// Category Archive for: Music

Kamtin Mohager, The Chain Gang Of 1974: Best Of 2011

Top Ten Albums of 2011
10. Weatherbox, Follow The Rattle Of The Afghan Guitar
9. Yuck, Yuck
8. The Shore, Light Years
7. The Damnwells, No One Listens To The Band Anymore
6. Low, C’mon
5. Ringo Deathstarr, Colour Trip
4. Dawes, Nothing Is Wrong
3. The Morning After Girls, Alone
2. The Horrors, Skying
1. Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders, Hurtsville

Kamtin Mohager is The Chain Gang Of 1974. Their most recent album, Wayward Fire, was released on June 21. For more on the band, check them out on their website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Christmas: A Celebration Of A Birth Marked With Death

By Maureen

Everyone has their favorite holiday classics to sing along to while trimming a tree, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, or traveling to be with loved ones. But has anyone ever stopped to think about what’s actually behind most holiday songs?

One in particular has always struck me as incredibly confusing. “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” is heard all over the world in many different iterations, but the gist is always the same. This is the least-festive holiday song ever! Someone’s grandmother is killed in a freak accident, and their first question is what to do about her presents?! It’s like the Asshole National Anthem. (more…)

They Came From The ’70s: Five Faves I Still Enjoy

By Julie Finley

Although for some of these artists, fame came before or after the 1970s, I am solely focusing on their 1970s stuff.
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Seven Songs From The Seventies

By Less Lee Moore

Japan’s David Sylvian tries to forget.

How to sum up a decade’s worth of music in one list? Bubblegum, country, disco, glam, power pop, punk, post punk, new wave, rock & roll, heavy metal, rap, show tunes . . . the ’70s had all of that and more.

Rather than trying to squeeze in every style that the 1970s presented, I picked seven songs that represent some of the decade’s most compelling—and perhaps unexpected—musical offerings.

The most interesting thing about this list is that I didn’t know about these songs until after the 1970s were over. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one, but I just followed my instincts.
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Bryan Ferry: Too Classy For Clevehole

Text and all photos by Julie Finley

Playhouse Square, Cleveland OH
October 10, 2011

So, I am standing on the street in Clevehole, waiting for the bus after work. I look across the street, and see demolition and one condemned building still standing (because the owners won’t sell; they think their condemnation is a gold-mine . . . WRONG!). I look kitty-corner, I see two thugs arguing. I look at the other corner, I see constant construction that will probably run out of money before it’s complete. Three of the four sidewalks are closed. Some sketchy guy is eyeballing me. I am grinding my teeth. I see some rusty, piece-of-shit Chevy Cavalier with a booming system cut off three lanes of traffic, and one jaywalker playing virtual Frogger in the midst of traffic.

I think to myself, “This is what Bryan Ferry is gonna see when his tour bus pulls into downtown Cleveland!” I am filled with disgust! Bryan Ferry IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS BULLSHIT . . . and frankly, SO AM I!
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The Stooges: Head On, By Brett Callwood

By Less Lee Moore

The Stooges are legendary, but that word implies events from long ago, where the facts are less important than romantic myths. At this point in time, Iggy Pop is famous, while The Stooges have always been more infamous than anything else. But even if your mom has heard of Iggy Pop, she may not know much about The Stooges. Brett Callwood’s book, Head On, seeks to enlighten those who don’t know much about the untold history of this essential and influential Detroit band who came into being well before the so-called punk movement of the mid-1970s.

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Summer Of Grease

By David Speranza

I can’t speak for any adults at the time, but for those of us in our teens when the movie version of Grease hit theaters in 1978, it was more than just the latest in a line of summer-movie blockbusters (a concept that was still fairly new). Imagine, if you dare, two or three Twilight movies condensed into a single summer, with a hit soundtrack by Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. Grease—with its catchy, inexhaustible pop tunes—represented the crest of the 1950s nostalgia that had been coursing through the decade.
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Can’t Fight The Fever

By David Speranza

When the movie Saturday Night Fever was released in December of 1977, it became a smash critical and popular success that delivered disco to the masses, John Travolta to movie theaters, and a soundtrack that became the biggest-selling of all time. But in my household, the film’s influence was precisely . . . nil. Considering my family’s strict rock & roll diet, at 13 I didn’t have to be told that a movie about disco was persona non grata. (Say it with me now: “Disco sucks.”) But beyond hewing to the party line, we also thought those high-pitched Bee Gee voices were whiny, nasal, and annoyingly ubiquitous in the months following the film’s release.

And those voices—along with the other Fever songs cramming the airwaves—were everywhere. I don’t remember how many times we’d be driving somewhere when that thumping bass and Gibb-brother whine would suddenly infect the car radio, causing one or the other Woodstock-era parent to reach violently for the tuner with a stream of R-rated invective. I knew the rules: if it had a dance beat, it was shunned—as clear as the laws of physics.
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So They Were Stars: The Razzle Dazzle Rockin’ Reign of the Hudson Brothers

By Cait Brennan

The Bible says music tore down the mighty walls of Jericho. In the 1960s and ’70s, rock and roll did the same for a generation of girls and young women. The rise of pop culture brought women and girls an unprecedented level of freedom, power, and influence. Perhaps it can’t quite be called “feminist,” and it may seem like a small thing, but before the mid-’60s, before the Beatles and Monkees, who could have imagined whole magazines devoted to pin-up boys?
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Linda Ronstadt: Not So Easy

By David Speranza

She’s not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She’s shockingly absent from Rolling Stone‘s list of Top 100 Singers. And yet in the 1970s she went where no woman had gone before, a female superstar in a male realm, clearing the way for the generations of pop, rock, and country superstars to come. She was featured on six Rolling Stone covers, the covers of Time and Newsweek, and received such appellations as “queen of rock,” “first lady of rock,” “rock’s superwoman,” and “top female pop singer of the decade.”

She was the first artist since the Beatles—and the first woman ever—to have two Top Five singles at the same time. Her string of multi-platinum albums and unprecedented (for a woman) arena rock shows made her the highest-paid female musician of the decade. Critical approval included a satchel-ful of Grammys, multiple Vocalist of the Year awards, and a date singing “The Star Spangled Banner” at Game Three of the 1978 World Series. Her voice was a technically perfect yet heartfelt instrument capable of expressing a multitude of emotions in an intimidating array of styles. Where female rockers were concerned, there was Linda Ronstadt—and there was everyone else.
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