Bloggerhythms

"Woke Up This Morning" has an unusual backstory. It was written and recorded by Alabama 3, a band from London, England. In the United States the group always uses the name A3 instead so they don't have to worry about any delicate or unfortunate legal entanglements with Alabama - the American country group - over the use of the name. It's difficult to categorize Alabama 3 because they don't cling to a specific style. They easily blend jazz, R&B, hip-hop, rock and dance music into something unique. The band wrote "Woke Up This Morning" after hearing about a highly publicized British murder case involving a woman, Sara Thornton, who stabbed her very abusive husband to death. Primary songwriter and vocalist, Rob Spragg, told Q Magazine that "We started with a Howlin' Wolf loop, but a lot of blues lyrics are quite misogynistic. So, I turned it round to be about a woman who's had enough and gets a gun – it's quite iron...

Today's post is about a song that is probably the most obscure piece of music on my entire top ten list. Anyone who puts it on their ballot deserves a huge round of applause because it's a marvelous, moody, blues-fueled, jazz vocal song. More than four years ago I wrote about a virtually unknown soundtrack album from a long-forgotten, 1982 movie that I have never seen. The music to One From The Heart was composed entirely by Tom Waits with country star Crystal Gayle as a featured guest vocalist on six tracks. The sessions were produced by Bones Howe. The celebrated Francis Ford Coppola directed the picture   starring Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raúl Juliá, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan and Harry Dean Stanton. Bloggerhythms' post about  the complete soundtrack  included a brief discussion on the flick's title track that Waits sang as a duet with Gayle. So, for #8 on my list of greatest songs from movies and TV I'm simply going to lift my own word...

"That Thing You Do," the theme song to the 1996 movie of the same name, was composed by the late Adam Schlesinger, leader of the fun power pop quartet, Fountains of Wayne. This Academy Award nominated record for Best Original Song reminds me of another fantastic one-hit wonder, The Knickerbockers' "Lies,"  a big hit from 1965 that many people believed was actually The Beatles. It's easy to be reminded of the Fab Four while listening to this exuberant production that only reached #41 - especially when you realize the film's story takes place in 1964, the same year the Liverpool guys hit the big time in America. It deserved a much better fate, but power-pop wasn't being played very often on the radio during this grunge infested year of 1996. The fictitious liner notes from the soundtrack CD claimed "That Thing You Do" reached #2 on the Hot 100. The four actors who played The Wonders in the movie didn't record the so...

"Before the Deluge" has always been one of my all-time favorite Jackson Browne songs. Yes, it's political - and therefore controversial - but it also has a gorgeous melody that was helped in no small part by the late, great - and always drug free - David Lindley whose sad violin work on this track is the highlight regardless of its intended message. "Before the Deluge" is one of Browne's most memorable songs. It's from Late for the Sky (1974) - an album most people consider his best. I loved the original studio recording, but it was easily topped five years later by this live version from the historic No Nukes soundtrack that made the original sound lifeless by comparison. To me, it's the definitive performance of this great song and it made me realize just how important Lindley was to Browne's music.  Browne continued to have a long and moderately successful recording career, but I always believed that after Lindley left...

Bloggerhythms has closely followed and often participated in radio station WXPN's annual 885 countdowns they've aired every fall for about the last twenty years or so. After years of counting down the usual fare of best songs, albums and artists the non-commercial station at 88.5 FM - licensed to Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania - decided to go rogue with some unique lists. Recent themes have included the 885 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century. I don't remember what came in at #1, but John Mayer had more songs on the list than anyone else. Two years ago we all voted for the 885 Greatest Songs By Women. This year the station offers listeners a fun countdown. Currently, you can vote for your ten favorite songs that appeared in movies or on television. Your selections don't have to be theme songs, they just have to be tunes that were aired on any TV show or featured in any film. They can be from concerts, documentaries, musicals, dramas, c...

I know this may sound like a commercial, but I must tell you about a true audiophile's dream. ELP, a Japanese company, has developed a laser turntable that has no tonearm or stylus. Instead, it uses five laser beams to play your old, 45 and 33 rpm, vinyl records and even your older 10-inch, 78 rpm, shellac discs if you happen to have any. This revolutionary piece of equipment will never damage or wear out any of your records as even the most expensive, traditional, turntables do. One thousand plays later your precious 12-inchers will sound exactly the same as they did when they were first played on this unique unit unless you happen to damage one of them. Unfortunately, there is a MAJOR drawback. ELP, begins pricing at $19,000 because each turntable is custom made. This stylish machine is 100% analog .  Company founder, Sanju Chiba, believes "Analog music is more natural... it is the sound of the master tape" so there's no digital technolog...

Writing about classical music is not in my wheelhouse. I don't feel as if I'm qualified to expound on it in any great detail, and I'm including the works I like. One of them is a concert recording by Virgil Fox, a slightly eccentric church organist from New York City who made a name for himself by applying modern techniques to his live, solo performances. Older, staid, classical music purists and devoted Johann Sebastian Bach aficionados weren't always fond of Fox's interpretations of the classical composer's music. The New York Times wrote that William F. Buckley said, Fox " must have figured that it was more important to fill the house with listeners who would hear Bach for the first time than worry about those who would resolve, like me, to have heard Fox for the last time." Bach Live at the Fillmore East , Fox's live, concert album that appealed to many young progressive-rock fans was recorded on December 1, 1970 and relea...

Once again, Mike Jacoby has written all of the songs on his California band's latest release, Welcome to the Family, and once again it's a good set of rocking tunes. On this, the trio's third release, guitarist, composer and lead singer Jacoby continues to work with his solid supporting cast, Don Read on bass and drummer Mike Levin. They're three middle-aged guys who can rock 'n roll, so I don't think they'll be telling their kids to "turn it down" anytime soon. Jacoby also writes intelligent - frequently edgy lyrics - and he's not afraid to get political. That's a brave act these days because too often artists take a huge chance of alienating a good chunk of any potential audience. On the hook-filled title track he sings, "There you are – a random face. You’ve come a long way from a distant place. Look over your shoulder – keep your eyes cast down. Never assume that there’s no one around....