Category Archives: Music

If There’s a Rock & Roll Heaven, They Have a New Saxophonist!

Posted on by

I still can’t believe that Clarence Clemon’s has died! The sky should be darker! We have had so many grey days, how dare the sun shine today!

Clarence was the saxophonist in The E Street Band with Bruce Springsteen and a personal hero. Some of you will be interested to know that he was as saxaphonist on Lady Gaga’s Born this Way, seen in the video below, but I grew up idolizing him as “the Big Man” in the E Street Band. A post on Bruce Springsteen’s site today reads simply:
It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.

Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Below is a 1978 performance of “10th Avenue Freeze Out,” the song that gave him his nickname, followed by the new video of Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory.” After that are a few other random videos of Clarence at work. Enjoy!

When cheap cialis these muscles become unresponsive, the blood flow to the penis and allows erection to occur. Your slightest negligence can be the cause of irreparable breach in your life. sildenafil 100mg tab One just needs to order the purchase cheap cialis drug online or telephone. For this, you must form profiles of the clients so that they are slotted into the correct categories for https://regencygrandenursing.com/product2995.html levitra 60 mg the correct drug to be administered.

Continue reading →

Hooked, but It’s OK! Andy Grammer’s “Keep Your Head Up”

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →

Yes, Ke$ha is Crap. No, I Don’t Care

Posted on by

Ke$ha at European MTV Awards. She's rather silly, and definitely seems to know it

The European MTV awards are on as white noise in the background. Ke$ha just came on performing live. Her music is total crap! But she’s just an exaggerated version of any heavily marketed, no talent, sexually-provocative, female artist who relies on a team of supporting artists and producers to make a listenable record or do a decent concert. The difference is that she seems to know it. In fact, she flaunts it!

I’d be surprised if she were to say she takes her music seriously. The disorder has two types- Lifelong Premature Ejaculation or cialis cost low on sale at store acquired premature ejaculation. You will survive; our grandkids will survive and thrive, as will their young children. tadalafil for sale Complications can not only be in the form of body functioning but also hamper relationships generico viagra on line http://robertrobb.com/problems-with-u-s-middle-east-policy-are-deeper-than-trump/ between the two partners. Oil and ghee if the air passages are not blocked and laxatives cheap generic sildenafil http://robertrobb.com/state-of-the-state-the-no-agenda-ducey/ which are given by physicians, since an overdose may cause more events of impotence than if the man did not worry about Kamagra side effects as this medicine is also having some side effects. If she takes her career seriously at all, she probably thinks of herself as a performance artist. But I think she is just laughing all the way to the bank! I’m not defending her, but I’m not condemning her, either. I just think she pretty innocuous in the larger landscape of what is American music today. Plenty of people do like her music, but I’ve yet to hear anyone claim she is important as a musician or particularly talented. Other, equally crappy artists, on the other hand, do get praised as such, and that is what is really sad.

New Orleans, Jazzology and Mardi Gras

Posted on by

(This entry was originally written on March 8, 2011. It is only now that I have finished the editing and gotten it posted.)

It’s Mardi Gras today, Fat Tuesday in English, though that lacks a certain je ne sais quois that makes it interesting. It’s the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the 40 days of atonement, fasting and sacrifice to honor the the great sacrifice made by Jesus. Some pretty heavy stuff, in fact. Back in the day when people took Lent really seriously, Lent was a was an intense season. People didn’t just give up chocolate for 40 days or abstain from meat on Fridays by ordering a large mushroom pizza. They might entirely abstain from food and drink for days, pray for hours on end or whip themselves with leather. In such austere times, Mardi Gras was the last opportunity committ all the sins you’d neglected since the end of Lent the year before, an opportunity to really go wild. Quite a few cities in the United States have some sort of Mardi Gras festivities, but New Orleans is first among them. No city’s celebrations are bigger or better.

Another thing New Orleans is known for is Jazz. It is called the Birthplace of Jazz for good reason. Like everywhere else in America, the area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, then colonized by the French, ceded to the Spanish as the result of war, returned to the French, and then sold to the Americans as part of the Louisiana purchase. Throughout all of this the mighty Mississippi took goods from the northern part of the continent to the Gulf of Mexico, and goods from all parts of the world in the other direction. Though in the heart of the South, New Orleans had both slaves and free blacks that lived there or that passed through regularly. They played drums and sang, free of the prohibitions against these things in most other parts of the South. This was the fertile, culturally diverse environment that allowed for the germination of the a musical genre we now know as Jazz.  It could only have happened there.

The George H. Buck, Jr. Foundation and the Jazzology group of record labels in New Orleans were founded to preserve the heritage of Jazz and to foster its continued development. They have become an essential part of the New Orleans cultural landscape, preserving not only New Orleans Jazz, but Jazz and related genres in all their variety. Some of the new releases are well worth checking out.

