Courtney Barnett's newest "Tell Me How You Really Feel".

She can do no wrong it seems. Her album collaboration with Kurt Vile was amazing. Her 2015 album "Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit" was in my top 10 of the year. Then there was "The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas" compilation from the year before.

i'd love to see her in concert if she came around here & i could afford to go. But for now, she's got a great new album. She's from Down Under, so the Aussies oughta be here promoting her, too.

The K7s "Take 1" album

They're a new band on the Rum Bar label which basically only releases hard rock, power pop and punkish power rock. The K7s mix Ramones-like punk pop with crunchy power pop into short less than 3 minutes songs with a lotta fun. Excellent album.

Ivan Motosserra Surf & Trash

They're a surf instrumental band from Brazil. Real good stuff. Who needs singing & lyrics?

Ruby Velle & the Soulphonics "It's About Time"

Very soulful album though it's not their most recent which i have but haven't heard yet. She sounds a little bit like a soul version of Adele.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

i've been listening to her new album, "Years", a lot lately. She can be categorized as outlaw country or a blend of insurgent country and cowpunk. There's a punk attitude in some of the songs and in others songs, there's that broken heart honky-tonk kind of hurt.

i like the new album better than her first one, "Sidelong" though both are good.

"Years" can be heard in its entirety here on bandcamp-

https://sarahshookthedisarmers.bandcamp.com

-They only allow a couple songs off the older album, i'm not sure why that is.

I go ten pin bowling once a week and the drive there takes about 30 minutes.

Rather than music, I've been listening to Big Finish audio dramas for Dr Who and Blake's 7.

They are loads of fun, with the actors all relishing another chance to play the characters they know so well.

Before the Big Finish stuff I had three albums in heavy rotation:

David Bowie, Singles

All the songs he ever released as a single. I think there are over twenty tracks on this release.

Some really classic tracks like Changes, TVC15, Heroes.

If you can't find something here to love, you're just not trying.

Lizzie the Musical

This sounds like it should be a disaster but it is just too awesome for words.

The story of Lizzie Borden the axe murderer, sung by four women who know how to rock, backed by a band that really wails.

Lock up your daughters.

The Runaways, Queens of Noise

Their first self-titled album has their most well-known hit, Cherry Bomb, but in my opinion this is the more solid offering.

Cherie Currie's vocale on Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin take this into the stratosphere.

The oft overlooked Joan Jett lays down the title track like the ballsy badarse that she is.

Sandy West, Jackie Fox and Jett lay down a tight, expressive rhythm section, which West recorded without using a click track. Unheard of, in this day and age.

Lita Ford is the secret weapon of the group, with blisteringly fast guitar riffs that sound as fresh as the day she shredded them.

A lot of people hate the final track, Johnny Guitar. It is growing on me. Probably helps that I stuck the Currie twins' Since You've Been Gone after it, on my iPhone. Makes everything end on a more upbeat note.

Currently listening to the latest from the Last Poets, their first new album in over 20 years, called "Understand What Black Is".

Lyrically, it's very topical, as is all their music. It's very soulful, too, a mix of jazz & Curtis Mayfield-type R&B with some light hip-hop beats now & then.

i love when great music like this is on Bandcamp & you can listen to the whole thing before deciding to purchase or not.

https://thelastpoets.bandcamp....rstand-what-black-is

I used Spotify for a while, when out and about, but only use it at home occasionally now.

It just ate up way too much bandwidth.

Now I will listen to an album on YouTube first, to see whether I will buy it.

This is for XC...mostly


https://www.youtube.com/watch?...eature=youtu.be&t=25

it caught me totally by surprise...tho I might just be late to the party.

quote:

Originally posted by Brucy Braless:
This is for XC...mostly


https://www.youtube.com/watch?...eature=youtu.be&t=25

it caught me totally by surprise...tho I might just be late to the party.

Are you talking about the song or the video? i prefer the Vapors original to her cover but Kristin does look better with blue hair so the video is pretty cool.

i don't do Youtube much anymore, not with Bandcamp and Soundcloud providing so much great music.

But i do like this song which i found on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD3Xcn9Aaso

Yes I was previously familiar with the song.
Wasnt overly impressed..then
but I followed a blind link ...like I left here.

totally expecting some dumb video Id regret clickin on.

I thought Kristin looked young but I figured it was the outfit
& all but thats from 2009!!!

I dont really watch Music Videos ...
so stuff like that is really fresh to me.


About your link .. its not bad!

But its suffers from something that bugs me about most modern music..

It VERY repetitive...incomplete feeling almost.

