Good evening, Crassholes. Have you been drinking? I hope so. Are you ready to shake your ass like your life depends on it? Are you ready to bop your head like a damn bobblehead? Are you ready to work up a sweat? You better be. What would Friday night on Crasstalk be without some music sharing? Let’s get this thing started. With any luck I’ll stagger home in time to play along with you for a while. In the meantime, though, check out these tracks to get your juices flowing: Continue reading
I am officially starting The Crasstalk Bad Song Contest. I got this idea from Jerrod’s Awful Songs column. I was also inspired by Dave Barry’s classic “Bad Song” column (yes, I know this makes me an old). This feature generated more mail than anything he ever did To quote “Americans care about song badness.” It’s been about 20 years since the original column. The entertainment world has gifted us with so much bad music during those two decades. It’s time to revisit the contest.
Thirty-seven years ago this morning, Sir Tone was walking towards his office on Music Row in Nashville when he heard one of Elvis’ side men yell out “You hear Elvis is dead?”
Sir Tone: “Drugs?”
Side Man: “Yeah.”
The mere mention of Elvis’ name is enough to throw Sir Tone into a fury. The primary reason black blues musicians and early pop recording artists never got their due, Sir Tone says. Not half so good a musician as a multitude of them, never wrote a song of his own and most egregious of all, failed even to acknowledge his debt to the Delta black music his baby self breathed in along with its white country and church music. Continue reading
Ok, so now that you know what Spotify is, let’s discuss what people are listening to on it.
Here are a few of the bands I’ve been checking out since I got my Spotify account. Continue reading
What do you think of when you think of metal? For many, it remains a 1980’s punchline: Spinal Tap, big hair, and leather pants. Others with a slightly more recent frame of reference may instead imagine barely comprehensible noise. Both are correct descriptions, but only partially so.
Like its punk and hardcore cousins, the term ‘metal’ encompasses a multitude of sub-genres and micro-genres, some of them ludicrously specific, and many of them sounding nothing like each other. In an attempt to bring some order to the chaos, I have combined my encyclopedic knowledge of metal with the graphical skills of the wonderfully talented tomqvaxy to bring you this genealogical chart: Continue reading
Free. Legal. On Demand.
Remember a long, long time ago when if you wanted a song from a band or singer you had to buy the whole album? Then Napster came along and you didn’t have to. Well, legally anyways. (Even though I know you’re all upstanding citizens and would never consider illegally downloading music.) Then iTunes came out and you didn’t have to buy the whole album if you didn’t want to, but you had to buy the single before being able to listen to the whole thing. And then Pandora came out and you could tell it what you liked and it would play similar music, but you couldn’t tell it what song you wanted to listen to, you just had to hope that it got played while you were listening to a station? Continue reading
Whatcha listening to? Why don’t you share it with the rest of the gang? This is your Friday night DJ thread. Put up whatever you have been listening to. Here’s what I listened to on the train on the way home tonight. Continue reading
Here’s a list of movie scenes that are made great by the music to which they are set. I didn’t delve into the performances of songs in movies which is definitely going to be another list. Also, sorry if I didn’t include your favorite but there were definitely enough to make a second list. Without furthur ado, here is the not-so-definitive list. Continue reading
If the rumor mill is to be believed (and in this case, I hope it is!), Kanye West & Jay Z will release Watch The Throne on July 4th. It has the potential to be epic – but at the very least, it will be something to talk about. It’s not, however, something new. Kanye has made a habit of working with different artists; some likely (see: Jay Z, Kid Cudi & Nicki Minaj) and some… not as likely. Let’s take a look at the best of the more unlikely Kanye collaborations (with artists outside of the world of hip-hop). Maybe ‘Ye will take the hint & become inspired by his past work with these artists enough to create whole albums with them. A girl can dream, right? Continue reading