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This is the place to say something, ask something or start something. How about you give away the secrets of your past?
Anyone see this movie?
Aug 312009
Aug 312009
Driving home from Maine in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, with my boys asleep in the back, my wife half out of it, and the iPod plugged into my car stereo and set to SHUFFLE, The Jam‘s “That’s Entertainment” came on. I had the volume down on the stereo so I wouldn’t wake anyone, but I started to get annoyed that I couldn’t follow the lyrics to this old favorite. I’m not married to lyrics – and I’m definitely not one of those people who search for a lyric sheet as soon as I buy a new album – but I’ve always like Paul Weller’s lyrics and will eventually pore over his latest set of words. I’ve always liked the lyrics to “That’s Entertainment,” but on this night, with the volume turned down, I couldn’t make out what he was singing. I had to stir my wife.
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Aug 302009
To begin the effort to answer this important question – and see that there is a victor in our Battle Royale – I’m gonna say “Everybody’s Talking” from Midnight Cowboy. Have you heard heard or thought of this song without immediately thinking of the movie? Have you ever thought of the movie without hearing the song in your head?
Aug 292009
If there’s one thing we know about a number of us, there’s nothing we like better than being turned onto music from a foreign culture (and I don’t mean Canada or England, Townsmen mockcarr, andyr, chickenfrank, et al). If there’s something I’m even more sure of, there’s a larger number of us who shy away from anything that’s not rock ‘n roll, sung in English, etc. (And none of you is off the hook for your soft spot for show tunes!) Our latest Hear Factor collection is entitled Turning Congolese. I think the title is self-explanatory. I encourage you to download this zipped file, unzip it, and spend the next 3 days living with it. It may do you good. It may cause you psychic unrest. Whatever effect it has on you, we want to hear about it.
In particular, for this challenging mix, I summon mockcarr to listen to this disc, which was artfully designed to offend his sensibilities.
Aug 282009
As many of you with kids know, the school year is about to begin again. Across the land, teachers are hunkering down, preparing lesson plans and hiding that secret stash of whiskey and cigarrettes to tide them through the coming academic season.
At this point, I’d like to inaugurate a new running series on Rock Town Hall, in which Townspeople can don the gown and mortarboard, stroke their beards thoughtfully and begin handing out GRADES to rock artists that have been in need of honest, substantive feedback for years now. Remember, you have a responsibility to guide these precocious performers towards artistic maturity. Be gentle, but firm — “tough love” is the rule of the day. Feel free to be brief if you feel the student is well aware of his or her specific shortcomings already — but if you feel they need to know *exactly* what’s preventing them from getting an “A” from you, you should tell them! Standard grading systems apply: A, B, C, D and — yes, even the dreaded “F” where it’s called for. Feel free to also assign “Incompletes” to those artists who need to deliver more material before they can judged. Also remember: it is the goal of the Rock Town Hall Academy to produce well-rounded performers, so please consider all areas of concern — creativity, discipline, tidiness, appearance/hygiene and how well they play with others — when preparing your report cards.
Following is a list of artists in this grading session:
Paul McCartney
David Lee Roth
James Brown
Keith Richards
Keith Moon
Colin Moulding
Paul Westerberg
Prince
Robbie Robertson
Bob Seger
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Aug 282009
As an homage to The Great 48’s I Wanna Be…the Last Man Standing thread, I present the I Can’t version:
I Can’t Explain – The Who
Aug 282009
A friend passed along this promo video for the upcoming Beatles edition of Rock Band. The daddy long legs aspect of the band members’ animated characters freaked me out a bit, but this looks like it will be fun to play with my boys.
For our purposes, I thought I’d run this clip to allow you to begin sniffing at historical/chronological inaccuracies and other things that promise to bug the likes of us rock nerds. I found myself watching McCartney closely, to see if his animated character would be as self-concious and scene-deflating as the real Paul usually was in Beatles movies. There was not enough evidence to tell if the animators were able to get around this limitation, but I’m sure you’ll be watching this with your own set of expectations. Let’s start working through what will surely be some difficult adjustments. Thanks.
