veruca salt – Music New to You from the Past and Present

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”.

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”.

Buy Music

As we mark the first day of fall, Janelle Monae hands us a last bit of summer fun with “Dance Apocalyptic” from her recently released “The Electric Lady”. How can you not love a song with a lyric “chalang-alang-alang”? In the video, Janelle departs from her signature tuxedo style and lets her hair down literally and figuratively.

The song can’t help but recall infectious tunes given to us over the years by other talented women. Here are some bands and songs that come to mind listening to “Dance Apocalyptic” – and they may have inspired Monae’s white-on-white motif: Veruca Salt in the 90s, The Bangles in the 80s, and the B-52’s in the 70s (delivering the other party song we’ll certainly play at the Apocalypse).