Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 by Dw. Dunphy
May is the unofficial start of the summer concert season, so to unofficially celebrate the shows of 2009, Popdose.com and internet radio station The Penguin have teamed up for Penguimania 2009. Tune in each Wednesday at 9:00 EST for Radioshow With Dw. Dunphy to hear the live performance megamix in full. Then each week we’ll present a downloadable MP3 of a set from the “concert.”
Set Two
The second set kicks off with Dream Theater covering the classic Elton John two-fer of “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.” As originally found on the ubiquitous Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, Dream Theater stays faithful to the original.
Marillion has, over the years, amassed a cult following that has spawned a whole series of official live recordings, lavish deluxe releases of their new albums and fan convention concerts known as the Marillion Weekends. Here is their live version of the standout track from the This Strange Engine album, “Estonia.”
The grand finale of Joe Jackson’s ambitious Night and Day album is the slow-burning lullaby, “A Slow Song.” This live performance of the song manages to top the original with a fantastic, building climax.
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We’ll see you here next week for set three and, don’t forget: you can enjoy the entire mix over at The Penguin, Wednesday nights starting at 9:00 PM EST: find it at www.thepenguinrocks.com.
Tags: Dream Theater, Elton John, joe Jackson, Marillion, Popdose.com, The Penguin
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Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 by Dw. Dunphy
May is the unofficial start of the summer concert season, so to unofficially celebrate the shows of 2009, Popdose.com and Internet radio station The Penguin have teamed up for Penguimania 2009. Tune in each Wednesday at 9:00 EST for Radioshow With Dw. Dunphy to hear the live performance mega mix in full. Then each week, starting today, we’ll present a downloadable MP3 of a set from the “concert.”
Set One
To start things off, we have a few classic rock staples and a great, under appreciated prog band. In the early ’90s, the band Yes fragmented for the umpteenth time and the classic lineup of Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe temporarily struck out on their own. They started their concerts with a medley of “Time and a Word,” “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and an ABWH original, “Teakbois.”
Paul Rodgers is famously known as the voice of Free and Bad Company’s early years. He’s known later on as the heir to Freddy Mercury’s throne in Queen. Here, Rodgers presents one of his best-known songs, “Bad Company.”
Once strictly a studio group, Alan Parsons struck out for the road in the mid-’90s, bringing several mainstays of The Project with him. Featured on this rendition of “Don’t Answer Me” is Chris Thompson, formerly of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
Enchant is a San Francisco bay-area prog rock band with more than one foot in the hard rock sound. Here is their ballad, “Follow The Sun.”
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We’ll see you here next week for set two and, don’t forget: you can enjoy the entire mix over at The Penguin, Wednesday nights starting at 9:00 PM EST: find it at www.thepenguinrocks.com.
Tags: Alan Parsons, Bad Company, Bill Bruford, Chris Thompson, Enchant, Free, Jon Anderson, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Paul Rodgers, Popdose.com, Queen, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe, The Penguin, Yes
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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 by Dw. Dunphy
In an ongoing series, Dw. Dunphy takes an occasional look back at Christian contemporary music (CCM) of the past and makes the case for a new audience to rediscover the best of it as great, lost pop music.
Next year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Adam Again’s Gene Eugene. Born Gene Andrusco, he found fame at an early age as a child actor, most memorably as the young Darren Stevens on the TV series Bewitched. Later in life he was able to combine full-blooded funk, rock chops, a love of classic R&B from the likes of Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, and the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and make it all stick in his version of CCM, probably the most unique and underrated in all of that subgenre’s history.
The band’s second album, Ten Songs by Adam Again (1988), was a bullhorn to staid and button-down listeners that this probably wasn’t their dad’s idea of Christian rock. If the cover of Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” wasn’t an indicator, the groove of “Tree House” and the sheer mournful weight of the closing “The Tenth Song” certainly was. Homeboys (1990) went even farther in describing through song some of the city’s dark side as the title cut detailed memories of a relatively happy childhood, even in the worst of landscapes. Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” gets a respectful but certainly not pedestrian run-through. The funk of “The Fine Line” tends to deceive. Listen to the lyrics about a man trapped inside his drug addiction and you get a vastly different impression than the fat party groove might impart.
(more…)
Tags: Adam Again, Anthony Cardenas, Bewitched, Bill Withers, CCM, Cleveland, Cuyahoga River, Dan Michaels, Darren Stevens, Dig, Dw. Dunphy, Gene Andrusco, Gene eugene, Greg Lawless, Homeboys, In A New World Of Time, Jon Knox, Leonard Cohen, Marvin Gaye, Michelle Bunch-Palmer, Ohio, Paul Valadez, Perfecta, Popdose Interview, Riki Michelle, Ten Songs By Adam Again, The Choir, The Green Room Serenade, The Lost Dogs
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009 by Dw. Dunphy
Introducing an occasional series wherein we take a look at some of the most massive-sounding songs in pop history. A funny thing happened around 1971, or maybe 1972 — it depends on who you talk to. Progressive rock had been a part of the 1960s music scene, but was most commonly lumped in with psychedelic music and drug rock and was seldom considered an entity unto itself. Then, at the dawn of the Watergate decade, prog escaped into the wide open fields of seven-minute solos, half-hour compositions and mountains coming out of the sky and standing there. The aim was clear — to make a popular form of rock that was as ambitious, orchestral and big as classical music.
Of course, pop music had already been doing that to an extent, and achieving it in under five minutes a clip. Say what you want about Phil Spector and his utterly reprehensible behavior, the guy produced monoliths that also doubled as three-minute pop songs. He wasn’t the only one at it, either, and Big Songs is devoted to taking a look at the microcosmic grandeur of some of these hits (suggestions are, as always, welcomed.)
Let us begin with the Brothers, Righteous and Walker. The similarities are immediate, starting with the fact that none of the five among the bands were actually brothers. The Righteous Brothers were, famously, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield, and their sound was built on a foundation of boomy, wall-of-reverb ambiance, slowly building orchestration from just simple strings to full, rich sections and backup singers that oooh-ed and aaaah-ed like a choir. It would not be strange to call the Righteous Brothers a blue-eyed gospel group under these conditions, especially in Medley and Hatfield’s emphatically roaring delivery. Key examples come in the ripping bridge of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” where their singing is closer to testifyin’ than harmonizing, and on “Unchained Melody,” where Hatfield moves from understated arrangement to nothing less than heaven appearing from the parting clouds. (more…)
Tags: Bill Medley, Bobby Hatfield, Dw. Dunphy, Gary Leeds (Walker), John Maus (Walker), Noel Scott Engel, Phil Spector, prog rock, Righteous Brothers, Scott Walker, Walker Brothers, Yes
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Thursday, April 9th, 2009 by Dw. Dunphy
Can I get a head count of all the bloggers out there reading this? Ten? Thirty-two? Forty-eight? … All of you? Well then, I suppose all of you will understand where this particular post is coming from. I’m always trying to dig up interesting things for the column, and now that I have a monthly Internet radio program here, I’m looking to supplement the materials cache. But as with any excuse a pack rat clings to, this incessant collecting catches hold of some rather bizarre detritus. So I’ve been looking into the files to give the hard drive a Web wiping, kick out the lascivious photos of Neko Case (rrrowr), and with any luck get the ol’ Compaq back into springtime fighting trim.
(Uh, what was I saying? Something about Red Vines? Focus! Focus!)
Like I said, I was digging around in the hard drive when what to my wandering ears should appear but this, a track entitled “When Banana Skins Are Falling (I’ll Come Sliding Back to You),” and gee, those voices are awfully familiar — and familiarly awful. Turns out I ended up with a track from the long-out-of-print The Odd Couple Sings album, recorded in the very early ’70s, when Unger-Madison Fever was sweeping the country. Now, it shouldn’t shock anyone that a cash-in was commissioned to capitalize on this sitcom’s huge success — such behavior is the cornerstone of our modern media, for cryin’ out loud. But The Odd Couple Sings? I mean, who was going to buy this thing? Who out there was jonesing for the dulcet tones of Jack Klugman? I was now intrigued and scared to death of what else I might find.
Remember just a few short weeks ago when America’s favorite pubescent Mensa pledge, Miley Cyrus, was caught doing yet another stupid thing in front of a camera, specifically her impression of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Poor little Miley. A victim of the politically correct times. Had she been born a couple decades previous, she would’ve already posed for Playboy, would’ve already been married and divorced, would’ve already found a second career as an infomercial pitchwoman, would be on her way to rehab for the tenth time could’ve been as insulting as she wanted to Asians and nobody would’ve flinched. Hell, she could’ve lent her talents to a TV cartoon complete with gong chimes, exhortations of “ah, soooo,” bloken Engrish, and more Confucius than your tiny mind could wrap itself around. You could get Ron Dante, the cartoon rock star once known as Archie (of the Archies), to provide pop tunes with mystery-related titles like “Whodunit” and vaguely stereotypical themes like “I’m the Number One Son” and nobody would bat an eyelash, flip a fan or fold a crisp, starched shirt for you. Oh Hannah, you dunce. You sure missed out.
