As most everyone knows by now, two songs from Jerry Herman’s musical “Hello Dolly” figure prominently into the story of Disney/Pixar’s eco-robo love story WALL-E. On a whim last night, I checked iTunes to see if either of the two songs – “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes A Moment” – had [...]
Posted in Music on Jun 30th, 2008
A Man Needs A Maid is easily my favorite Neil Young song (out of a career of favorite songs). Check out these two performance videos – one from the 1970s and one from a few months ago – to see how a great song matures… along with its performer. The intensity and snarling frustration in [...]
Posted in Music on Jun 10th, 2008
April March won a permanent place in my heart over a decade ago with her spot-on recreations of 1960s French pop music, so I was thrilled to see a new album from her hit the streets a few weeks ago. ‘Magic Monsters’ is a collaboration with Steve Hanft, a songwriter best known for directing music [...]
Posted in Music on Jun 9th, 2008
Summer approaches, and that means it’s time to seek out some fun new music for the beach, park or pool. My first sure-fire-summer-party-starter is “L.E.S. Artistes” by singer/songwriter Santogold. You can download it from Amazon or iTunes.
Posted in Music on Feb 6th, 2008
My hipster cred plummets as I admit to never hearing of this band until a couple of weeks ago, but my shame melts away as I crank up the volume on this lush and crunchy collection of lo-fi jams. “Classics,” released in 2006, was the second album from NYC-based duo Ratatat. It’s all instrumental, and [...]
Lifehacker’s Adam Pash posted a short piece yesterday on creating a “Best of 2007″ playlist in iTunes. He suggests setting up a smart playlist that finds all music added in 2007 with a play count of 25 or more. It’s a nice idea, but as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I [...]
Adrien and I went to see Cloverfield on Sunday, and while it wasn’t the transcendent movie-going experience that I was hoping for, it was certainly a whole lotta fun. If you’re a monster-movie aficionado, be sure to stay for the credits. They roll for a minute or two in near silence, but then the movie’s [...]
Jason at Webomatica recently held a “So Bad They’re Good” movie contest, asking readers to submit their favorite “bad” movies for him to review. I’ve been fascinated with bad cinema since I was a kid. The Golden Turkey Awards was a very influential book during my formative years (how disappointing that Michael Medved has turned [...]
I’ve read a many accounts of the iPod’s psychic abilities in shuffle mode, picking songs that the listener was just thinking about or that somehow relate to a recent event in the listener’s life. But Lily over at Once In A Lifetime puts a unique spin on the story and recounts an iPod tale of [...]
Steve Earle is one of my musical heroes. For those unfamiliar, he’s a country/rock singer-songwriter who was on the leading edge of the “Alt Country” movement when he started recording back in the mid-1980′s. His career was derailed in the early 90′s by drug addiction and a brief stint in jail, but he emerged from [...]
PowerSong is one of my favorite features of the Nike+iPod Sport Kit. Whenever I feel like I’m slowing down during a workout, I can press my iPod’s center button to instantly play a pre-selected PowerSong for a quick boost of energy. It works. This week, my PowerSong is Lucky Bunny Foot by indie hip-hop group [...]
Just prior to Macworld this year, I wrote that my one wish was for Apple to release a version of iTunes that supports tags — a la Flicker and Technorati — as a way to categorize and sort music. As far as I’m concerned, “genre” just doesn’t cut it any more. Yesterday, Lifehacker took up [...]
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