Tom Hawking’s list of 50 albums everyone needs to own, with the caveat that he selected one album per year from 1963-2013 is the rarest of lists. It’s both a comprehensive musical overview of the last half century, touching on many necessary albums and cross-polluting plenty of genres, but it’s also one that is well [...]
Music
Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away yesterday afternoon from bile duct cancer. He was 74. The quasi-Baroque introduction Mr. Manzarek brought to the Doors’ 1967 single “Light My Fire“ — a song primarily written by Mr. Krieger — helped make it a million-seller. Along with classical music, Mr. Manzarek also [...]
There’s a Kickstarter going on right now to get a giant coffee table book made of the band’s early days. Seems like $75 is a bit spendy, but then again that’s probably the typical going rate for a big, beautiful, one-of-a-kind coffee table book. Any music history or Pixies fan will probably want this.
Yes, the obituary for Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening’s mother reads like something The Onion would conjure up. Here’s another interesting bit of Simpsons news: Icelandic band Sigur Rós is not just going to be a guest on the upcoming May 19th episode, but they are also going to score the episode with original music and [...]
The National, in collaboration with the Icelandic installation artist Ragnar Kjartansson, spent six hours inside a small geodesic dome in the courtyard of PS1 in Queens, an offshoot of the Modern Museum of Art, singing “Sorrow” non-stop. BECAUSE ART. “I like the tranciness of it,” Mikael Karlsson, a Swedish composer who lives in New York, [...]
So, Twitter launched a music service that lets users, gulp, find music that’s popular on Twitter and music based on the bands you follow, according to Joanna Stern. To listen to songs from the new app, Twitter has integrated with Rdio, Spotify and iTunes. The caveat is with iTunes, you will only hear a preview [...]
Nacho Guzman shot this teaser video for OPALE‘s upcoming album, “Sparkles and Wine”, that will be released in May. Guzman was inspired by the unfinished 1964 film L’Enfer by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It’s crazy this is achieved simply through lighting.
Universal Music decided to remix Anna Kendrick’s cup performance from Pitch Perfect into an actual single. Here she is making biscuits and biscuits in her first music video for her own song. It takes awhile for the song to get going, but Anna Kendrick MAKING BISCUITS. Oddly enough, Pitch Perfect was really good. Probably one [...]
There’s a Levon Helm documentary? Hellz to the muthafucking yes. Levon Helm was/is on my list for “if you could have three people over for dinner” question. I would just have him read me food labels and other mundane things. His voice is that good.
“The Exploding Hearts are the biggest “what if” in the history of Portland music.” So begins the Willamette Week’s fascinating look back at the ill-fated power-pop-punk band that released one album, ‘Guitar Romantic‘, ten years ago this week. Sadly, on the way home from a series of concerts in San Francisco just fourth months later, the [...]
