The album from which the Rachid Taha single comes, ZOOM, is released in Europe, and if you go to the YouTube page you’ll get iTunes link from which you can buy it. But as is often the case with music I like from other countries, I can’t actually do so. If I were buying the CD, which I may well do at some point, I could simply use my credit card and the internet, pay extra shipping charges, and take advantage of the borderless world of the internet to get the newest release by an artist I’ve been following for decades. There’s an Amazon link, too. Ironically, the digital store is more locked down.
Yes, I know there are ways around these restrictions such as proxies and such, but that’s not my point. I don’t want to have to result to those techniques in order to legally purchase music, just because the record label has decided it isn’t ready to distribute across the pond yet. And most people don’t know how to do take advantage of those methods yet. Make no bones about it, it’s a corporate decision to lock down distribution this way. The artists, with the possible exception of huge megastars, are usually just thrilled anyone at all is actually buying their music and paying full price for it. They love having fans wherever they are.
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Tag Archives: music video
"Forward" Music Video
There’s always a part of me that feels just a little naive and sentimental when I post a video like this one. But I suppose I am a little of both those things. I strongly believe in the essential goodness of human nature, and that when a society offers people an opportunity to excel, most will rise to the occasion. Congressman Barney Frank once said, that government is simply the name we give to those things we choose to do together. That is the view taken in this video, and it is one thing I like about it.
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Lyric Videos for New Singles by Two of my Absolute Faves
‘Nuff said!
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Amnesty International's 50th, 80+ Acts, 76 Dylan Songs, $20, 5+ hours… No Matter How You Count, It Equals Awesome
Amnesty International is one of the most important human rights organizations operating in the world today, and it celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Started in 1961 with a worldwide “Appeal for Amnesty” on behalf of individuals imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their beliefs written by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the movement now counts more than 3 million people worldwide.
What better way to celebrate this milestone anniversary than with an album of songs by a man whose songs include the anthems “I Shall Be Released” and “Chimes of Freedom”? Bob Dylan has long been a supporter of Amnesty International, and Chimes of Freedom was also the unofficial anthem for the amazing Human Rights Now Tour, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1988.
The collection is available now directly from Amnesty International, on iTunes, or at Amazon. I downloaded the digital tracks, 76 of them, for $19.99 and it’s the best $20 I’ve spent in recent memory. I’m not exaggerating. By and large it’s great music, but more on that in a minute. Let’s get some math out of the way first, if you’re budget conscious like me. I don’t buy much music these days. For the most part, I rely on a subscription service, Rhapsody, for my music. I only purchase music when there’s are really good reason to. This is worth buying, a bargain by any standards.
It is a 76 song digital download for $19.99, or 4 CDs for $24.99. Moreover, all profits go to help Amnesty International in its work. That’s well over 5 hours of music and the satisfaction of helping out one of my favorite causes, for the price of two album downloads on iTunes. Your average digital LP on iTunes or most other legal sites is usually $9.99 (increasingly $11.99) and it usually includes 10-12 songs. This is 76 songs. If that were sold at 12 songs per record , it would be 6 1/3 records. Nobody like fractions, so let’s just say this collection equals 6 iTunes LPs + 4 free bonus tracks. If Amnesty International were a record label and not a human rights nonprofit, they’d have known to more slickly market this collection typical price of $59.94, but tell us it’s on sale now for $19.99, $24.99 for the 4 CDs. Then we’d know we’re getting a bargain!
Of course it’s only a bargain if the music is good. It could contain twice as many tracks, but if you only like 9 of them, then you still don’t want to pay $20.
So then, is it any good?
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Hooked, but It's OK! Andy Grammer's "Keep Your Head Up"
This is an interactive video for “Keep Your Head Up” by singer-songwriter and fellow Binghamton University alumn Andy Grammer. (I’m not sure what Grammer studied and SUNY Binghamton, but according to this bio he was there two years active in the theater program. I did my PhD there.) At various points in the video you will have an opportunity to change the scenario by selecting options. And if you do the whole thing again, you’ll get different choices.
