Natalia Lafourcade’s label has most of her live performances on lockdown. I’ve been wanting to share something of hers for years; KCRW finally came through for me.
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Loading... This was the lullaby I most frequently sang to the Poissonnière, back when she was an age to need them fairly often.
(2 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)Loading... The first Tom Russell tune I heard was “Gallo Del Cielo,” which stopped me in my tracks as a guy in my unit played it over a field telephone speaker out in the field. You couldn’t get much lower-fi than that delivery, but I was transfixed by the song. I wrote the performer & title down in my notebook and made a note to acquire it once I got back to the barracks. I jumped into the back catalogue pretty deep after that. The only other memory I have of the guy who introduced me to Tom Russell was him getting busted for trying to smuggle a confiscated Colt .38 Special back from Iraq.
I can’t find a version of “Gallo Del Cielo” online that does the studio recording justice, so instead I went with a live version of the initial track of Blood and Candle Smoke inspired by Tom’s experiences teaching in Nigeria during the Biafran War. This is a pretty fair introduction to how densely allusive his songwriting can be.
I don’t think Tom tours anymore and I’m not even certain he still plays shows. If he was coming remotely close to the People’s Republic I would be there. He’s one of my favorite living songwriters.
(2 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)Loading... Shows on the scale that Angélique Kidjo is routinely capable of pulling off would be exhausting for me to attend, but there’s no way I would willingly miss her. I don’t know who is in charge of parceling out megastardom, but somehow they managed to short shrift Mdme. Kidjo.
(2 votes, average: 8.50 out of 10)Loading... This week I'll be featuring some of the artists on my 4-Hour Bucket List — essentially, those I'd happily drive up to four hours away to see perform (assuming no shows on the tour are closer to me). There are more names on the list than days in the week, so (spoiler alert) I'll drop my list on Friday and invite you to do the same.
Orquesta Akokán ("from the heart" in Yoruban) is made up of musicians from Cuba and New York. The band's arrangements are penned by a guy with a PhD from NYU who wrote his dissertation on Cuban piano improvisation in the 1930s–40s, and the band’s three founders recruited the rest of the lineup through the vocalist's connections with Irakere, the legendary Cuban band founded by Chucho Valdés.
(3 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)Loading... Kacey has been covering this Bob Marley classic for years now, I found one video of her singing it at Farm Aid in 2013. The song is featured in the movie Bob Marley One Love. Enjoy the rasta yo' day, mon.
(1 votes, average: 8.00 out of 10)Loading... I was an early fan of the 1984 cult classic Streets of Fire with music by Jim Steinman, Ry Cooder, Bob Seger, Tom Petty, and Stevie Nicks. Also this catchy tune that Dan Hartman wrote for Hall & Oates but ended up recording himself. I don't care for the Hall & Oates update they did in the aughts, but I found this version from the ultimate Australian cover band that I kind of like.
(2 votes, average: 7.00 out of 10)Loading... Metallica showing Elton and Bernie some heavy metal love at the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song concert. The original is great rock and roll, but this version puts a real hard edge on an old saw.
(4 votes, average: 8.25 out of 10)Loading... It was 1972 and I was almost 13 years old and my best friend and I talked the lady selling tickets at the movie theater into letting us in for an afternoon showing of the new James Bond movie with Sean Connery back playing 007 again. I'll admit that Jill St. John (Tiffany Case) and Lana Wood (Plenty O'Toole) made quite an impression on my adolescent self. So I have fond memories of this particular Bond theme, originally sung by the great Shirley Bassey with notes and melody and stuff by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black
(1 votes, average: 8.00 out of 10)Loading... Sure, the original by Waylon Jennings is canon, but these guys nearly do it justice.
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