time to send this song to me.
Wow, DJ nailed it.
Self descibed, and this is not a joke, "queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks", the band is based in Toronto - or, as they call it, Tkaronto (a name that is somewhat indigeneous-derived). They celebrate their Filipino roots while being punks that play traditional flat bells. Pantayo is literally the Tagalog word meaning "for us".
The song is a direct assault on the colonialism that the Phillipines has experienced, and the cultural colonialism that occurs in Filipino diasporas worldwide. It, and the rest of their self-titled album, resonated, as it was short-listed for the Polaris Prize in 2020.
I personally think the song sounds so much richer live. But first, listen to them introduce their instuments.
When asked what is the best band I have ever seen live, without fail, I say "Elastica".
And the thing is, I saw them twice, in the same year - and they had a different bassist each time.
I know what you're thinking right now. "Who cares?" Well, give me a second.
The second time I saw them, I saw them with Abby Travis, who is an absolute beast and amazing and, on later Lollapalooza dates, played back to back with Elastica and Beck in 1995 (she had already been playing with Beck, so I did see her play, apparently).
The FIRST time I saw them, I saw them at Lollapalooza 1995. It was an early date, and so original bassist Annie Holland was still with the band - she left about a week and a half later because of exhaustion. No, she didn't write this song, which was VERY CLEARLY ABOUT HER. No, it was primarily written by guitarist Donna Matthews and Jane Oliver and was about going to visit Annie in Brighton, where she spent most of her non-touring time.
By the way, they were EQUALLY solid BOTH times.
The song is short, but it rocks hard.
This is a pre-Lollapalooza show, with Annie on bass, where they are killing the song live.
And this is from a 1996 performance, when Annie was away from the band.
Annie did eventually return to the band.... but Donna Matthews left. Here's one of THOSE performances, from 2000.
I'm not gonna lie - it's great. It's missing the harmonies at the chorus, but it's still solid.
By the way, if you want to hear the ACTUAL performance - and probably me in the crowd - the audio of this performance is on YouTube. And I remember it like it was yesterday.
I cued it up to "Annie" for you. HOWEVER, you should hear the whole thing.
I was going to open this post with a fan-made video of this song with a lot of videos of police brutality.
Unfortunately, those videos are age-restricted and can't be embedded here.
This song began life as the B-side to "Holiday In Cambodia", a song with a similar feel, in 1980. The surf guitar riffs kind of hide the fact that this song is told from the story of a two awful police officers who are brutalizing people and abusing their power.
The song was actually written in direct response to a real 1970's incident in Oakland, CA, but, let's face it - it is more broadly applicable. Written by Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray (who is responsible for the fantastic surf guitar riffs), the song experienced a resurgence in popularity after the George Floyd murder. And yeah. It was a murder. That's how I feel about that.
Back in the day, when the band performed live a lot, they brought even more energy than they did in the studio.
It's 1969. You just picked up your copy of Led Zeppelin II. You've just finished side one. You flip it over.
You are smacked in your face with arguably the greatest riff in rock and roll history.
The iconic guitar solo in the middle was actually recorded separately from the rest of the track - and Jimmy Page used a pull-off technique that inspired guitar virtuosos for decades.
Led Zeppelin was a great blues band who manged to get volume turned up to 11, and this song was arguably their magnum opus.
Even though he originally recorded it separate from the rest of the track, hearing and watching Jimmy Page performing what is almost inarguably his greatest solo of all time, live, embellishing the hell out of it, is incredible. This performance is from 1979.
This song was Grammy nominated in 1996 after being a huge hit song around the world in 1995.... except in the United States, where it was NOT a hit. Canada? Loved it! New Zealand? Huge hit. Spain? Top 5. United States? #75 on the Hot 100.
Let's be honest - even though Kravitz wrote and produced this song, it sounds like he lifted half the riff from "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin. It's undeniable (and probably why it failed in the US). In reality, that riff was the riff from "Are You Gonna Go My Way" - which shared an album with this song - played backwards.... so, not actually lifted. But man, I sure thought it was, too.
Anyway, the song is a pretty solid rock song.
Oh yes, he plays it live, and it's perhaps more impressive as a straight-ahead rock song. Here he is performing it in 2011. Not pictured: the painting in his attic that's aging for him.
Does Throwing Muses have new music out? They sure do.
Did I go back to the 90s for some of their older stuff anyway? I sure did.
No, Limbo is not my favorite album of theirs - it was post-Tanya era Muses, which is never my preference. It was their first album on Rykodisc after a decade with Sire Records (and of course, as always on 4AD). The album and stress on it - combined with Kristin Hersh's successful solo career - led to the band breaking up for several years.
As most of their music, written by Kristin, the song is at once noisy - a bit noisier than their earlier work - and dark. Even though Limbo isn't my favorite of theirs, this song floats to the top for me.
I love Kristin's voice live. It comes through a lot raspier than on record.
This 1995 song by folkie Jill Sobule was her biggest hit, in both the US and Canada. It was on my short list to be posting this song very soon.
Unfortunately, her untimely death today in a house fire at age 66 hastened that for me.
In 2009, in response to Katy Perry's song of the same name, Sobule said, and I quote: "Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe “not good for the gays,” title thieving, haven’t heard much else, so not quite sure if you’re talented, fucking little slut." No, she really said that.
She didn't actually harbor any ill will against Katy Perry. She was kidding. Perry's song sparked new interest in Sobule's.
Anyway, this song was sweet and earnest and kind, and here it is.
Jill was touring until, no joke, this week. She was literally scheduled to perform in Denver tomorrow. This is a performance of this song from February of this year. Her storytelling is pretty damned amazing.
This is a sad day for music, and she will be missed.