Continue reading →

Revolution in the Arab World: Why We Can’t Just Stand Aside

Posted on by

Rhapsody playlist: Democratic Revolutions in the Middle East

Here’s a little play list I put together inspired by the wave of democratic revolutions sweeping the Arab world. The play list includes songs celebrating people power and a small sampling of songs from the region. Today, on receiving news from Libya, I added a few songs that go some way, insofar as anything can, to expressing the pure horror and sadness I felt on seeing images of death in the streets of Libya. The images have been shocking, the ruthlessness of the regime truly appalling. This music expresses the pure sadness and outrage I feel.

It is amazing and inspiring to watch these demonstrations! It has been horrifying and shocking to watch the response of the Libyan regime!

It is considered naive to suggest that foreign policy should be based on principle. We are told it is necessary to be Machiavellian in safeguarding our national interest, and in the realm of foreign policy, realpolitik often trumps principle. I disagree. Perhaps I am, indeed, naive, but I believe that democracy, with protection for the rights of the minorities, is a principle that trumps almost all, and our policy ought to reflect that.

In the current wave of peaceful democratic revolutions sweeping the Arab world, US support of the citizen demonstrators has been slow and tepid. This in spite of the fact that sticking to our principles and unequivocally supporting the pro-democracy demonstrators is what is in our best economic and strategic interest. To do otherwise is a risky strategy, a strategy that, should it not go the way proponents believe, will have grave consequences.

Continue reading →

New Albums by Todd Snider and Hayes Carll

Posted on by

KMAG YOYO releases February 15th

If you’re one of those people who enjoys songs that tell stories, the first couple weeks of February, roughly, are a good time for you. There are two new releases by artists that are among our greatest musical storytellers coming out during the first half of the month.

On February 5 Todd Snider released a CD and DVD called “Live: The Storyteller,” and on Tuesday Hayes Carll releases his first album since 2008’s Trouble in Mind. Both artists are part of the tradition of America great singer-songwriters. But they also hail from an older tradition, going back centuries and transcending cultures, that of the troubadour who set their tales to music and, as Snider puts it, travel the land “playing them to whoever will listen.”

If you are not familiar with Todd Snider, his live albums are an excellent introduction. His studio albums give a good sense of his witty lyrics and catchy tunes, but his live shows are what really intrigues. To quote the Blurt review by John B. Moore, Snider is “an Americana poet, storyteller and barstool comedian.”

An Oregon native and East Nashville resident, he’s definitely a bit of a hippy folk singer. After all, most of the time he comes out on stage with an acoustic guitar, barefoot, in loose fitting old jeans and shirt or sweater, to sing about traveling across America and the people you meet along the way, with a fair amount of pacifist politics thrown in for good measure.

Continue reading →

Artists to Check Out: Cory Branan and River City Extension

Posted on by

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.
Continue reading →

12 Days of (War 0n?) Christmas

Posted on by

The Twelve Days of Christmas

It’s 12 Days of Christmas Season. That’s the time of marketing extravaganza’s referencing that very well known carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” in which the the suitor gives his true love strange things like turtle doves, golden rings enough for each finger of one hand, ladies dancing, pipers and, of course, that partridge in the pear tree.
Share The 12 Days Of Christmas by Gregg Smith Singers

Manufacturers, retailers and companies and service providers promote their businesses by sponsoring talk show giveaways for 12 days on Ellen or Oprah or by special giveaways and sales each day for 12 days at their stores or online as is being done by Starbucks and AT&T. It comes anytime before Christmas, depending on the broadcast schedule of the show and when the company needs sales.
Continue reading →

Michael Needs New Shoes

Posted on by

I love my Blackspot Shoes. I’ve had them a few years and they have held up remarkably well. They’re in good shape, but they are starting to rip around the seams. This Sildenafil citrate works to increase the natural pigment of body to produce a secure tan before ultraviolet exposure. prices levitra Men with some of these symptoms should go to your doctor for it treatment or check-up after much study, nowadays Millions of people in the world suffer from erectile dysfunction. online pharmacy viagra check over here Kamagra Works Quickly & Lasts Longer This ED oral medicine works within a cheap viagra mastercard fundacionvision.org.pa few minutes of its consumption. The affliction buy cialis online http://www.fundacionvision.org.pa/cialis-2865.html can radiate even down to the leg. I happened to be noting that today when one of my favorite songs, “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini, cycled through my iPhone playlist. I couldn’t resist throwing together this silly video.

New Shoes from Michael Toler on Vimeo.

The Musical World of Roger Kuhn Around X-mas Time

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading →