Throwback Thursday Morning Shuffle – Tying Faith Mix

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It seems like just about everybody is at or on their way to South by Southwest, but believe it or not there is still plenty of live music here in Nashville.

Last night, I headed to Bobby’s Idle Hour on Music Row – where every single Wednesday Sam Cooper hosts Sam’s Jams which runs from noon until 8:00p.m. with constant songwriters all day. Last night, Brock Zeman and Blair Hogan from Ottawa played their second Nashville show – this time an acoustic show which sounded amazing.

Back across the river to The 5 Spot for the AGD Entertainment Spotlight. It was great to see Adrian + Meredith (who sounded great with an awesome full band – including Paul Niehaus on guitar and pedal steel) and Patrick Kinsley and a Fistful of Dollars (who are consistently one of my favorite live bands in town).

Tonight is the CD Release show for Charlie Hager (I have featured some songs from his brand new album American Saga). The music gets underway at 7:00 and The Crying Wolf – and there is a stacked lineup of music going all night.

Now, it is Thursday, so let us throw it back… I mean… let us throwback to some great tunes from some non-specific number of years ago.

“When My First Wife Left Me” by R.L. Burnside

First up is song from blues legend R.L. Burnside. This song comes from his 1994 album, Too Bad Jim which was produced by the late journalist and producer Robert Palmer (who was not the “Addicted to Love” guy in case you were wondering).

“Summertime” by Janis Joplin

Another legend. In her short, troubled life, Janis Joplin left behind some incredible music. This is her take on a song from Porgy and Bess which was composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Dubose Heyward who wrote the novel from which Porgy and Bess is based. Ira Gershwin is also credited as lyricist on this song.

“Beg, Borrow and Steal” by Scruffy the Cat

A song from 1980s Boston band Scruffy the Cat. Blending power pop and punk with a mild country feel, they are among the many great bands who helped to create the alt-country/Americana music of today.

“Caroms” by fIREHOSE

Next up a track from the very first fIREHOSE album, Ragin’, Full On which was released in 1986. The band featured Mike Watt and George Hurley from Minutemen along with vocalist/guitarist Ed “fROMOHIO” Crawford.

“Backstreets” by Bruce Springsteen

When Bruce Springsteen classic album, Born to Run turned 40 years old at the end of last summer, I added to my phone and have been featuring it ever since. The album holds up really well – it stands as one of the best albums of all time, and it was one of my earliest favorite albums when I was first really getting music.

“From the Middle Room” by The Tourists

A non-album single from the British band that included Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart before their left to form Eurhythmics. The single was included as a promo with the band’s 1980 final studio album Luminous Basement. The song was written by Lennox and Stewart.

“Everyday People” by Jeff Buckley

A rare new release in the throwback shuffle. The compilation, You and I was released last week and includes recordings done in 1993. The album contains mostly cover songs including this cover of the Sly and the Family Stone classic.

“Old Dreams” by The Shakers

And we close out the throwback shuffle with another from the 1990 album, Songs from Beneath the Lake by Nashville band, The Shakers.

VIDEO PLAYLIST

Monday Morning Music Shuffle – Tarantula vs. Wasp Mix

Thank you Dawn for the subtitle of today’s shuffle.

Like we did last Monday, we shuffle up some of our classic tunes and play them back for you…

First up, we have one of the most exquisitely perfect Pop songs of all time by a master of the genre from his very first album. Marshall Crenshaw was released in April 1982 (30 years!) and Someday, Someway got played on Casey Kasem‘s American Top 40. Blah blah… let’s get to the song (a nice way to start a cruddy Monday morning).

For our second song of the morning, we go back another 11 years or so for a song written by Kris Kristofferson. Janis Joplin died in October 1970, and her version of the song was released in January 1971. It turned out to be her only Number One song. It appeared on her classic album Pearl.

Now we go back another five years or so to a song released around the time I turned one month old. Since I seem to be unusually obsessed with Billboard chart positions, this song reach #5. So there.

Homeward Bound is from Simon & Garfunkel’s album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. This song always comes to my mind when I am in the final leg of a return from a long vacation.

That last video was recorded at the Monterey Pop festival in 1967. The final song in this morning’s shuffle was recorded just two days later. For What It’s Worth was originally released on Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled debut album.

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Affiliated Links

Rhino Hi-Five: Marshall Crenshaw
Rhino Hi-Five: Marshall Crenshaw

Janis Joplin Janis Collage Spiral Dye Men’s T-shirt
JANIS COLLAGE – MEN’S T-SHIRT

Classic Paul Simon – The Simon and Garfunkel Years
The music from four landmark albums. Bookends, Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Sounds Of Silence, and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.

Monterey Pop – Fullscreen Dolby
The first concert film of the rock & roll era, Monterey Pop is an invaluable record of some of the major musical figures of the late 1960s. The organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival, held June 16-18, 1967, wisely chose to record the proceedings on film for commercial distribution. Even if some of the festival’s big acts — The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, and Buffalo Springfield — didn’t make the final cut for various reasons, the roster of performers who did reads like a who’s who of the era: Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin), Simon & Garfunkel, and The Mamas and the Papas (that group’s leader, John Phillips, was one of the festival’s principal organizers). The festival’s “international” tag is well-earned by one performer in the film: Ravi Shankar, whose final-day performance was one of the festival’s highlights and closes the movie on an exuberant note. Though the festival seemed to be anticipating nearby San Francisco’s Summer of Love, the film chooses to concentrate on the musical performers, with only brief intimations of the burgeoning counterculture. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Thursday Morning Music (Covers) – Pride & Joy Mix

Day 3 of no morning music: the crisis continues. Today is the day, I would normally be presenting some interesting covers songs, and but so, I was thinking about Covers on my way in to work – what makes a great cover, a good cover, a failed cover or a pointless cover.

Of course it is all subjective, but here goes my take on that subject at least for the time being:

A great cover can happen when a great artist takes on a great song and owns it. In many cases, over time, some people may even forget that the song is a cover – take Janis Joplin’s definitive version of Kris Kristofferson’s Me & Bobby McGee. Or this cover:

Another situation which can produce a great cover occurs when an artist you love deconstructs some over-produced popular song of the day. I recently heard Ryan Adams version of the Ratt song Round and Round. But, one of my all-time favorite examples is this track:

Of course,there are also some really cool deconstructed versions of some really cool songs. Case in point, Grant Lee Phillips outstanding album nineteeneighties which features tracks like this one: