Posts Tagged ‘The Smithereens’
Friday, September 18th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyTags: Dan Castellaneta, Dw. Dunphy, Elton John, Elvis Costello, fun, Gin Blossoms, Jeff Lynne, Marshall Crenshaw, Michael Roe, Midnight Oil, Porcupine Tree, Ric Menck, Roland Orzabal, Steven Wilson, Tears for Fears, The 77's, The Attractions, The Balls Of France, The Imposters, The Move, The Simpsons, The Smithereens, Toto, Velvet Crush, Yngwie Malmsteen
Posted in Music, The Weekly Mixtape | View Comments
Thursday, September 17th, 2009 by Scott Malchus
Two years ago, when I was working on this column’s debut, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen’s “Book of Dreams” and what the song means to Julie and me. During the first month of our courtship I created my first mixtape for her, entitled HEY, HEY, JULIE! On that tape was the Springsteen song, one that’s grown to have profound meaning in our relationship.
We began dating in August of 1992, and soon thereafter, I threw this tape together in a flurry of inspiration, wanting to give Julie something that came from my heart. I don’t recall the actual minutes spent in my parents’ basement picking the songs or laying them down on a Maxell cassette (my brand of choice), but looking back on the list of songs, I’m happy to see they still add up to 90 quailty minutes of music.
Before Nick Hornby wonderfully wrote about what makes a good mixtape in High Fidelity, I assembled exactly the right combination of hip, well known and somewhat obscure songs from my small music collection. Combining big hits like “Learning to Fly,” “What I Am,” and “All This Time” with lesser-known songs by popular artists such as “Until the End of the World,” “Shining Star,” and “Getting to Know You,” while tossing in some hard to find (at the time) songs like “Baby Mine” and “Wild Night” made this tape eclectic, but still enjoyable to listen to and quite accessible. (more…)
Tags: Barbara Streisand, Basement Songs, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Colm Wilkinson, Crowded House, Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, Erich Kunzel and The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Grand Canyon, Ike & Tina Turner, Indigo Girls, INXS, James Newton Howard, James Taylor, joe Jackson, Lawrence Kasdan, Les Miserables, Martha Reeves, Maxell 90 minute cassettes, Melissa Etheridge, mix tapes, Poi Dog Pondering, Pretty in Pink, Scott Malchus, Sting, Suzanne Vega, The B-52's, The Replacements, The Smithereens, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, U2, Van Morrison, Was (Not Was), XTC
Posted in Basement Songs, Music | View Comments
Saturday, July 11th, 2009 by Scott Malchus“I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.” —Walt Whitman
With the All-Star Game right around the corner, I suggested to Kelly Stitzel that she feature Bull Durham for this week’s Soundtrack Saturday. I was shocked — shocked, I tell ya! — to find out she’s never seen writer-director Ron Shelton’s 1988 summer hit, one of the best sports movies of all time, if not the best movie about baseball. It’s also one of the finest romantic comedies of the past 25 years.
First-time director Shelton drew from his own experiences as a minor-league ball player for Bull Durham’s screenplay, and he was blessed with a stellar cast that brought his richly drawn characters to life. It’s a movie full of smart dialogue and character-based comedy that celebrates the lunacy, hijinks, and joy of America’s two favorite pastimes — baseball and sex.
Susan Sarandon, radiant as ever, flew on her own dime from Italy to audition and win the role of Annie Savoy, a part-time teacher in Durham, North Carolina. Annie dedicates each summer of her life to tutoring a player on the Durham Bulls, the local minor-league team, that she believes has the best potential to get a call up to the majors. However, Annie isn’t interested in improving the players’ reading and writing. And she isn’t a coach, although she knows as much about baseball as any manager. No, she’s more of a spiritual and sexual adviser: “You know how to make love, then you’ll know how to pitch.” She reads Walt Whitman to her lover-players and puts on Edith Piaf records in the hopes of making them well-rounded human beings and therefore better ball players. At the top of the film she chooses as her new student Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, the Bulls’ latest gifted pitcher, who has a million-dollar arm but a five-cent head on his shoulders.
The role of Nuke went to Tim Robbins in a career-breakthrough performance. Shelton had to fight to get Robbins cast in the part; up to that point he’d been in Howard the Duck, an infamous flop, and mostly blink-and-you-missed-him bit parts (raise your hand if you recall him in Top Gun). In addition to his lack of experience onscreen, executives at Orion Pictures felt that a woman as classy as Sarandon would never fall for a guy like Robbins. Luckily, Shelton prevailed, and the two actors not only worked wonderfully on the set but fell in love and remain a devoted couple to this day. Shows you how smart those movie execs can be.