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Tags: bears, Brownsville Station, Confucious, Dw. Dunphy, Family Guy, Hannah Montana, Jack Klugman, Martian marijuana, Matthew McConnaghey, Miley Cyrus, peanut butter, Ron Dante, Seth McFarlane, Snoopy, The Amazing Chan And The Chan Clan, The Odd Couple, The Royal Guardsmen, Tom Lehrer, Tom T-Bone Stankus, Tony Randall, Woody Harrelson
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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 by Dw. DunphyThere was a period of time during junior high and high school when I was convinced music wouldn’t be a part of my life. I couldn’t afford to get a guitar or a keyboard, I didn’t have the outsize personality the other rock kids had, and I found it terribly difficult to put across my ambitions to even the few people I entrusted with my goals. I focused more on the possibility of going into comics. Just as some of my earliest recollections are of songs, I also have an undiminished affinity for Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. In those high school years my attention was fixed on the artist Al Williamson, whose superrealistic, detailed style was so perfect in the notorious EC science-fiction comics of the late ’50s and early ’60s. In my mind, his work on Marvel’s adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back and his subsequent work on the Star Wars newspaper strip are the epitome of great comic book art.
In the past month I’ve been rooting through the boxes in my attic, looking at the stuff I’ve squirreled away up there over the years. I came upon a small cache of drawings, paintings, and such, gave them a once-over, and decided maybe it was a good idea to bring them downstairs and get some quality scans together, just to have a decent record of their existence. I doodle from time to time, but my dreams of being in the business of comics are long gone. This is partly due to the quality of what’s out there, specifically the writing. In the past two decades Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller have made that once unimaginable leap from the “funny books” to honest-to-God literature, and they didn’t even have to change their addresses. With the often funny but deeply felt Bone saga, Jeff Smith made a brilliant epic out of something that might have been relegated to a goofy kids’-comic limbo at one time. And then there’s Jon J. Muth’s insanely awesome adaptation of Fritz Lang’s M
. Each example not only deserves space on the snootiest of bookshelves, but some deserve to kick a few warhorses off those shelves just for breathing room.
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Tags: Al Williamson, Alan More, Bob Ross, Bone, Charlie Brown, Dw. Dunphy, EC Comics, Elvis Presley, Frank Miller, Fritz Lang M, happy accidents, happy little trees, Jeff Smith, Jon J. Muth, Keith Richards, Marvel Comics, Neil Gaiman, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Peanuts, Richard M. Nixon, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back
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Thursday, March 26th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyI may have to change my radio habits. As a general habit, my car is tuned to the local public radio station out of New York. I like it, it keeps me informed, and some of the shows are entertaining. Others are less so, but that’s not why I might need to de-program the station from my settings: It’s pledge drive week, a necessary evil for such outlets. I understand it. I accept it. This time they’ve gone too far, though and, for once and for all, it might be time for NPR to suffer the cost of affiliate ignorance — yes, ignorance, for the stunt they pulled today left only one thought on my mind, and only one statement on my lips: How dare you. How Dare You.
We all know the drill. They need your pledge money. If you’re listening to their programming of your own volition and not contributing, then yes, you’re a sort of a drain on their resources. They play this card more often than they say “you know.”
“You know, Griselda, for a contribution of $120, you’re funding this great resource with only ten dollars every month.”
“You know, Herbert, you can’t get programming like this anywhere else.”
“I know, Griselda. You know, we can’t do it without member contributions…” and so forth. Invariably, either Herbert or Griselda, later in the day, will feel the need to play the good cop/bad cop game. They take to the airwaves with guilt trips, condemnations and accusations. “Why should someone else shoulder the financial burden of supporting this station while you, also a listener, do not? Do you think that’s fair? Do you think that’s right?”
Let me answer a question with another question. Did you listen to the news break that preceded your money-raising rant? Didn’t you just hear Carl Kasell say that the American economy had just hit a quarter-century low? Didn’t you hear that in a single week the unemployment rate jumped a level ordinarily deemed risky by standards of a month, not seven days? How about that report about how many people got super-sick with the flu over the winter because, without their jobs, they also didn’t have medical coverage to do something about it? Of course you didn’t — because your righteous angst over who is and isn’t paying into your broadcast coffers is not about right and wrong or ignorance vs. knowledge.
