All posts tagged with "music-pop-culture"

Back before the days of blogs and digital images, Mrs theskinnyonbenny and I got married and took a follow-up trip to Ireland. We toured around for a bit and happened to end up in Dublin at the same time that then-president Clinton was in town. You young uns won't remember, but back in the day, terrorists would occasionally blow up buildings in Ireland...

The dentist chair is a good place for the mind to wander. This week, I took those mind-wanderings and started typing them out as a post. Whose music is dentist-office appropriate, but still good? Let the debate begin.

We are driving to school. Close to being able to drop V off. We've been side by side in the car for almost an hour, and we're still flipping through radio channels, trying to find some decent tunes that we aren't tired of. For the 6th or 7th time in the hour, we land on the hip-hop oldies channel. It's "Banned in The U.S.A" by 2 Live Crew. We keep it on.

A big nerdy reflection, a little Three's Company content, and then an out-of-the-blue joke that really hits.

On Saturday, I heard something that I had never heard before: Floyd Cramer on the radio. Back in the early 90s, if you turned on mid-day TV for any amount of time at all, you were sure to see the commercial for a Floyd Cramer, playing a collection of other people's hits as piano instrumentals.

Just about the only thing I've listened to this week is Cloud Nothings's Attack on Memory album. And the track I keep going back to is Wasted Days.

Like so many others, I was blown away by Jodie Foster's speech at the Golden Globe awards. She wasn't crazy, she wasn't on drugs. She was incredibly nervous.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to meet Shelly at the airport, where she was dropping off her rental car. (It's a long, holiday season travel story. If you're interested, rent Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It's much funnier).

Here's a video that has more than 290,000,000 views, so I guess I'm the last person on the bandwagon. i caught this while wishing I could go back to sleep at 5:15 this morning. By 5:17, I was laughing out loud and wide awake.

A few years ago, I created a Pandora station, mixing Washington DC go go artists with New Orleans funk bands -- close musical cousins to be sure. The first name I typed in to start the station was Chuck Brown.

Yeah, I missed our music edition last week. Busy morning, Friday. (But of course, you know these are written and post dated earlier in the week.) First of all, here's Florence and the Machine, as promised, along with some thoughts on tv and a different really cool tune.

Twenty-five years ago this week, U2's Joshua Tree album hit #1 on the US charts. To celebrate, I listened to the album from the first low rumbling of "Where the Streets Have No Name" to the kind of weird, Beatle-esque ending of "Mothers of the Disappeared" straight through, for the 1367th time. There aren't many albums that are in my regular rotation after so many years, but I've never gotten tired of The Joshua Tree

What happens if you take crisp linen sheets, throw it out in a hailstorm, whack it with sticks made of rhino poo, and sprinkle that with awesomeness powder?

I know an unusually large number of divorcing people right now. We're at that age, I guess. Heard this one on one of the satellite radio stations this weekend. Catchy tune, and you can say, "I knew it when." There are only 815 views at the time that I'm posting this.

I wanted to feature something this morning from Madonna's new album, MDNA, but to be honest, there's nothing there that excites me that much yet. Maybe once I get to know the songs better.

It's difficult to google up a video from the Scottish band The View. You get a lot of clips of politicians being falsely cordial with this group of bitchy old women who have a television show by that name.

I saw this video on NME, and was then disappointed to find that Spotify had only two tracks by California X. Amazon had just the same two, so maybe that's all they've written. Doesn't exactly make me want to pin them as future break out monster stars, but this tune is a good one. Reminds me of the first time I found My Chemical Romance on line.

There must have been some top-tier procrastination going on at my desk this week. Because I've never once before heard a Taylor Swift song (although I know the name), and there's exactly a zero percent chance that I will see Hunger Games. But somehow, I found this video, and I like it.

Would it be fun to make these music videos a regular feature? Maybe I can have a post ready for you every Friday morning, to kick off your last work day before the weekend. Or, maybe I'll never do this again. Too early to tell.

I lived in Connecticut (State motto: Impossible for even former residents to spell our name without spell check) my last two years in high school. Unfortunately, I missed out on all of the sex that is apparently going on up that way. But Connecticut of the late 80's was a place of girls in bulky sweaters, and if any leg was showing at all, it was masked by long-underwear pants. So it might have been harder to work up a good, old fashioned case of being horny back then.

Despite it being one of my greatest loves, I don't do many music posts. I've been disappointed to find that the music I love most is unloved -- unliked even -- by most of my friends. I have playlists full of songs that no one wants to hear other than me.

Are we entering a new golden age of music? For the past 10 years or so, I could count on one new album every 12-18 months that would really, really get me excited. Albums that were new, creative, great, and instantly excellent.

If you have a little kid, you've probably suffered through little kid music. It's part of the price of raising a child. But there are degrees of bad little kid music, and I'm with you today to warn you away from the worst of the worst.

The biggest testament to Bob Dylan's songwriting ability might just be that he was able to crank out hits, despite having a voice that would be envied only by a seal with a two-pack-a-day smoking habit.