Tag Archives: rock

Time for Some Fun with Hayseed Dixie, Duck Sauce and The Kinks

Last weekend we were turned on to Hayseed Dixie (drawl it “ACDC”), a bluegrass band dedicated to rock and roll covers.  The video for their version of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” features clips from “The Wild One” starring Marlon Brando.  If you like the band, check out their covers of The Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl”, and especially Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Priceless. Thanks, Paul!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pST4tHrc6Q4

Duck Sauce, the DJ duo of American Armand Van Helden and Canadian A-Trak, released their first full-length album “Quack” in April. It includes new tracks and previously released singles. The video for “It’s You” is a lot of fun, as are the videos for their earlier hits “aNYway” and “Barbra Streisand”.

To cap off the fun video theme, we’ll pay our respects to Ray Davies who celebrated his 70th birthday a few weeks ago. In the early days of video the Kinks put out this one for “Come Dancing”, a single which later appeared on the 1983 album “State of Confusion”.  To illustrate the power of MTV, “Come Dancing” became one of the Kinks’ highest charting singles in the U.S. almost 20 years after “You Really Got Me” got things started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2kFrGluKs

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YouTube Just Got Even Better with Music Vault

Yesterday, Music Vault began the process of uploading thousands of concert videos to YouTube.  Search for “Music Vault” on YouTube to see a link to the new channel. Thank you Bill Sagan!

[ Dear Readers, we’ve noticed that three of the links on this post have gone dead.  In fact, for reasons unknown to us, it is hard to search the offerings of the Music Vault channel on YouTube.  We’ll update you if we figure out why.  In the meantime, while the Music Vault channel is still worth checking out, it is hard to search.  HarryDJ ]

Music Vault, which has its own website that launched only a couple of months ago, is part of Sagan’s on-line music empire that includes the subscription concert audio archives of Concert Vault, rock & roll memorabilia website Wolfgang’s Vault, indie music site Daytrotter, and on-line publication Paste Magazine. Learn a bit more about how Sagan got started in our earlier post.

While the Music Vault collection is heavy on classic rock, it also includes new music and fabulous jazz performances. Here is a sample to whet your appetite.

Ray Charles covering Paul Simon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1fGArJgng

U2 covering Bob Dylan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHlWOqfBGw

Louie Armstrong performing a song he recorded in 1949 that Fats Domino would later cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T-vC-0CCjY

And it doesn’t get any more indie than Rubblebucket (get past her funny hat, this is a pretty interesting band)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDVwF_2eiXs

Jackson Browne: Tribute and Reissue

“Looking Into You: A Tribute to Jackson Browne” was released in April.  The two disk set features a dazzling array of artists including the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Keb’ Mo’ and Bruce Springsteen.  But honestly, doing Jackson Browne songs anywhere near as well as Jackson Browne is tough even for these titans.  So, covers of lesser known songs are among the most enjoyable.  Two tracks from Browne’s fourth album “The Pretender” get that treatment: Sara and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek covering “Your Bright Baby Blues”, and Springsteen accompanied by his wife, Patti Scialfa, covering “Linda Paloma”.

Just last week a 40th Anniversary Reissue of Browne’s third album “Late for the Sky” was released.  We featured the title track from that album in an earlier post, so here’s “The Late Show” which provides the “early model Chevrolet” lyric that ties to the album’s cover art.  The song has all the ingredients: deep lyrics, pure Jackson Browne voice, beautiful vocal harmonies and David Lindley steel guitar, found in so much of Browne’s work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD-Da6eaL40

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Bob Mould Keeps Bringing the Alt Rock

Bob Mould just released “Beauty & Ruin”, the 11th solo album from the frontman of the influential punk band Hüsker Dü and the 90’s band Sugar.

The video for “I Don’t Know You Anymore” puts you through about two minutes of concept set-up with Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, but rewards you with an enjoyable tune reminiscent of Mould’s earlier work.

Sugar only lasted for a few years in the early 90’s, but produced a few albums that made the top 10 on the UK indie album charts. A favorite song form their second album is “Your Favorite Thing”. The sonic connection with Mould’s brand new work is pretty clear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsAyegnKWI4

Hüsker Dü gets credited as an important American punk band of the early 80’s, and as one of the bands that pushed American music down the alternative rock path – integrating a bit more melodic sense into its fast and powerful sound. See what you think of Hüsker Dü’s “Makes No Sense At All” from the band’s fourth album “Flip Your Wig”. And if you hang in till the 2:30 mark, Hüsker Dü pays homage to a TV show that put their hometown of Minneapolis forever on the sitcom map.

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Grab Bag: Mark Whitaker, Draco Rosa, and Veruca Salt is Back!

One of our favorite excavators of new music, Jess at pH balanced and mvyradio, featured Boston-based artist Mark Whitaker on a recent blog post – a great voice, an interesting banjo style, and very nice song writing.  Here is “Nowhere to Land”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Id5k-cEQKA

Another one of our favorite sources, Read and Hear, recently featured a song by Maggie’s Dream. The band was fronted by Draco Rosa, along with the likes of Ricky Martin part of the boy band Menudo, and recorded only one album of rock, funk, soul in 1990. Despite recent illness, Rosa has continued to record, creating his own modern latin sound. See what you think of “Change for the Better” by Maggie’s Dream, and Rosa’s “Mas Y Mas” from his 2013 album “Vida”.

And not to shift your sonic gears too hard, but Veruca Salt is back! The original line-up, with vocals by Nina Gordon and Louise Post, put out a two-song EP in April for Record Store Day. Nina’s and Louise’s voices are as sweet as they were two decades ago on “The Museum of Broken Relationships”.

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