Sort of ..Hay we came up with a hook lets just use that ..
why make a full/real song.

by the time it was 1/2 way thru I felt like I had heard it many times already.
Im not sure when that started ..
but its a true detriment to music, I would say.

Like gum that loses its flavor after a few Chaws..LoL
Know what I mean..?

I'm going to click on xc's link to hear the song for myself, but regarding modern music, Brucy, I have noticed that repetitiveness, and it gets on my last nerve. It's not just the same melody over and over, either. That's fine, so long as the music builds, and has a growing 'feeling" with every phrase,as if someone is telling a story with a beginning, middle and an end.
Like Ravel's "Bolero." It's classical and it's also such an inspiring piece...it was in the movie "10," I heard, which skyrocketed Bo Derek's career. She was so sexy and beautiful and that piece, I'd heard was used in a love scene between her and Dudley Moore. I never actually saw the movie cuz when it was out it was just SO popular, as was Bo Derek...and I thought it was kinda sexist then too the way they made her up as such a sex symbol. I've been meaning to watch it at some point, maybe I will, but I won't get into movies and go off topic.

For a classical music piece, I think "Bolero" became popular with more than just classical music buffs, cuz of that movie. It was certainly a helluva good sex soundtrack, complete with the ending "climax" to coin a phrase. But it has the same melodic phrase over and over again. A lot of classic rock/pop tunes have the same thing. "Moonlight Drive" by the Doors, which I was just listening to, is one of them.

But the production of today's music is formulated. Just slap it in and keep it going throughout the tune, reverb the singer's voice and keep it stilted all the way through. The singer could even be better than all that but lol, gotta sell a product, right?? It ends up sounding like a bunch of computers in sync. I'd rather listen to ring tones or sound notifications of texts or DM's strung together. Musak sounds better.

The 80's were kind of a dawning of synthesizers with instruments like guitar, bass and even violin just requiring basic keyboard skills to be played. But looking back, while I thumbed my nose at the 80's music when I was in high school then...the "modern" music of that time? Was a lot more heartfelt than it is now. xc and I, in this thread, have briefly discussed from time to time, classic rock/pop music and how so many people gravitate toward it. I get the appeal of being in the now and appreciating what is relevant today. And...lol I'll be fair by saying there may come a time, should I live to be 20 years older, when I look back and even Justin Bieber seems more heartfelt than whatever ends up happening with music 20 years from now. Heh...that's a lot for me to say cuz truth be known, every time I hear a Justin Bieber song I feel a bit of my soul being sucked out of me. That's just me, though, I realize others may feel differently.

God I miss the 90's!!! It was such a breakout of a kind of prison musicians felt they were in.
My generation as well...we were all, most of us, brainwashed not only by formulated commercialism in the music industry but by politics and social awareness as well. The 90's came and Nirvana hit the scene, then others like Pearl Jam, Soundgarten, Green Day, and others. Grunge music introduced cool new styles of messy, unkempt hair as opposed to the big, teased up hair of the 80's. I used to wash my hair in high school and just wrap it up in a hat, not even bothering to brush it. Kind of my own diversion from the pushy styles of the 80's as well as the music. I blared Bruce Springsteen and Cream on my Walkman and walked around the hallways in my own world lol. Then Grunge comes and I couldn't help but wonder...did I start that in my own way? Heh, well me and a million other underground "rejects" from the time.

But that was what music was about you know? Finding a place where we belonged, those of us who didn't quite fit in with the so-called norm. It was our home, our identity. And today's music...it just seems like it took all the emotions out of it, the stories the individuality.

Lol, here I am going on a tirade but I think y'all know what I m ean.

One musician I will say from today who rocks my world because he is inspired by old blues from the 30's as well as later classic rock? Is Jack White. He is one of a kind. I love his tunes. The White Stripes came out in the 2000's, and I loved the rawness of just the two of them playing onstage. That rocked. Meg's drumming, simple and pure, was just perfect for it. Jack expanded a lot after they broke up and some may not like it...but he has this purity about him that resonates with me. It's not just someone getting up there and saying, "oh, I'm so glad the song is number 1 on the charts!" Rotflmao, then talking about a feud they're having with another musician, or whatnot. Oh well.

Anyway...lately I've been checking out Nighwish, whose album in 2015, "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" just is golden. Yep, another modern band, so there you go, not all modern bands are the same. Again, xc I will check out your link. Nightwish is from Finnland, so maybe they do things differently there, and I don't know how often they work in the States other than touring. In keeping with the nature of this thread, altho it's fun to discuss music as well...here is a video of Nightwish's "Greatest Show on Earth." I will check out Bandcamp and that other one...mostly I put on YouTube vids just to hear the music. Lyric videos are my favorite really so I can sing along.
There are many pearls even if a lot of the sea is full of dead oysters.

Nightwish--"The Greatest Show on Earth."
NOTE: This opens a third of the way thru the song, since I was listening to it while writing this post, so start at the beginning to get the whole effect.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Free Madness,

Repetitiveness in music. The Wargirl song is mostly funk rock which is a repetitive genre & has been since the days of James Brown. It's really a key element of funk. Disco took the repetitiveness to what i consider a nauseous extreme.

But music being repetitive, as far as my ears are concerned, is more prevalent in classic rock/soul/pop and today's pop music than today's alt-rock and indie-rock because older music was meant to be hit singles and needed that repetitive hook or beat. It doesn't mean the alternative & indie rock of today is free of being repetitive, i think it's just less so. But rock isn't all i like, i like funk, alt-country, garage, prog, world music, etc. i don't think repetitiveness is bad at all when done right. If the beat, rhythm or hook is right, then keep on keepin' on.

Kate, when you talk about '80s music i don't think about new wave, hair bands or synth bands. To me the '80s meant the Paisley Underground (Green On Red, Dream Syndicate, True West), post-punk (my beloved Sonic Youth) and music scenes around the world that produced some great artists like the Replacements, Yo La Tengo, the Pixies, the Triffids, Daniel Johnston, Marti Jones, Bevis Frond, etc. Of course, these artists never were played on mainstream FM radio, unless it was way past midnight. College radio in the '80s was really great but became too commercialized when grunge & post-rock came along.

In the 90's, i listened to some grunge but Cobain & his wife made me sick of their music very quickly. That's went i began listening to the fringe genres like surf, ska, swing, power pop, alt-country, prog, psych, Afro-funk, garage and electronica. I can appreciate Nirvana better now. But the '90s were too Guns N' Roses sounding for me & then the turn of the century brought too many bands that sounded like Dave Matthews- eww!

These days, radio misrepresents music in a worse way than ever before. It's such a joke. There are plenty of great artists & as in every decade- a lot of junk. The so-called classic eras of the '60s & '70s had plenty of garbage acts- groups who would attempt to copy the sound of a popular artist or one-hit wonder bands with maybe one other decent song on their albums. Today, with Bandcamp, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc., everybody & their brother has a song or album out. A lot of it's great, a lot is junk. Try CD Baby & check out the excess in garbage.

At the same time, there's so much great stuff out there that is not being heard because nothing gets promoted like it used to. It's easy for thousand of people these days to have a favorite band that millions have never heard or even heard of. Plus a great artist today may only release an album or two because there's no more A&R people to oversee artistic development.

I did hear the link you posted, Kate, and it's good.

Two of my favorite albums this year: From the prolific Ty Segall-

https://tysegall.bandcamp.com/album/freedoms-goblin

and from Courtney Barnett, from Down Under:

https://courtneybarnett.bandca...-how-you-really-feel

xc you know what you just reminded me of??? A friend of mine who once said something to me along the lines of, "You are hooked on the mainstream, you seek safety there, you need to branch out and check out the underground, it's nice here!!!"

Lol I'm paraphrasing that cuz that's literally what I'm telling myself right now. When you talked about all the 80's bands you remember xc all I could think of was, "I COULDA HAD A V8!!!"

My friend Gerry was in a band called Sandoz Lime for awhile...Sundown was his stage name. They actually had a nice li'l career overseas for awhile, playing punk or garage rock. I don't know if you ever heard of them, xc but you might be able to find some of their tunes. A couple of them are on Youtube.

Sundown could sing like no one's business, still can! He was 11 years old in '67 when I was born, and lived all that music but really loved the underground stuff no one talked about. He used to sit me down and introduce me to certain bands and singers...old and new I'd fall in love with them of course. Ellen Foley, Anti-Nowhere League, Suzy Quattro, etc.

I began with all the top 40 shit in 1982 when my sister insisted I listen to WIFI 92, the radio station in Philly that played all the rock, pop and New Wave bands like Blondie, Pink Floyd, Missing Persons, etc. all the shit popular in 1982.

Most of the 80's bands you mentioned, xc I never even heard of.

Shows me what I missed when I was staying stagnant in the mainstream, lamenting all the 70's bands that "sold out," like Heart, Steve Wynwood, Starship(BARF), and clinging hard to people like Sting, U2, Eric Clapton and Patti Smith who kept some of their old integrity alive even into the 80's mainstream.