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Tags: Bennie Wallace, Bill Haley & His Comets, Bonnie Raitt, Bull Durham, Dr. John, Edith Piaf, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Gina Schock, House of Schock, Ike & Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, John Fogerty, Kevin Costner, Los Lobos, Minor League Baseball, North Carolina, Pat McLaughlin, Robert Wuhl, Ron Shelton, Scott Malchus, Soundtrack Saturday, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Susan Sarandon, The Blasters, The Dominoes, The Everly Brothers, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, The Smithereens, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson
Posted in Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Film, Soundtrack Saturday | View Comments
Monday, July 6th, 2009 by Matchup Monkey
As people eat more meals outside the home, they consume more calories, less fiber, and more fat. Commodity prices have fallen so low that the fast food industry has greatly increased its portion sizes, without reducing profits, in order to attract customers. The size of a burger has become one of its main selling points. Wendy’s offers the Triple Decker; Burger King, the Great American; and Hardee’s sells a hamburger called the Monster. The Little Caesars slogan “Big! Big!” now applies not just to the industry’s portions, but to its customers. Over the past forty years in the United States, per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks has more than quadrupled. During the late 1950s the typical soft drink order at a fast food restaurant contained about eight ounces of soda; today a “Child” order of Coke at McDonald’s is twelve ounces. A “Large” Coke is thirty-two ounces-and about 310 calories. In 1972, McDonald’s added Large French Fries to its menu; twenty years later, the chain added Super Size Fries, a serving three times larger than what McDonald’s offered a generation ago. Super Size Fries have 610 calories and 29 grams of fat. At Carl’s Jr. restaurants, an order of CrissCut Fries and a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger boasts 73 grams of fat — more fat than ten of the chain’s milk shakes.
–from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
(more…)
Tags: Bon Jovi, Burgers, Carl Dobkins, Concrete Blonde, Fast Food, Ice Cube, Iced Out Eskimoz, Jr., Michael McDonald, Morrissey, Phoenix, Placebo, Semisonic, Song-Off, The Smithereens
Posted in Music, Popdose, Song-Off | View Comments
Friday, June 19th, 2009 by Dw. DunphyTags: Bobby Jimmy, Bread, Critters, David Gates, David Letterman, Dw. Dunphy, George Harrison, Jellyfish, Lindsey Buckingham, Marshall Crenshaw, Matthew Sweet, Mitch Albom, Neil Finn, Ringo Starr, Rocket Scientists, Sieges Even, Split Enz, The Moody Blues, The Real Tuesday Weld, The Smithereens, Tim Finn, Vector, War, Warren Zevon
Posted in Music, The Weekly Mixtape | View Comments
Friday, October 31st, 2008 by Scott MalchusTags: Badly Drawn Boy, Ben E. King, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Deana Carter, Dion, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, John Wesley Harding, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Patty Griffin, Sonny Burgess, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, The Knack, The Mavericks, The Reivers, The Smithereens, Thea Gilmore, Trisha Yearwood
Posted in Meta, Music, The Weekly Mixtape | View Comments
Monday, October 27th, 2008 by Will Harris
Last week’s column opened by noting that, when you hear the name “Don Dixon,” you’re probably more likely to think of him in terms of his production career than for his accomplishments as a singer and songwriter. Although I followed this observation by noting that this tendency gets really annoying for those who’ve lived and loved to Dixon’s albums over the years, I also clarified that it should in no way be taken as a dismissal of his production work; the guy has had his hands on some of the best albums of the ’80s and ’90s, some of which you may have forgotten about. But, hey, that’s what I’m here for…
Popdose: I wanted to ask you about a couple of your production jobs…well, quite a few of them, actually, because I’m a big fan of a lot of the artists you’ve worked with. In fact, looking over your resume, it looks like you had a hand in about 7/8 of the American music I was listening to in the late ‘80s!
DD: I was busy!
PD: You were!
DD: And I made records quick. And cheap. That was the other thing. I made quick, cheap records.
PD: I’m a huge fan of the Connells’ Darker Days.
DD: I love the Connells. In fact, Arrogance just played with the Connells at an outdoor thing for a…well, it was kind of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing. And the Connells still sound great.
PD: They used to play the Boathouse every other week, it seemed like, and I think I was there for most of the shows.
DD: I think I was only at the Boathouse once. We were there when Marti was opening for Chris Isaak, and I did some of the shows on that tour. I was doing some projects, so I wasn’t on every date, but she did a couple of months with him, and I think I was…no, I know I was at the Boathouse show, because I can remember exactly where the buses were parked. The Boathouse was kind of an odd show, because it was mostly theaters on that tour, and at the Boathouse, it was hard to fit all three buses in the lot.
PD: I can believe it. I’m sure they were all lined up next to the water.
DD: Uh-huh. So, anyway, the Connells. Let’s talk.