You know, Herbert and Griselda, your spiel is mostly about you both being worried you’re not going to get paid this week. Welcome to the real world and get the hell off your high horse. Did you truly think your usual tactics were appropriate in the new economic climate? Did you bother to check that copy before you both opened your mindless, fatuous mouths on the air, spouting that same canned crap you’ve been plopping on our lawns all these years? No, you didn’t. You couldn’t even be bothered to listen to your own station when the bad news was breaking. People are going to be homeless soon. They’re going to die of easily treatable ailments because there’s no proper system in place to help them through it. Are they worried that they’re stealing your precious knowledge, not kicking in for the cost of this berating? (more…)
Tags: Arts, Car Talk, Carl Kasell, Dw. Dunphy, Formats, Frank Sinatra, fundraising, Jonathan Schwartz, National Public Radio, NPR, Radio broadcasting
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Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyJack Sheldon is many things, from a world-class jazz trumpeter to the musical director/bandleader of the old Merv Griffin talk show to a Bill on Capitol Hill. He’s also known for his bizarre sense of humor, a side of his personality that surfaced in 1962 on the album Oooo, But It’s Good. Sandwiched between standard jazz releases, one has to imagine the plight of the hep cat who brought home this particular platter, put it on and heard Sheldon tell the tale of Irving Lancelot and the Medieval Jazz Quartet. This ain’t jazz. This ain’t even word jazz.
I don’t know how I came into possession of this album, only that it happened way back in the ’80s. It might have been procured at one of the thrift stores in the area, so fashionable at the time. Either that or one of those disgruntled hep cats finally threw it out and my dad’s friend George, a kind soul with a knack for buying low and selling high (i.e. selective Dumpster diving), dropped it off. Of course, I didn’t know Sheldon from shinola, and even his distinctive singing voice on the lone musical track, “Born to Lose,” failed to ring bell one. Oh, I knew of that famous Schoolhouse Rock skit, as well as his other notable short for “Conjunction Junction (What’s Your Function?),” but like Clark Kent with his trumpet — uh, eyeglasses — Sheldon out of context was something I couldn’t recognize.
Two critical notes, one on the files and the other on the recording itself: These come right from the 47-year-old album, so the sound quality is slightly on the FUBAR side, but as an entertainment curio I felt the recording was worth the time anyhow. As far as the recording itself, I submit that you’ll probably never hear a drunker audience than you will here. Even when Sheldon overworks a premise on the way down to Bad-Pun Punchline Town, the crowd laughs like a third grade class who’s just heard a fresh fart joke. In particular, listen for the lady cackling like a barnyard animal. You’ll know it when you hear it.
Oooo, But It’s Good has never been released on CD. I suspect it’s never been on cassette either, just to illustrate how far behind the lines this album truly is, so I think I’m safe in offering it in its entirety here, so that the blogosphere can experience the twisted wit of Jack Sheldon. Enjoy.
Irving Lancelot and the Medieval Jazz Quartet
Experiments With Rats
Born to Lose
Amoeba Jazz
The Falcon
The Last of the Great Fun Wars
Tags: Bill, comedy, Dw. Dunphy, Jack Sheldon, Jazz, Merv Griffin, Schoolhouse Rock
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Thursday, March 12th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyGet out your wallet — or, better yet, don’t: The music subsidiary industries of live venue ticket sales and satellite radio are here to give you a lesson in economics. It was news recently when ticket agent monolith Ticketmaster shuttled consumers seeking Bruce Springsteen tour tickets immediately to a “secondary arm,” which in this case means aftermarket, or, to be more blunt, scalping. The turnaround from viable public sale to resale was an estimated 15 seconds, an impossible speed for the average concertgoer to have broken through to obtain tickets. The whiff of stink indicates that Ticketmaster concocted this scam to get the tickets immediately to the secondary market, where they could charge whatever the market would bear. 100 percent markup? 500 percent markup?