I don't think I got the concept that it was nice underground and you could probably make a decent living even if the world really didn't know you. I used to think we all had to "change the world," like John Lennon and Yoko Ono tried to do. I used to think getting a LOT of people to listen and TALK about you was the way to make a difference. Most of the people squatting in abandoned houses, getting their meals from soup kitchens, their clothes from clothing drops, those who just dropped out of society's expectations, they knew what they were doing. I never felt like they understood or accepted me which is why I never really cleaved to their world. I always needed to belong somewhere...wherever it was. My family had turned me out without actually tossing me from the house...cuz of many reasons all to do with becoming a teenager. They were my foundation, and everything was politics and classical music by the 80's. They'd turned away from mainstream when the folk, Elvis and Beatles went away after the 70's, only being played in nostalgia specials on VH1 to remember John Lennon on the anniversary of his death. But when I lost my place in my family I never found it anywhere else even though I tried. Anyway, this is just one person's experience but I wish I'd known about a lot of that music and gave it a listen. I was trying to be visible cuz I really wanted a music career of my own, like, CRAVED it. I needed to show myself that I could do something, and I thought it had to be HUGE in order to free me from the emptiness inside. It was impossible to try to get an actual CAREER as a musician and singer without having to learn how to crack the commercial code. At least I thought so cuz everyone I talked to at bars when I'd try to play there would say, 'We need more than just your little acoustic guitar and your voice that sounds like Joni Mitchell. We need big hair and an actual band." Lmao.

Ah well! I could've been a contender we all seen the movie. Moving on. I'm glad to be alive and can catch up on shit. I have shared here that recently I'd discovered bands like Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy and the Mission and others. xc you're right about every decade having its dead music and alive music. Oh well...

I'm glad you liked the song, xc! I got kind of busy chatting with family about my Dad's memorial, coming up at the end of the month, but I'll check out the link you posted. Need to learn some new music!!!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Free Madness,

i like Jim James new solo album. For them that don't know, he's the guitarist for My Morning Jacket and he's also in the Monsters Of Folk supergroup. His new album is called "Uniform Distortion" which is more rock 'n' roll oriented than other albums he's released.

I like his guitar playing, it reminds me of Jack White in the White Stripes.

Here's a video off the album-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmya6hUzVhE

I like that song, xc. "Here in Spirit" is cool too.

I'm listening to a playlist now of songs by Elliot Smith, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and others like that. I am totally drinking up Elliot Smith's "Between the Bars" as it's literally about me right now.

Yep..."separate from the rest, how I like it best."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...DxUe5k3YLcyQ&index=2

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Free Madness,

Hot Buttered Rum

They're a bluegrass/Americana band.

At times, there's a Tom Petty vibe to their music. Couldn't find anything recent from them on YouTube.

Listening to a 3 CD box set of mostly rare psych from the '60s.

Some of it i have heard before but most people would not have heard any of it before.

Theres only 1 Classical music station around here.

My mom listens to it in t5he car & was bemoaning that her 100s of CDs arent playable cause new Honda has no CD player.

But it Can play .mp3s offa USB stick.
I was SHOCKED by how little Classical music I have.

But I put a buncha stuff on it I know she'll like.

I ve just listened to
:

Singing Nun - Dominque
Astrud Gilberto - Girl from Ipanema
Mason Williams - Classical gas
Henry Mancini & His Orchestra - Peter Gunn Theme
TwoUnlimited - Get Ready forThis
Manfred Mann - Machines


And its only 4:49 in the morning....Nite is still young!

i have very little classical music, too, and all of it on vinyl.

i do have a cd of covers of classical music done up by a surf instrumental group. They add an extra oomph to the sound that i like.

I like all kinda music y'all know me.

I've just discovered Sara Bareilles. She's pretty cool. I'm doing a concert next Spring where they asked me to sing, "She Used to be Mine." I had never heard it before...it's from a Broadway show called "Waitress."

I haven't cried like that about a song in years...it sounds like the person who wrote it knew me really well...too well.

Classical music...I think of people like Puccini, Verdi, Bellini, Handel, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Berlioz, Wagner...all that awesome stuff I grew up on and sang for about 18 years. I do remember Classical Gas, that's a cool song. Always love Girl From Ipanema and the Peter Gunn theme. STAPLES, those.

Girl From Ipanema & Peter Gunn are more like original soundtrack music or lounge music to me. i like them but i can't lump them in with classical. Music To Watch Girls By and that lite jazz kinda stuff, that's what they also are as far as genres goes.

If i listen to classical, i like it upbeat. The same with jazz. Jazz is more experimental, stuff like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, that is wild & how i like it.

As far as instrumental music goes, surf is the word for me.

Yes!!

the list of songs is NOT Classical music...LoL

Thats just what I was listening to while I was prepping up the USB Sticks.

I did include those on there for her Except Manfre Mann.