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Pop Rock Nation

Category: People

all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music

  • New Music In Stores and Online10/7/08: The Streets, Sarah McLachlan, Oasis & More!!!

    Obviously I can’t have a record buying bonanza every week, otherwise I’d go broke. Definitely not a good look in today’s economy. So, this week will mark something of a vacation for me, with only one release that I’m nutso about. Here’s this week’s lineup of releases.

    Mike Skinner AKA The Streets. Photo by "realname".

    The Streets “Everything is Borrowed”:
    Folks on these shores (most of ’em) don’t get Mike Skinner or his style of music. Considering I didn’t think Amy Winehouse would cross over, I think Skinner is long overdue for some American love. “Everything is Borrowed” is his fourth, and reportedly the last album he is releasing under the Streets moniker. Expect more personal raps spiced with enough British slang that you might have to IM your best friend from London to ask “what the hell is he talking about here?”

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  • Infatueighties: #82: “Silent Morning”

    The cover of the 12" single for Noel's "SIlent Morning".
    The cover of the 12

    There’s an undercurrent of mortal fear that runs through “Silent Morning”, the 1987 Latin freestyle hit by Noel. The chorus of “silent morning…I wake up and you’re not by my side” is sung with a tangible sadness that rock critic Dave Marsh somewhat accurately connected with the AIDS scourge that was terrorizing the gay community in the mid-late Eighties. A little research reveals that the original title of the song was “Silent Mourning”, underscoring the shock many of the people who were dancing to the song at the height of its’ popularity felt as they saw many of their friends and lovers suddenly dying.

    Like many freestyle hits of the time period, “Silent Morning” isn’t particularly well-known to the general public. However, if you were living in Miami, L.A. or New York during the time period it was out, this song was ridiculously fucking huge. Noel Pagan’s two hits (“Morning” and “Like a Child”) are now fodder for “Oldies” nights at clubs and on radio stations, or freestyle reunion shows in which Noel shares the stage with contemporaries like The Cover Girls and TKA. However, next time you hear this song, keep in mind that some of the folks dancing to it may be doing so in celebration of lives that were lost much too soon.

  • Special Edition Live: Mark Lawrence

     

    MARK LAWRENCE live at Googie’s Lounge, NYC, October 1st 2008

    On an almost daily basis, I wonder how up-and-coming singer-songwriters manage to do it these days.  You can release your own CD, upload your tracks to the internet, then get in a car with as few people as possible and hit the road, I suppose.  Can you be a one-man business in this modern world, selling your own T-shirts and booking your own gigs and driving yourself from town to town?  I guess.  I’ve often dreamed of getting a CDL and becoming a self-contained trucking & entertainment industry myself, performing my favorite Marty Robbins tunes at truck stops ’round the country after dispatching giant cords of lumber, a pot-bellied pig named Porky my only traveling companion.  Joe Six-Packs and Hockey Moms nationwide could band together and order my 8-Track hits comps from K-Tel!  Well, a former beauty queen from The Last Frontier can dream, can’t she?  Oh, nevermind…

    The thing is, all these thoughts just wash right out of my mind when I witness an actual performance by a great singer-songwriter, if only because the magic of a great performance tends to sweep me up into a world where the technical aspect of being a performer no longer matters.  Who cares how the magician does the trick, if the illusion is breathtaking enough, right?  Well this is how I felt last Wednesday night when I caught a set by Mark Lawrence at Googie’s Lounge, a small cabaret perched above The Living Room on Ludlow Street in lower Manhattan.

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