The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #06: Bowie Covers (And Super Creeps)
Published on December 10th, 2015 in: Music, Podcasts |
Less Lee Moore and Jeffery X Martin examine the wide variety of cover versions of the songs of David Bowie, focusing on Cleopatra Records’ release A Salute to the Thin White Duke, the female-fronted Spiders from Venus album, and others. The show concludes with a discussion of Bowie’s single/video release, “Blackstar.”
Links:
A Salute to the Thin White Duke
Today In Pop Culture: 50 Years of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”
Published on December 9th, 2015 in: Holidays, Music, Retrovirus, Today In Pop Culture, TV |
Not only does it have the greatest dance scene ever committed to celluloid (you know it’s true), but A Charlie Brown Christmas is also one of the most well-loved television specials of all time. It works on many different levels and, even though it has definite Christian leanings, the cartoon crosses those potentially limiting boundaries with a sophistication that bursts through the lines of what was expected of a child’s entertainment.
Music Review: Hedersleben, The Fall Of Chronopolis
Published on December 8th, 2015 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |By Tim Murr
From the book description on Amazon.com:
“The mighty ships of the Third Time Fleet relentlessly patrolled the Chronotic Empire’s thousand-year frontier, blotting out an error of history here or there before swooping back to challenge other time-traveling civilizations far into the future.
Captain Mond Aton had been proud to serve in such a fleet. But now, falsely convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, he had been given the cruelest of sentences: to be sent unprotected into time as a lone messenger between the cruising time-ships. After such an inconceivable experience in the endless voids there was only one option left to him.
To be allowed to die.”
—The Fall of Chronopolis by Barrington J. Bayley
Today in Pop Culture: Circuitbreakers
Published on December 8th, 2015 in: Music, Today In Pop Culture |By Jeffery X Martin\
Today is the day that John Lennon was shot to death outside the Chelsea by some asshole who seriously misinterpreted The Catcher in the Rye. I’ve read that book. I missed the part about killing rock stars.
Music Review: Saber Tiger, The Best Of Saber Tiger
Published on December 8th, 2015 in: Culture Shock, Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |By Tim Murr
The more you learn, the less you know. Sapporo, Japan’s Saber Tiger have been rocking since 1981, making them an official classic metal band. Until I received this album to review, however, I’d never heard of them!
Music Review: Nat King Cole, The Christmas Song
Published on December 8th, 2015 in: Current Faves, Holidays, Music, Music Reviews, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews |
Nat King Cole’s album The Christmas Song is a masterpiece. Year after year, Cole’s dulcet tones fill the airwaves, kindling warm feelings of nostalgia through his tracks. The songs on The Christmas Songs are (save one, the little-heard “A Cradle In Bethlehem”) classics, and Cole’s performances are easy, understated treasures.
Today in Pop Culture: The Songs of Pearl Harbor
Published on December 7th, 2015 in: Culture Shock, Music |
Destroyer USS Shaw exploding after her forward magazine was detonated. Image from Wikipedia.
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember that right after the Towers fell on 9/11, the American airwaves were filled with something akin to patriotic music, vowing revenge against the attackers. Toby Keith famously sang about the USA putting “a boot up their ass / It’s the American way.” Alan Jackson urged us never to forget by asking us where we were “when the world stopped turning.”
Music Review: Shovels & Rope, Busted Jukebox, Vol. 1
Published on December 7th, 2015 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |
When a band releases an all covers album, sometimes the things revealed by their choices are baffling (I’m looking at you still, Duran Duran). When a band like Shovels & Rope release an all covers album, their choices are illuminating.
Today in Pop Culture: We Said Goodbye To Frank Zappa
Published on December 4th, 2015 in: Eulogy, Music, Today In Pop Culture |
Frank Zappa died today in 1993.
Calling Frank Zappa “influential” is like saying ghost peppers will leave a mild burning sensation in your mouth after you eat them. It’s like saying water is wet. The sky is blue. The legend and legacy of Frank Zappa are elemental. He took music and made it his bitch.
His beautiful, happy, gleaming and weeping submissive bitch.
These Conversations Kill: RIP Scott Weiland
Published on December 4th, 2015 in: Eulogy, Music |
“I thought he was already dead.”
The internet response to the passing of singer Scott Weiland has been somewhat disheartening to observe. Instead of focusing on the fact that a human being has died, one who had a tremendous impact on an entire generation of music fans, the choice has been made to focus on the fact that Weiland did drugs. Scott Weiland’s dead? It must have been an overdose.