13 November 2023 - Malcolm McLaren and the World Famous Supreme Team - Buffalo Gals

This one might take some explaining.

You see, Malcolm McLaren was a manager to a lot of punk and post-punk bands, like the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow.  It was the latter that brought him to New York City in the 1980s, where he went to an outdoor block party by Aftrika Bambaataa.  There, he discovered hip hop and scratching.

So he, Trevor Horn, and Anne Dudley got together, wrote a song that replaced guitars with scratching, got a whole bunch of then-unknown DJs and MCs to perform on it, and made a hip hop classic.

How a punk manager made a hip hop record might be strange, but there's no doubting its influence. Eminem made reference to it in one of his biggest hits.   Neneh Cherry based her biggest hit on this song.  The song was, and is, beloved and revered.

In 1998, McLaren rereleased the song as part of a larger record that featured songs based on and interpolated from "Buffalo Gals".  Our favorite reimagination of the song was by Rakim.

10 November 2023 - The Go-Go's - Head Over Heels

The Go-Go's were rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.  This was the pinacle of their career, and they wrapped up their time as a band in 2022 - if Belinda Carlisle is to be believed.  They've broken up before, though, so we'll see.

At any rate, let's feature the band's last Top 20 hit - from 1984 - and the song Jane Wiedlin calls her "favorite Go-Go's song."   Written by Charlotte Caffey (the only one without a short haircut in this video) and Kathy Valentine (the bassist - who wrote herself a somewhat iconic solo), the song is pop-rock perfection.

In this 2001 performnace at Central Park, we get to see the problem with Go-Go's live performances - the camera is almost never on Gina Schock..... but when it is, you can see she's a bad-ass drummer.

9 November 2023 - Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart

I'm never really sure if anyone reads any of this anymore - because Google has changed how they measure stuff.  On some metrics, it looks like people definitely read this.  Using others, it's clear they do not.

Anyway, that doesn't mean I'll stop shouting into the void.  Here's an early 1990s dance hit.  This song is widely considered a classic, but it really started when a couple of DJs - Super DJ Dmitry and Jungle DJ Towa Tei - got together with a vocalist who went by Lady Miss Kier and formed a wild collective.  

Their first single off their first album was a huge hit and is widely considered a classic.

8 November 2023 - RBD - Ser O(u) Parecer

For a while about a decade and a half ago, this song somehow popped into my consciousness.  I'm not entirely sure why - despite my Spanish language studies, I don't usually listen to radio that isn't English-language based.  I don't watch much Univision or Telemundo.

And I certainly don't watch telenovelas, and since this is a band that got its start ON a telenovela, on the Televisa network in Mexico, I have absolutely no idea.

And yet this 2006 single is so damn catchy even the most fervent gringos will be singing along.  A song about unrequited love, you don't need to speak the language to understand the emotion.

The song DID end up making the Billboard Hot 100 (read: English-language charts) on its strength in markets with large Spanish-speaking populations.It was, of course, a top Latin radio hit.

Like I said, I studied Spanish.... so when I hear the Portguese version they also released in 1996, it kind of messes with me a little.  It enjoyed some success in Brazil.

RBD (short for "Rebelde") broke up for a bit, but they are back together and touring. This version was recorded a month ago in SC.   They still sound great and the crowd loves them.

7 November 2023 - Suzanne Vega - Left Of Center

Today is Election Day in the United States.   Suzanne Vega's song from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack perfectly reflects a widely held political philosophy not held by either of the two major parties.  

Seriously, this was one of Suzanne Vega's first hits, reaching charts overseas but not in the US.  The piano in the background is brought to you courtesy of Joe Jackson.   

It's also one of my favorite Suzanne Vega songs.  

6 November 2023 - The Decemberists - Sons and Daughters

Every day, it gets harder and harder to come up with new material for this blog.  

Thank God we have a lot of pop culture to digest.  Take the Season 9 episode of the popular NBC sitcom The Office - titled "The Farm" - where the Schrute family siblings inherit a farm.  In one poignant scene, they perform a song together as a family.

So that got me thinking - is this some sort of traditional folk song I should know?

It was not.   It was the 2006 song "Sons and Daughters" by The Decembrists, closing their fourth album, The Crane Wife.  It is a live favorite.  Which really shouldn't be a surprise - it's a beautiful song and it was on The Office.  

The song may not have been a traditional folk song, but it sure as hell is now.  The Decembrists are still bringing folk music to new and great places, and, all these years later, the Portand, Oregon band is still blazing new trails.

That doesn't mean audiences don't want to hear this song, though.....

3 November 2023 - fIREHOSE - Time With You

I was bound to get here.   

fIREHOSE, which grew out of the ashes of The Minutemen after d.boon's tragic death, was never a huge band commercially, but they made a lot of great music.  This song, from their 3rd album fROMOHIO, was recorded in Ohio, which is where vocalist/guitarist Ed Crawford is from (the rest of the band is famously from San Pedro, California).  

The song is something of a love song - a simple, sweet love song.  You don't expect that out of fIREHOSE, who are usually all about the boom stick, but here we are. 

The band, which helped to bust Mike Watt out a deep depression over the death of his best friend, never really broke up - they just went into mothballs at times while everyone was doing other stuff.  In 2012, they toured and of course played this song.

Ed Crawford still looks like he's living his dream.