Springsteen wasn’t at all happy about it and made his displeasure public. Afterward, a whole raft of complaints came in, not just for the Springsteen incident but for Britney Spears tickets, summer festival tickets, and a whole host of gouged events. Wouldn’t any other company out there compete head-to-head with Ticketmaster to bring tickets back down to the common strata? Well, maybe LiveNation would be our savior! Well, sure, until it was announced that LiveNation was seeking to merge with Ticketmaster, forming what could only be described as a monopoly on the ticket agency market. Pre-merger, we have seen even modest summer events ticketed at a starting rate of $100 for nosebleed seating. What the post-merger business holds in store is just about unthinkable, and in a poor economy where such entertainment distractions would be welcomed, this seems like a suicidal business practice.
Well, if we can’t rely on businesses to be responsible, or at the very least realistic, we can expect the US government to intercede and not allow such shifty unions to take place, if only for the sake of the public trust, right? Think back to the days when our governance said things like, “We cannot allow XM Satellite Radio to merge with Sirius. They’re the only game in town. To wed them is to subject their customers to all manner of pricing abuses.” Not long thereafter, the two joined forces anyway because, in matters such as these, the merger almost always goes through. And now it looks like XM/Sirius is on the brink of bankruptcy. Are these events related?
Back in the infancy of satellite radio, there was a cry of disdain — how can you expect the public to buy into paying for radio after having free access for years? Signal quality is a selling point and, undeniably, digital radio sounds a lot better than standard airwave broadcasting. Censorship is another point, in that because you pay for the usage, you assume the liability of offense, so the codes of “morality and decency” are waived, much like cable television. This was a big plus for Howard Stern, one of the first truly big stars to gravitate to satellite. He famously berated the fans who refused to follow him over, calling them all manner of slurs now that the station he was on (being his very own) would never muzzle him. (more…)
Tags: Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Dw. Dunphy, Hannah Montana, Howard Stern, Live Nation, LiveNation, Satellite radio, Sirius, Ticketmaster, XM, XM Satellite Radio
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Thursday, March 5th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyNo time for love, Dr. Jones. The fakes await! As I mentioned last week, this post is devoted to the cinematic musical alter egos (and some non-cinematic ones as well) and as Jon Cummings mentioned last week, he did it first. Undaunted, I’m sending my posse over to his abode to knock ‘im into shape. Yes, my posse consists of a penguin, a rabbit and a cat that has used up one too many lives.
So Opus, Bill and all the rest never made it to the movies, but they should have, and considering how bankrupt Hollywood is for ideas, they may yet get there someday. In the meantime, we have volumes of Berke Breathed’s Bloom County comic strips and a flexi-disc with two of Billy and the Boingers’ (formerly Deathtongue) “hits.” “I’m a Boinger” is rather hard on the ears, the kind of sledgehammer comedy fans used to send to the Dr. Demento show after listening to too much “Weird Al” Yankovic. “U Stink But I Love U,” on the other hand, is obnoxious, but was performed by the very real hardcore band Mucky Pup
. They even got the tuba in, so big points for that.
Last week, I gave credit to Bill Nighy for singing his parts in the film Still Crazy
. This week, I’m doing the same for Hugh Grant. What an insane world we live in. Having never seen the film Music and Lyrics (2007), all I knew about it was that Grant played a former pop star from a band (loosely modeled on Wham!) called PoP! His forte was the music, but now as a writer for hire, he’s contracted to create a hit tune for rising pop music starlet and he’s in need of a lyricist. Enter Drew Barrymore, a lyricist on the rise. The rest is rom-com history. Now, there was no need for Grant to sing on the soundtrack, as I think an audience would have given him that latitude. I mean, it’s Hugh Grant. He’s not a singer and nobody really expects anything at all from him. To my shock, “PoP Goes My Heart” is a rather faithful approximation of ’80s synth-pop and I have to offer my apologies. What I will not apologize for is a Wiki blurb indicating David Hasselhoff covered the song and had a hit in Germany with it. I’m calling Bravo Sierra on that one… (more…)
Tags: Aristophenes, Arts, Berke Breathed, Bill Nighy, Bloom County, Bob Mould, Carole King, Cheech And Chong, Christ, David Hasselhoff, Diane Lane, Drew Barrymore, Eli Janney, Fee Waybill, Girls Against Boys, Hair, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hugh Grant, Jesus, John Cameron Mitchell, Laura Dern, Lou Adler, Mamas And The Papas, Mucky Pup, Music, Music And Lyrics, Paul Cook, Paul Simonon, Plato, pop, Rent, Steve Jones, Still Crsazy, Superstar, The Clash, The Dukes Of Stratosphear, The Fabulous Stains, The Sex Pistols, The Swirling Eddies, Traveling Wilburys, XTC
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