Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
TIMESTAMPS
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20110529035846/http://www.yourdrum.com:80/yourdrum/music/
Ray Lamontagne sings with a melancholy tinge in his voice but that's what heartbreak sounds like. His last album is getting great reviews. It's hard not to like Ray. He seems so sincere in misery and sometimes, just bursts right out of it.
"How do you follow a debut record that achieved out-of-the-blue grandeur on its way to selling a quarter of a million copies? For Maine’s Ray LaMontagne, it’s all about shaking up the formula, evading repetition and delivering the unexpected. Till the Sun Turns Black finds the introspective singer/songwriter complementing his folk-country ways with traces of strings and horns and spooky soulful background voices." Amazon
Who can't remember all the Motown hits from Berry Gordy's stable of amazing artists - Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Glaydis Knight, the list goes on.
Motown Hits of 1968 is out.
Various Artists The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 8: 1968 Link
1968 was a very tumultuous year - "James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" essentially erased the word "negro" from polite conversation, the Beatles spent the spring at an ashram overlooking the Ganges and much of the fall riding the six-minute "Hey Jude" up the pop chart, Sly & the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" brought funk to more ears than anything before it, and it's hard to shake the feeling that maybe silly love songs aren't always going to cut it when you're watching reports on the Tet Offensive on CBS and your brother is in Vietnam. And so it was that a few of Motown's biggest hits in 1968 pointed in new directions: The Temptations took us on a gritty funk odyssey to "Cloud Nine", Marvin Gaye's harrowing, intense version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" finally saw release after a year and a half in the can, and the Supremes topped the charts with the social commentary of "Love Child." Link
After being part of a Winter Storm which has dumped snow and ice on the Northeast, I like to lay back with some Ambient music. The release of Pop Ambient 2008 fills the bill.
"The new "Pop Ambient" compilation is full of the sound of the season: wintry, placid and subdued, but with that drowsily optimistic feel of a sunny snow-filled day. " Listen
"The term "ambient music" was first coined by Brian Eno in the mid-1970s to refer to music that can be either "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener"
Music Video from Markus Guentner, one of the musicians on Pop Ambient 2008.
Haale an Iranian-American sings Psychedlic Sufi music. She is influenced by her Persian ancestors and the sixties music of the Doors and the Velvet Underground."
"A combination of Jim Morrison, Nico, Edith Piaf, and Selma Hayek...Haale's voice was playful, sultry, and nuanced; she could wail over the din as well as coax a melody out of her breath... The 90-minute set seemed to pass in a blink." Metroland
Sigur Ros, an Icelandic group, whose singing is actually gibberish - it means nothing, makes beautiful music for any occasion. They inspire me with their magical, mythical sound. Link
"Not exactly a new album, but this lovely new Sigur Ros record is full of all new material and is practically TWO new albums if you're gonna be fair. The first five tracks are unreleased rarities from the band's archives, three unheard numbers and a couple of radical re-workings of tracks from "Von", their arresting 1997 debut. Then you get six more breathtaking live acoustic versions of classic Sigur Ros, for an irresistible package.' Listen
I saw on Ovation TV a wonderful film about Harry Smith. I had heard of Harry and his collection of Folk music.
"The Anthology of American Folk Music is a compilation of eighty-four folk and country music recordings that were released as 78 rpm records in the 1920s and 1930s. The compilation was originally released in 1952 as a collection of six LPs. The collection is famous due to its role as a touchstone for the US folk music revival in the 1950s and 1960s. The anthology was compiled in 1952 by Harry Smith, a bohemian who lived in Berkeley, California in the late 1940s and 1950s." Link
But really never knew of Harry Smith's accomplishments.
"Harry Smith was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms." Link
Now you can visit the world of Harry Smith through the The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology Of American Folk Music Revisited (2 CD/2 DVD BOX SET)
"Spread across two CDs and a pair of DVD's are a rich slate of performances captured in Los Angeles, New York, and London in 1999 and 2001, as well as documentary material about Smith's own pioneering efforts that helped inspire them. Beck and Lou Reed spin spare, harrowing takes on blues godfathers Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, respectively, while Elvis Costello, Wilco, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, Van Dyke Parks, the McGarrigles, and others offer up covers characterized by varying degrees of reverence." Amazon
Richard Thomas: "Coco Bird" from Harry Smith Project
The Eagles have a new two disc cd,"Long Road Out of Eden" that has hit #1. The sound is the same smooth 70's harmonies and lead vocals touching on California decadence, country, love ballads and social issues that have made the Eagles sound so unique.
Unfortunately, you can only buy it at WalMart. What were they thinking?
Koop Island is a teriffic new album by who else but Koop. It's jazzy with a 30's and 40's vocal flavor mixed with Koops' electronica style. I especially liked Yukimi Nagano beautiful sultry voice.
TV On The Radio from Brooklyn is really a terrific band. Their jazzy, off beat bluesy rock sound is original. Their last cd, "Return To Cookie Mountain" 2006 is one you will listen to over again to hear the complexity of each song.
"Their second album and first for Interscope is almost wholly brilliant. Like Mogwai, Sigur Ros and a dozen others, TVOTR excels at making slowly-evolving tunes with vaguely anthemic choruses and lots of loud-soft dynamics. Unlike virtually any of those other bands, TV on the Radio mix a genuine and actual songwriting ability with their knack for finding sounds that appear to be "new." Amazon: Link
