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Tuesday, Apr 3 2018, 6AM
Bookends is the fourth studio album by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel. Produced by Paul Simon, Roy Halee and Art Garfunkel, the album was released on on this day in 1968, on Columbia Records.
Bookends is a concept album that explores a life journey from childhood to old age. Side one of the album marks successive stages in life, the theme serving as bookends to the life cycle. Side two largely consists of unused material for The Graduate soundtrack.
After the release of two EPs, Hilary Woods spent 2017 writing and recording songs on an eight-track in an abandoned flat she was living in at the time. Layering piano, synth, tape machine, field recordings, vocals, drone, unadorned beats, and old string instruments, these songs culminate in her debut solo LP Colt, out June 8th.
Find this single and the album preorder here: hilarywoodsmusic.bandcamp.com
The album was recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in Julien's hometown of Memphis, TN, and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Florence & the Machine, Arcade Fire). You can see her at Sasquatch! on Friday, May 25th! www.sasquatchfestival.com
"Downtown is a state of mind; the details might change from person to person, or song to song, but the feeling of endless possibility remains. For ‘60s singer Petula Clark, downtown was all bright lights and tall buildings, a place of gleaming wonder, where “everything’s waiting for you.” In 1983, it represented something beautifully grubby for Jackson Browne: a locale populated by blue-collar dreams, rats, and winos, where the best and worst of humanity collided, making you feel alive. And when horndog R&B boy band Pretty Ricky sang of “going downtown” in 2009, their destination was decidedly more intimate—but equally ecstatic.
Majical Cloudz’s latest single both pays tribute to and deconstructs the joyous downtown pop lineage. Rather than being in the middle of any sort of hustle and bustle, frontman Devon Welsh sounds like he’s eyeing Broadway from a thousand feet above, levitating. Wisps of droning organ hold him up as he finds his own downtown in another person." -Pitchfork bit.ly
Fade Into You reached number three on the Billboard Modern Rock chart in 1994, and is Mazzy Star's only single to make the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 44. The song also charted at number 48 on the UK Singles Chart.
The song was written and composed by Paul Simon, and concerns young lovers hitchhiking their way across the United States, in search of "America," in both a literal and figurative sense. It was inspired by a 1964 road trip that Simon took with his then girlfriend Kathy Chitty. The song has been regarded as one of Simon's strongest songwriting efforts and one of the duo's best songs. A 2014 Rolling Stone reader's poll ranked it the group's fourth best song.
This is the first single from the upcoming album, due out May 18th. You can see Ray LaMontagne at Sasquatch! on Sunday, May 27th. www.sasquatchfestival.com
Sera Cahoone and special guest Zoe Muth will be at Benaroya's Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall on April 20th
Hell-On is the title track from her upcoming album. “I write songs from a feeling of solidarity with folks who feel alone or isolated, I think I’m trying to comfort people in this way,” she said in a press release. Neko Case is playing Sasquatch! on Sunday May 27th and then heading out on tour with Ray LaMontagne. See all the dates here: nekocase.com
“Save The Life
of My Child” was one of the first songs ever recorded using a synthesizer. Simon & Garfunkel took classes from Robert Moog on how to use his new invention. They brought the “enormous
contraption” into the studio and used it as a bass instrument.
Damon McMahon on this latest album: "...for Freedom I was even more entrenched in a true purpose. You make art to make good art, you don’t make good art to get accolades." Check out the full interview and photo shoot here: bit.ly
This song was initially released only as a single on July 7, 1967 through Columbia Records. It was later compiled into the second half of Bookends. The song's lyrics stem from Simon wondering about his occupation and life had he been born a century earlier.
It peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A Hazy Shade of Winter peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1987, The Bangles recorded a cover version; that version peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
The low-key nature of 2012-2017’s February 17 release seems to have been intentional: Jaar’s name appears nowhere on the cover art, and its entry on Other People’s online store contains no written description of the music inside.
“I see things like Against All Logic as a continuation of that,” Jaar said in a 2017 Crack interview, referencing his Wolf + Lamb singles. “I always find it funny when announcements say something is ‘the first Nicolas Jaar single in three years’, as I’ve put out work under many different names.”
