Tag: Music

 

I heard a couple Post Malone efforts a while back. Didn’t care for over-produced auto-tune type stuff. So I didn’t even try after that – just let it go. But I’m a sucker for you-sorry-you-left-me stories about rejection followed by success. So a friend insisted last summer and I heard this.

An almost rap/almost song hybrid with a slight echo. Mostly straight-on authentic, kind of soulful, genuine.

Okay, so I can try lay off the rapid-judge thing for a while.

First two lines is rejection. Maybe a girl friend tossed him? Wanted an up-from-loser success trade-in?

Rest of lyric and all the on-screen video is about that success. World tour, different cities. Who he sings with.

Eat your heart out, lover.

Then comes quirky. A video dancer, a middle aged, near bald, overly bearded, white guy with a belly, looks like somebody’s grandfather, has some dance moves and loves Post Malone rap. Mike Alancourt comes from Jacksonville, calls himself Dancing Beardo Been dancing in his own videos, has a million or so views.

Here’s the background: Post Malone saw the Beardo online and invited him into this video, flew him to Arizona from Jacksonville, and asked him to join as back dancer on tour.

Want to see the words?

 

Leah Nobel is kind of weird, but in a good way. NPR did a piece on her a few years ago.

She wanted to compose music about the human experience, authentic music about real people. So she put ads in social media and haunted public places. She sought out and interviewed 100 people over three years. She based an album on those interviews, Running in Borrowed Shoes.

She later wanted to experiment with a more aggressive beat. She invented an alter-personality. As Hael, she created this a month ago.

She also does some minor rap as Lil Cheesecake.

Lyrics are published on Youtube. Click on SHOW MORE

 

I dunno why I have liked this ever since. I didn’t even hear it for three years after it was out. Comes from an English band, kind of off the wall.

Kelvin Swaby is the lead. He wrote the song. Mostly it comes from punk violence in London. A family member got in seriously deep. Tragic upheaval.

The theme is about being the biggest baddest winner who has to end up a loser, because that kind of reckless violence is a losing game. That’s my interpretation.

Kind of a cowboy theme with a heavy beat. Big bad guy gets beaten in the end. Town folk won’t take him forever so he has to go.

Want to see the words?
Continue reading “Short Change Hero by The Heavy“

 

I think of this as an ode to nihilism. The meaning seems to be that there is no meaning. The focus is on the inevitability of the end of life.

Still, the poetry about the absurdity of mortality, and the music that goes with it, are beautiful, at least to me.

The strange thing: I find the piece kind of exhilarating. Maybe it’s a sort of purging of hopelessness. Maybe it’s an elevating of self: if I have no purpose to which I need to be devoted, it means I am my own purpose.

Or maybe it’s just really good music.

Want to see the words?
I found them here.

 

Olly Anna is a Nashville based singer and producer. About 3 years ago, she discovered a flair for her own form of indie rap. I like it.

The lyrics don’t inspire. It’s the sound.
But if you want to see the words….

Continue reading “How Ya Like That – Olly Anna”

 

Sometimes I’m in the mood for mood music. Homer Gaines has been producing my sort of music for a quarter of a century.

Not full time, though.

His day job, in Atlanta GA, is computer program development.

He says he is inspired by Sumi-e, a Japanese drawing technique of brush, ink, and paper that strives for meaning from each brush stroke.

 
I have liked the music from the time I first heard it about 10 years ago. A high pitched male voice singing about freedom. It was a departure from the band’s usual motif.

Eventually, I listened to the words. I laughed at the humor of a bad sales pitch.

A friend tells me this is about innocence lost.

I think the words are about responsibility aversion and resulting loneliness. It’s an attempt to seduce without commitment. A one night stand being kind of brave and noble, all about freedom.

I still like the music, and the funny words.

A band member was interviewed by Billboard Magazine.

“I made an effort to make it positive cause I thought, ‘If this ever takes off I’m gonna be singing this every night, so I don’t want to be drawing negative energy to myself or projects’…”

“If you listen to the first record it’s all pretty positive imagery. I just want people to be uplifted from the record, feel energized from listening to it. So lyrically I can relate to it.”

Want to see the words?
Continue reading “Vagabond by Wolfmother”

 

I liked this song ever since I heard it in the early 1960s. The Dixie Cups made it a hit, then other groups picked it up. Its popularity kept getting bigger.

Until this week, I never knew the real story behind the song, or the brutality that took the songwriter out of circulation.

In the early 1950s James Crawford, with the stage name Sugar Boy, was already a local success in New Orleans. Native American rituals were the source of parts of city culture. He combined a couple of native chants he had heard and put the result to music. His group was invited to record the song. The record was a minor hit for a short time, then faded.

In 1963, his little group was headed for a gig in North New Orleans, when they were spotted by the Louisiana State Police. There was no infraction or reason for suspicion. The officers saw an expensive car driven by a young black man and knew that was just not right. During the stop, Crawford was insufficiently obsequious.

One state police officer didn’t like his attitude and beat him to a bloody pulp.
Continue reading “Iko Iko – The Dixie Cups”

 
Yeah, I suppose it’s disco Sunday. Been thinking about that for some reason.

KC was Harry Wayne Casey. He was a record store guy who scored a parttime gig at a small independent record label production company. He took a chance and started the band in the 1970s.

The group went out of and into and out of business with the sort of personality clashes that afflict a lot of human relationships. One stumble came when KC almost died in a car accident. KC retired in the mid 80s, then unretired in the 90s.

I was happy each time the group came back to life.

At the start, guitarist Jerome Smith drove much of the sound that made the Sunshine Band a success. But he was driven out by drug addiction a few years later.

Rumor was he was thinking of rejoining them when he was killed in a freak accident in 2000. He was driving a bulldozer, fell out of the cab, and was crushed.

The group was fading by then, surviving on the nostalgia scene. I wonder how music might have been if Jerome Smith had been there.

Lyrics? Really?

 
This was internationally popular in the 90s. It was on the first album by the group Black Box. I still like the sound. For me, it still captures the excitement of disco.

But it ran into some controversy. The extraordinary song writer and singer Martha Wash was not featured, or even credited. A member of the group, French Caribbean model Katrin Quinol, lip-synched the voice of Martha Wash.

It was a common pattern in those days. Katrin Quinol was sexy and lip-synched parts of most of the group’s songs. Martha Wash created and sang one hit after another for several groups, but her weight counted against her. She often received no credit and no royalties for her work.

Here she is singing live at a gay pride event a few years ago in Richmond, VA.

Here are the lyrics