SOUNDTRACK: BRAD-Live from WXPN’s World Cafe (2010).
Brad are most known, if they are known at all, for being the side project of Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard.
I remember getting their first album and thinking it was okay. But since then I have re-listened, and bought their other discs and found them to be an interesting side project from one of hard rock’s most enduring bands. It’s also funny that Stone Gossard, by no means the most visible member of the band (surely Eddie Vedder wins for that and even lead guitarist Mike McCready gets more notoriety) should create a side band in which he is, again, not the main figure. Lead singer Shawn Smith steals the show with his impressive voice.
This live set is brief (six songs in half an hour) and features four tracks from their recently released Best Firends? CD (which I haven’t heard). The other two tracks “Buttercup” and “Screen” come from that first album.
The tracks from the new album seem like good classic rock (with “Low” being much harder than the other three and “Believe in Yourself” being a delicate piano ballad). “Buttercup” still sounds good here as a sort of mellow jazzy number. I’m not sure if Smith’s voice is as strong as it was, but he still sounds good.
It’s not a great show, but it’s a good collection of mellow rock songs. You can listen to the set here.
[READ: October 11, 2010] “The Book of the Dead”
Edwidge Danticat is the next writer in the 1999 New Yorker 20 Under 40 issue.
I love the name Edwidge Danticat, although I’ve never heard of her before and (therefore obviously) never read her stuff. Actually I take that back, I had heard of her book Krik? Krak! but didn’t recognize her as the author.
This story is about a young sculptor. Her subject is almost exclusively her father. He was a prisoner in Haiti and had a chance meeting, on the day he was released, with the woman who would later become his wife (and the artists’ mother). They escaped to America and have lived happily ever since.
The first sculpture that the young artist made is one that she has fondness for but one that she never thought was very “strong” as a piece. But one day she is told that a celebrity, a Haitian beauty who now appears on an American television show, wants to buy this sculpture as a gift to her own father. The sculptor is so excited, that she personally travels across the country to deliver the sculpture to the celebrity. She invites her father along since he was the inspiration. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: Philadelphia Radio Stations (circa 1990 and 2010)
There’s a Dead Milkmen song called “The Big Sleazy” in which the chorus is
I’ve always been amused by the song, especially when I travel to Philly and hear these stations. That song is from 1990, so 20 years later I’m not sure what the band would think of their new playlists.
Now, I have no idea what XPN was like before, but, yea, I can see that he folk Nazis are in charge. Of course, I rather like that. However, XPN also plays a bunch of artists who are broader than the folk label, so I wonder if they have changed even more since 1990.
SOUNDTRACK: MOXY FRÜVOUS-Bargainville (1993).
I first heard Moxy Früvous on an NPR weekend morning show. They performed “Johnny Saucep’n” (a tongue twisting a capella marvel) live and it blew my mind. And, lest I forget, these 4 guys do AMAZING a capella. Amazing. Their harmonies are simply magnificent. I immediately went out and got whatever their latest album was (Live Noise, I expect). And I worked my way back from there.