Check out the video for We the People here: youtu.be
"Mrs. Robinson" became the duo's second chart-topper, hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and peaking within the top 10 of multiple other countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain, among others. In 1969, it became the first rock song to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. The song has been covered by a number of artists, including Frank Sinatra, the Lemonheads, and Bon Jovi. “Mrs. Robinson” was originally titled “Mrs.
Roosevelt” and conceived as an homage to Eleanor Roosevelt.
R.I.P. Anticon cofounder Brendon Whitney, the producer and DJ otherwise known as Alias.He has died this week at only 41. www.residentadvisor.net
If hunting down that rarity on RSD is not enough of a challenge for you, Sigur Rós are releasing a series of four limited-edition vinyl albums for record store day u.k. (april 21). originally released with handmade sleeves by icelandic artist sigga bjorg as part of the band’s norður og niður festival in iceland, the rare recordings can now be bought in a second limited edition run. for the record store day u.k. release, each contributing artist chose his favourite sleeve from sigga’s 100 hand-mades to become the official sleeve for this record store day release.
On April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not scheduled
to speak at Mason Temple in Memphis. In town to help galvanize
striking sanitation workers, Dr. King was asked at the last minute
to speak at the church because a crowd of a few thousand people
wanted to see him. It would be the great orator’s final speech.
Moby explains: "The B Sides is a collection of songs that weren't quite appropriate for Play, but that I still love enough to release as B-sides. Some of these songs might not be instantly accessible, but I (immodestly) think they are all quite special."
"Voices of Old People" is a sound collage,
and was recorded on tape by Garfunkel at the United Home for Aged Hebrews and the California Home for the Aged at Reseda.
Jon Hopkins is starting a US tour in New York on May 22nd. All his website says is "More dates to be announced soon"
See LCD Soundsystem play Someone Great live on Austin City Limits: bit.ly
Modeselektor is a German electronic music duo consisting of Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary. In an interview the group said regarding their sound: "Happy metal, hard rap, country-ambient, Russian crunk. We don’t like it if people tag us as being a certain style or school or scene or whatever. We don’t really care about all that."
Need some more Tom Vek? Then check out the Song of the Day Podcast. Sherman by Tom Vek was featured 7/2/14 www.kexp.org
On March 27th, Lea Porcelain released a videa for another track, "If Time Was On My Side." Watch it here: www.youtube.com
The song is one of Paul Simon's many tributes to his hometown of New York City, and was written for the soundtrack of The Graduate, specifically the scene which takes place at the San Francisco Zoo. However, the song was not used in the film. The song was licensed in advertisements for the Bronx Zoo and the San Francisco Zoo in the late 1970s. In 1991, Paul Simon released a children's book titled At the Zoo (ISBN 0-385-41771-3) which combines the lyrics of the song with the very detailed illustrations of Valerie Michaut. To make this book considerable as "age-appropriate" for children, Simon made changes and additions, including identifying Rum as a beaver (because the original lyric states that "the zookeeper is very fond of rum") and giving the hamsters headlights (because they "turn on frequently").
The team spent over
50 studio hours recording "Punky's Dilemma," re-recording vocal parts, sometimes note by note, until they were satisfied. Simon paid close attention to his vocal takes, and he strived to get each line perfect.
The Detroit indie rocker Stef Chura met Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo during a 2016 tour, and before their first show, Toledo told Chura he sought her out after finding her music on Tumblr. When Chura later visited his studio, they spontaneously decided to re-record a few songs that had been cut from her excellent 2017 debut album Messes. “Degrees,” which is marked by her blistering guitar work and Toledo’s tight production, is the result of that collaboration.
Originally a “completely finger-picked folk song,” “Degrees” became the rock anthem it is now when Toledo suggested emulating Janis Joplin’s “Ball and Chain,” a song with similarly aggressive guitars and acidic vocals.
In 2008, it was announced that the song had sold 26,000 digital copies, 29% of which had occurred since September 2007. Billboard magazine later hypothesized that this uptick in sales was due to a Cadillac commercial that used the song. According to Matt Talbott, the frontman of Hum:
People have always said this or that about using our songs in movies or commercials and nothing ever really comes of it. [...] [But one day] some guy at an ad firm asking about using a song for a commercial [...] I said, 'Yeah, sure, whatever man.' [He eventually] wrote back and told me more, and when I knew it was for real and that it sounded like a large campaign, I called my lawyer.
