Eli Young Band's Latest SingleI’ve been vaguely aware of the Eli Young Band’s existence for a while now, but have never really been compelled to seek them out until I spotted their latest entry on the Billboard country charts – a song called “Even If It Breaks Your Heart”. I recognized the title of the song from a song recorded by singer-songwriter Will Hoge a couple of years ago for his album The Wreakage. Could it be the same song? It sure is!
And it’s a great one. Hoge’s song about persevering in a dream – specifically the dream of making it big (or even just making a living) as a musician – deserved to be a bigger radio hit than it was. Had it come out during the late-90s Wallflowers-Counting Crows-Tonic-Matchbox Twenty moment, it just might have been.
Some of the Hoge fans commenting on the Eli Young video have been less than charitable, but I think it’s great that this song is finally a hit for someone. It’s reaching more people than it ever would have otherwise, and not only will the song have a longer “life expectancy” as a result, but it will also inevitably introduce more people to Hoge’s original, and by extension, his whole body of work. Last year, Hoge released his seventh studio album called… Number Seven. Here’s his latest single: “When I Get My Wings.”
John Wesley Harding's New Album: ''The Sound of His Own Voice''Back when I was in high school, British folk-rocker John Wesley Harding first wooed me with an earnest acoustic guitar cover of Madonna’s (then quite recent hit) “Like a Prayer” (from an EP he called God Made Me Do It), and then with a great big horn-backed celebration (?) of the dark side of mankind called “The Devil In Me”. Although he’s been a most prolific artist for the past two decades, I lost touch with him somewhere between high school diploma and college degree. But with his latest video, he takes me all the way back to middle school, with some help from his comedian pal Eugene Mirman (better known perhaps as “The Fertility Clown”). The song is called “Sing Your Own Song”, from the album The Sound of His Own Voice, and as much as the video borrows from a Paul Simon classic, the song itself is a virtual re-write of Mama Cass by way of Sesame Street.
Oh, and did I mention you can download the song for free from Amazon? You’re welcome.
10 years ago – y’know, before iPods and stuff – it was my general practice to keep a mix CD of my current favorite songs in my car to listen to on my way to and from work. And then, every week or so, I’d make a new CD, replacing the songs I was tired of with fresh new ones. I was listening to one such CD Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. On my way home from work that day, I was struck by how eerie some of the songs felt in light of the day’s events – the same way the absolutely perfect blue sky of that day took a sinister cast once its perfection had become so abruptly purified of the usual air traffic.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, radio programmers were purging their playlists of songs that, however popular before, suddenly felt insensitive or inappropriate. The nu-metal act Drowning Pool had scored a breakout hit that summer with a song called “Bodies”, a tribute to the joyful violence of a moshpit. The song had been ubiquitous on rock radio and MTV2 all summer, and suddenly it was gone. Similarly, Jimmy Eat World’s then just-released third album Bleed American was pulled from the market, only to reappear a couple months later, euphemistically retitled as Jimmy Eat World. In the place of those “troubling” songs, came Five For Fighting’s “Superman” (at the time, a 6-month old single that had previously fizzled at radio, like it’s superior – and more troubling – predecessor “Easy Tonight”), and a new version of Enya’s “Only Time”, tricked out with 9/11 audio verite.
In the meantime, I kept my little mix CD, and while I already loved most of the songs on it, the fact is, they’d taken on a whole new dimension for me (in the same way that Five for Fighting song did for so many others). Even now, hearing any one of these songs in any context has a sort of time travel effect, and I’m back on that beautiful, horrible Tuesday morning.
Eventually Bleed American got its original title back. And “Bodies” would eventually be revived, not only as theme music for professional wrestling, but also as an instrument of torture at Guantanamo. And eventually, my little CD got a little beat-up – CD burning was still a relatively new thing at that point, and my home made mix CDs had pretty short playable lives. But I kept the tracklist, and here are ten highlights, presented with no further comment, in the order in which they appeared on my CD.
1. “Crystal” by New Order
2. “Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)” by The Pernice Brothers
3. “Sometimes” by Ours
4. “We Need a Resolution” by Aaliyah
5. “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” by Radiohead
Ida's ''The Braille Night''[no video available]
“Fixing an eye on the hopeful in a heartless room / you’ll be done soon /
Snow is falling down and the whole damn town / is covered in white”
8. “Broke” by The Beta Band
9. “Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)” by James