(more…)
Tags: Butch Vig, Don Dixon, Fire Town, Guadalcanal Diary, In Tua Nua, Kurt Cobain, Leslie Dowdall, Lou Reed, Marti Jones, Mitch Easter, Murray Attaway, Nirvana, Pat DiNizio, R.E.M., The Connells, The Smithereens, Tony Berg
Posted in Hooks 'N' You, Music, Popdose, Popdose Interviews | View Comments
Friday, April 4th, 2008 by Will HarrisSometimes, it’s good to be a Popdose reader, and this is one of those times…if you’re a fan of Kylie Minogue, that is.
As you may or may not know, Kylie’s new album, X, finally hit our shores this past Tuesday, courtesy of Astralwerks/Capitol, and in conjunction with its release, we’ve been offered the opportunity to give away a Kylie prize pack: the U.K. Enhanced CD single of “2 Hearts,” stickers, postcards, and a poster.
Do you care? Maybe, maybe not. If you do, then you’ll want to pay very close attention right now…and if you don’t, you’ll probably still want to pay attention, because we suspect you’ll enjoy this challenge whether you want the prize pack or not.
To win the prize, here’s what you have to do: connect Kylie Minogue to The Smithereens in ten moves…no more, no less. We’re looking for actual musical collaborations that connect these artists, be they vocal or instrumental. Whoever fills in the last blank wins the prize pack.
UPDATE: And the prize has been won! LuverOfLuv came up with the following connection:
1. Kylie Minogue collaborated with Manic Street Preachers on Impossible Princess.
2. Manic Street Preachers‘ “Your Love Alone is Not Enough” features vocals from Nina Persson.
3. Nina Persson sings the theme song to “Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased),” which was composed by David Arnold.
4. David Arnold composed the song “The World Is Not Enough” for Garbage.
5. Garbage collaborated with Tricky on the song “Milk (Wicked Mix).”
6. Tricky’s song “Keep Your Mouth Shut” features vocals by Bjork.
7. Bjork composed the song “Bedtime Story” for Madonna.
8. Madonna’s song “The Power of Goodbye” is a collaboration with Rick Nowels.
9. Rick Nowels provided vocals to Belinda Carlisle’s album Heaven on Earth.
10. Belinda Carlisle contributes backing vocals to The Smithereens‘ 11.
Absolutely valid, and congratulations!
For the record, this was how we’d had them connecting:
1. Kylie Minogue collaborated with the Manic Street Preachers on The Impossible Princess.
2. The Manic Street Preachers‘ song “Your Love Alone is Not Enough” features vocals from Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans.
3. Nina Persson also contributed guest vocals to Shudder to Think’s soundtrack to the film “First Love, Last Rites.”
4. Also contributing guest vocals to the soundtrack was Billy Corgan.
5. Billy Corgan contributed guitar work to Enuff Znuff’s Paraphernalia.
6. Also appearing on Paraphernalia was Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick.
7. Rick Nielsen contributed guitar to Hall & Oates‘ Across the Red Ledge.
8. Also contributing guitar to Across the Red Ledge was George Harrison.
9. George Harrison also contributed guitar to Belinda Carlisle’s Runaway Horses.
10. Belinda Carlisle contributes backing vocals to The Smithereens‘ 11.
Tags: Kylie Minogue, The Smithereens
Posted in Music, Popdose | View Comments
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 by Dw. Dunphy
I like the power pop.
When done right, it can be a deceptively potent thing, like the best of Cheap Trick, or Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk. When it’s done wrong, there’s nothing worthwhile to be found. Trust me. I’ve heard some really awful bands who thought they were “pop pioneers for the modern age,” but sounded like brakes with no meat on the pads. Somewhere in between lay the Smithereens.
I can hear it now: “Little harsh there? They gave us ‘A Girl Like You’ and ‘Blood and Roses’… ” No, I cannot take anything away from those very catchy, very good tunes, but even though I enjoy their music, I can’t deny the merciless repetition therein. The prime illustration of this is the Green Thoughts album. There is probably not a hookier power pop album in existence, but you have to shut down the census bureau while listening to it. “House We Used to Live In” constantly repeats its title, and so does “Only A Memory.” “The World We Know” also invites copious counting fits. God help you if you use these songs in a drinking game — you’ll die of alcohol poisoning. In spite of my criticism, I like those tunes. What they do not reflect in lyrical sophistication, they make up in pure guitar-jangle exuberance. (more…)
Tags: Dennis Diken, Dw. Dunphy, Green Thoughts, Jim Babjak, Mike Mesaros, Pat DiNizio, power pop, The Beatles, The Smithereens
Posted in Dw. Dunphy On..., Music, Popdose | View Comments
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