The commercial was released before the members of Hum were aware that a deal had been agreed upon. According to Talbott, he only learned of its existence when he was at a hotel and the commercial was playing. Suddenly, Talbott received a call from his wife, who informed him that others had seen the ad and were phoning their house.
"I first discovered The Twinkeyz 45 'Aliens In Our Midst' in the late '70s when I was working for Subway Records in Cincinnati, Ohio," Chuck Cleaver wrote in a note to Noisey. "White vinyl with a picture sleeve and a comic book insert (I still have it). I loved the raw simplicity of it and thought the words were particularly wonderful. Wussy started playing it in our live sets a couple of years back and it’s gotten such a positive response that we decided to record it and put it on our newest record, What Heaven Is Like. Not to slight the others, but it’s actually my favorite song on the album. And considering the current shit storm, the words are as relevant as they’ve ever been.
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" was first released as a single in June 1980 and became Joy Division's first chart hit, reaching number 13 in the UK Singles Chart. That October, it peaked at number 42 on the Billboard disco chart. It also reached number 1 in New Zealand in June 1981. In 1980, the track was named NME Single of the Year.
"Life in a Northern Town" is the lead single from Dream Academy's self-titled debut studio album "The Dream Academy", released in 1985. The song was written as an elegy to British folk musician Nick Drake, who died in 1974, and the single's record sleeve includes a dedication to him.
In their 1968 appearance on Kraft Music Hall, Paul Simon explained that "Overs" is a companion piece to their earlier composition, "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her"; that song concerns the belief in true love, while "Overs" relates to the loss of that belief.
It has been suggested the song, which was originally written for but cut from The Graduate, was inspired by the film’s depiction of the Robinson's loveless marriage.
Kristin Hersh played nearly all the instruments on "Sunny Border Blue". She described the album as having even more intensity than her previous works, as she continued her pursuit of songwriting as being in part a way to transform "ugly feelings" into art.
Would you like to see School of Fish ply this song on top of a derelict Mercedes in the desert? Here you go: www.youtube.com
New album, "Sparkle Hard" is out May 18th. They'll be at the Neptune on August 4th.
Stephen Malkmus states in this track that R.E.M.'s "“Time After Time” was my least favorite song"
Not sure exactly what year this is from but here is a vintage video of Simon & Garfunkel performing "Old Friends" www.youtube.com
The Bookends Theme appears twice on the track listing, as the first and last song on side one of the original vinyl LP.
American Utopia's closing song is called "Here" and sums up much of what David Byrne's art conveys. It's a song with Daniel Lopatin on drums and keyboards and Byrne on guitar and voice, singing about how the brain processes the world. It's a little neuroscience lesson that ends with this thought and then a question "Here too many sounds for your brain to comprehend / Here the sound gets organized into things that make some sense / Here is something we call elucidation / Is it the truth? Or merely a description?"
This song is a musical eulogy, inspired by the death of the black South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in police custody on 12 September 1977. Gabriel wrote the song after hearing of Biko's death on the news. Bantu Stephen Biko was an anti-apartheid activist who was a founding member of the South African Students' Organisation in 1968 and the Black People's Convention in 1972.
Young Father's latest album, Cocoa Sugar was released in March. Check out the video for "Lord" here: bit.ly
The lyrics appear to be about the policing by authority figures of group discussion and the persecution of a dissenter. The warning against groupthink places the song in the same Orwellian category as the Hail To The Thief tracks "2+2=5" and "Myxomatosis."
In an interview Robert Smith said: "I was thinking of Bourbon Street in New Orleans when I wrote it - I was getting ready to go there and I thought: what the fuck do I think I'm going to find ? It's about the incredulity that I could still be fooled into looking for a perfect moment."
Head to Portland's Mississippi Studios on April 12th to see Blackwater Holylight
blackwater holylight with Sandrider, Museum of Light, and Heldscalla
Saturday, Jan 18, 2025
Event Info
