Tag Archive

Last week, the pop of the one they jokingly call Barely Man-enough. This week, early Randy Newman from the beginning of the disco decade. I wonder what Newman thought of Manilow. The style seems to pay homage to lots of American roots music. I hear New Orleans, maybe even his contemporary, Dr. John (Newman lived there as a kid and …

It was only a matter of time before we featured disco. The video shows a younger Barry Manilow during a stage show. I saw him live in the early 2000s, and he was doing the same stuff–props and all–but with much better stage presence. Laugh at disco if you want; it won’t mind. As my prog-oriented dad always said, “Disco …

I’ve not only featured this artist before, but this very album. It’s just that good. In my youth, Dad would walk around quoting this one: “Hey señorita, that’s astute. Why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute?”

This may be our first Top of the Pops video. Spiritualized are not the standard guitar/bass/drums rock combo. I’m not even sure they use verse-chorus-bridge song structure. They certainly have a sound all their own.

The dated hairstyles. The music videos with absurdist plot lines. It can only be the ’80s. Great synthesizer work ALSO makes rock better (see: the Cars). This number features a nasty synth break … followed by a sweet horn break, courtesy of the TKO Horns. (They also worked with Elvis Costello, but I love his work with the Dirty Dozen …

I brought up Napster earlier this week. Ed Harcourt was another of my early Napster finds, thanks to a blurb in Q magazine about his self-produced (and -performed and -mixed and …) debut EP. A song on that EP always reminds me of dating my future wife. Here’s another song from the EP that carried over to his actual album …

They Might Be Giants are my favorite American band. Fun is the keyword. When they performed at my alma mater, there was a confetti cannon. And a conga line. They recently released a free live album that covered their different eras. It was great to hear them in their original, 1980s format (guitar, accordion, drum machine). But I sure loved …

Apologies for the swearing of a cuss or two. This is from a lovely little movie about an Irish soul band. Yes, that is the teen actor’s actual voice. I give you the Commitments.

This week’s rock song is more rock-adjacent. Banda music is what happened to brass bands when they made it to Mexico. (That’s the Mark Ramsay version, anyway. You can hear some German oom-pah in it.) This one’s in honor of Marta, a Mexican lady I know who had to leave the country to take care of her dying father. She …