This guy knows how to load a song with melodic hooks and they do their job. The song snagged in the netting of my muddled brain the first time I heard it and it’s been stuck there since. Usually at least one or two songs from the beginning of summer crop has such a hook, but usually it drives me crazy. That’s because I usually don’t even like the song, but the hook is effective, so it snags and won’t pull lose. And because the artists is often backed by the full marketing budget of a giant record label, the single is ubiquitous. You hear it on the radio, in the mall, in your favorite tv shows and movies, over television commercials, as a Starbucks Download of the Week, etc. The artists appears on daytime and late night talk shows, as a guest performer or mentor on reality competition shows, in cameos on episodic television, on radio talk shows, in public service announcements… So every time the song fades from memory, its planted again. I’ll find myself singing it in the car, the shower, on the street, deliberately preventing myself from learning the whole thing, annoyed at the banality of the lyrics, the derivative nature of the music, or some other aspect of the song.
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Artists to Check Out: Cory Branan and River City Extension
I checked out Cory Branan playing at Paradise Saturday. He was one of the acts that played before headliners Dashboard Confessional, and so the set was disappointingly short, only about short, 1/2 hour. Branan took to the stage before a rather quiet audience. Dashboard sometimes do a version of his song “Tall Green Grass” when they play live, but clearly this audience didn’t know who he was. Once he started though, he had their attention.
He has an impressive stage presence. He was last in Boston in October at Great Scott where he played a similar but longer set opening for Drag the River. John Snodgrass helping out on some vocals. But in both cases he followed a similar pattern. Branan’s genuinely a humble guy. He comes out, acoustic guitar in hand, looking the part of the humble singer/songwriter, folk artist. He apologizes to the audience for taking their time, and then proceeds to deliver a set that rocks like you would never expect an acoustic set to do. His fingers slide up and down his guitar, he strums or picks hard and fast, and his voice wails. It’s powerful and masculine, a real rock and rollers voice.
He’s a hell of a performer. He whips through songs like “A Girl Named Go” steadily picking up pitch and speed. volume as the girl name Go picks up speed in her car. “Tall Green Grass” he plays with with a humor and mirth. He played a new song from a forthcoming album, but gave no sense when it might be released.
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The Musical World of Roger Kuhn Around X-mas Time
Cover Art for "Every Year Around XMas Time"
Singer / Songwriter Roger Kuhn will be at the American Indian Community House in lower Manhattan tomorrow, Friday, December 3, for a concert marking the release of “Every Year Around Christmas Time” a collection of original Christmas songs available at most online music outlets. (Click here for information on the show.)
The record marks a return to the studio for the farm boy from North Dakota, turned New Yorker, who’s now become a Boston resident since moving here with his husband in May, 2009. He has spent the last year reading, studying yoga, meditating, and enjoying married life off the road. But now “he’s got the bug again,” and the Christmas collection is just some of the new music coming our way. A new single, My Vow to You, is already available on iTunes.
In this video interview he talks about his childhood, becoming a musician, the importance of music in negotiating his identity as a gay man of mixed Native American and White heritage, his spirituality, his career thus far, and what is still to come.
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Praise and Blame. Well, Pretty Much All Praise.
The video below is a recording of “Did Trouble Me,” a Gospel song by Susan Werner, as sung by Tom Jones on his new album Praise and Blame. To most people Tom Jones is probably best know for songs like “What’s New Pussycat?,” “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “It’s Not Unusual,” and his cover of Prince’s “Kiss.” Praise and Blame is his second release on Lost Highway Records, better known for releasing music that might be labeled “Roots Music” or “Americana.” It turns out the fit between Jones and the label is not at all a forced one.
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More Train Songs
Almost exactly a month ago I posted a list of Train Songs, but I did so too early. I had asked the help of friends in Lost HighwayRecords Fancorps. They reminded me of lots of songs I had forgotten and even more that I didn’t yet know. They also introduced me to Jimmie Rodgers, The Singin’ Brakeman. A few suggests came in from other places, too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who contributed. This was fun. I may just take SlowMovinOutlaw up on his suggestion and do another list on another theme. He suggested trucking songs. Maybe, though I don’t know how much that crosses genres. I found train songs that were Country, Rock, Jazz, Blues, Folk, Soul… They’re all here.
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Two New Versions of Cry Me A River
There are songs that are such classics that they are recorded over and over, generation after generation, and they still seem contemporary. “Cry Me a River” was written in 1953 and first recorded by the British actress Julie London in 1955 as part of the movie musical The Girl Can’t Help It. It was Ella Fitzgerald who introduced it to Jazz fans, though, and it has been recorded by so many great jazz artist since, especially the vocalists, including Shirley Bassey, George Benson, Etta James, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dexter Gordon, Fourplay, etc.
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