Great rock ‘n’ soul from Jersey City’s One and Nines (seemingly named after U.S. Truck Route 1/9). Their new single “Tell Me” (b/w “Make it Easy”) mixes a bit of shore-side soul with some Memphis-flavored horns and a mix courtesy of the Bo-Keys’Â Scott Bomar. Available as a digital download or a 7″ vinyl single [1 2] for those of you with a working highway hi-fi.
Sweden’s Sweet Serenades make pop music that suggests they’ve fallen through a time vortex into the prime of early-80s MTV. In the snappy “Moving On” you can hear shades of the Buggles, Motors, Alarm, Call, Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, and other favorites of music video’s golden age.
New video from New York’s Lost Leaders (Peter Cole & Byron Isaacs), with a heavy CSN feel to the melody, harmony and guitars. Isaacs plays with Levon Helm and Ollabelle, Cole is reportedly a member in good standing of the American Automobile Association. You can hear a live performance (the so-called “Scarf Session”) in the video below, and download the studio version (plus a second song from their upcoming EP) on the band’s home page.
Image Courtesy of 45cat.com
Perhaps this is obvious, but artists who cover songs you like have a good chance of writing songs that you’d also like. With the huge, searchable, hyperlinked, on-demand catalogs of Rdio, MOG, Spotify and Rhapsody at your fingertips, this pivot has never been easier to execute. Search for a favorite song, say the Beach Boys‘ “Girl Don’t Tell Me,” see who’s covered it, and then take a stroll through their original album. In this case you’ll find that Heartworms‘ album Space Escapade leads you to an album of indie pop by Velocity Girl’s Archie Moore, you’ll find a period cover by ’60s UK singer Tony Rivers nestled among 58 singles released by Immediate, and a Dutch band called The Hik whose four tracks are featured on the compilation Kruup 6×4 alongside the surf sounds of Los Tiki Boys and the Herb Alpert pastiche of The Herb Spectacles. There’s also tuneful indie/punk rock from Amy Miles and Joe Jitsu, and a few faceless studio bands covering the Beach Boys and other surf bands. This still leaves out great versions by the Smithereens, Vivian Girls, The Shins, and many others. Next time we’ll try the Shangri-La’s “Train From Kansas City.”
As great as are the performances from Jimmie Dale Gilmore (vocals/guitar), Jerry Douglas (dobro) and Viktor Krauss (bass), it seems as if guitarist Bill Frisell really steals this one.
You can get a feel for the music issued on the Truth & Soul label by noting that they still release old-school vinyl singles. Two solid shots of soul at a time. They also release full albums, of course, and digital, but their musical ethos is rooted in a time when singles dominated radio, and radio dominated listeners’ imaginations. In March the Brooklyn-based T&S will release their second album on veteran soul singer Lee Fields. Now in his fifth decade as a vocalist, the edges in Fields’ voice are especially well fitted to the throwback sound of his latest session, which can be previewed in this track “You’re the Kind of Girl.”
Buddy Holly, Paul Anka and Jerry Lee Lewis
The recent PBS tribute to Buddy Holly, Listen to Me, revealed this interesting tidbit: Holly’s hit song “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” was written for him by Paul Anka! Perhaps not as surprising when you consider that Anka also wrote the theme song for the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady,” and the English-language lyrics for Sinatra’s signature “My Way.” On top of all that, he donated his composer’s royalty for the song to Holly’s widow, Maria Elena.
It’s hard to believe that the bubblegum group that hit with “Simon Says” and “Indian Giver” also produced one of the greatest Phil Spector tributes of all time, “When We Get Married.” Their last single for Buddah, it barely bubbled under at #118 in 1969, and marked their last chart appearance. But 40+ years later, it still packs an incredible Spectorian wallop thanks to Richie Cordell’s take-no-prisoners production. 
MP3 | When We Get Married
Streaming music services MOG and Rdio are great resources. They’re not a replacement for music that you license a copy of (because music can disappear from their libraries at any time), but they’re terrific resources for browsing new and catalog music, or providing hours of uninterrupted entertainment.
Both services allow you to search by artist, album or song title, but leave out so many other ways a visitor might try to locate something of interest. Where, for example, are basic genres? How does one find rockabilly or lounge music? MOG lists a record’s genre, but doesn’t hyperlink it; Rdio doesn’t even list genres. Why?
Rdio lists and hyperlinks the record labels (so you can easily find all of the Norton Records entries in Rdio’s catalog), but so many other pieces of metadata are missing. Who’s in the band, and how do I find all the catalog items in which they participate? Who wrote the songs, and where else is their material? And on and on.
Rdio’s New Release section is painful. 30 per page for 100+ pages, unsortable and unfilterable. They seem to hand-curate the first few pages, so you’ll see artists you know up-front, but as you click onward you’ll find yourself paging through dozens of karaoke records and grey-market reissues.
Serendipity can be entertaining, especially in discovering music, but not by force. Computer systems easily admit multiple indices across a collection of data, so why are the paths of discovery offered by these services so incredibly miserly?
Read a comparison of MOG and Rdio here.
A few months after Alex Chilton’s passing in May 2011, the remaining members of Big Star (Jody Stephens, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow) played a tribute show in Memphis at the Levitt Shell. The entire show was recorded, and may eventually see release, but for now, a terrific three-song EP featuring John Davis has made the leap from its initial vinyl release to the digital domain. You can hear it below, and buy it as part of a Big Star bundle at Ardent’s on-line store.