I’ve been trolling around the internet looking for new bands to
listen to, new songs to play, band gossip, upcoming releases of note,
new fabulous sources for mp3 downloads and i found a few things of
interest and a wealth of strange new specialized blogs featuring
music of just about any kind, all compiled in one grand place. The
site is called Gravy Bread and can be found at
http://gravybread.wordpress.co
called the Mega Super Mammoth Mp3 blog list and a music fan could
spend countless hours looking through this alphabetized list of blogs
with short descriptions of what they focus on musically and a simple
rating system based on how often they update and feature new stuff, if
they are still in operation or are retired and just exist as still
available archives of downloadable treasures. It’s an amazing journey
to just start at the top and start browsing. You will find old things
you have only heard of but never heard, brand new singles from
upcoming releases that have leaked onto the internet (grab those quick
before the cease and desist orders are served), massive amounts of
international psychedelic and prog rock from the sixties that you’ve
likely never heard of (just how much music was being created in Brazil
back then and Japan as well?), garagerock of every national origin,
garagerock that was only released as vinyl 45’s and painstakingly
converted to mp3s by some very committed bloggers (there are many
vinyl obsessed people doing this amazing service with old blues discs,
old 78 rpm records, old hard to find disco, rare gay-themed recordings
and completely bizarre oddities and weird home-made recordings of all
kinds of freaks doing crazy shit. There are even sites that handle
cassette only punk rock releases like this.), tons of vintage regional
funk from the early 70’s, more rare and regional soul recordings from
the logical soul centers like Detroit, Chicago, Philidelphia, New
Orleans, Memphis as well as areas lesser known for soul and funk music
like Texas and the Pacific Northwest and Canada, sites that post only
covers of songs originally popularized by other artists (I really love
those), mash-ups created by people you know like our very own Adrian
and Diedre of Club Bootie fame who are really expanding and playing
other cities and developing quite an impressive online presence, goth
and horror related music blogs, rare and unusual soundtracks,
psycho-folk, old and international folk, power pop, 80’s only, rare
punk and hardcore, electronica, rap/hip-hop, Bollywood soundtracks,
weird shit found at the library, and on and on and on. It’s almost
overwhelming and before you know it your entire hard drive could be
filled with hours of music. I try to not get totally carried away but
theres a lot of worthy stuff out there.
One of my finds that i just think is incredible comes from the
aforementioned Adrian and Mysterious D, local mash-up sensations and
once again they’ve done something great that i cant get out of my head
even though i kind of shy away from mash-ups when I DJ. Well I wont
with this one called “Standing in The Way of Connection” a mash-up of
the Elastica song “Connection” with The Gossip’s “Standing in the Way
of Control.” The way they mixed it up is so subtley brilliant, Beth
Ditto’s soulful whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoas colliding with the shrill guitar
riff in some magical bound dissonance. I was totally amazed and
impressed. Good work A+D!
An artist who has been getting lots of attention for her interesting
songs of tough-talking hard-boozing bad girl-isms, Amy Winehouse
caught my ear with her songs “Rehab” and “I’m No Good” mostly the
latter which I think is an amazing and clever confession of
infidelity full of great imagery and modern details and its a pretty
gutsy stance for a female artist I’d say. She’s got a great look too,
all raven-haired and tatooed and sexy. I heard she may be the next
Bond girl. I was especially thrilled to find that one of my favorite
rock groups The Arctic Monkeys have recently covered the song. Its a
really straightforward take on it with the original gender in the
lyrics remaining intact and some nice guitar solo-ing thrown in for
good measure. It’s not terribly cheeky like i expected but rather a
respectful rendition of a great song and i think it rules. This came
out almost in conjunction with the release of the Arctic Monkeys
second LP, Favourite Worst Nightmares, the follow-up to the fastest
selling debut album in the history of British Pop Music, Whatever
People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. As always there was a great
deal of expectation and anticipation for the groups sophomore effort
and after just one listen to the new one I’d say they aced the notion
of a lackluster follow-up. It’s a great record, ambitious, tough and
not the slightest bit lazy or formulaic. They really are all that. I
love this band and i’m glad to see them progressing so naturally and
not getting all weird and spoiled by their rapid rise to the top.
These very young men handled it admirably and covered a really awesome
song by a contemporary artist which is kind of a tough thing to do.
Search it out on the internet as i think thats the only place you can
find their cover of the Amy Winehouse song. Those Arctic Monkeys
certainly knew how to use the internet to their advantage from the
very beginning. For your listening pleasure so should you.
25 years of colums i wrote for SF Bay Times/ by Don Baird