web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Blog

  • “Why Don’t You Stay?”: Does This Mean There’s Gonna Be a “House Party V”?!?

    Ha. And how many of you knew that there was a “House Party 3” or “4”?

    Anyway, I was home on Saturday evening, flipping through channels while waiting for a friend to drop by so we could go to dinner. As I flipped through the video channels (MTV2, MTV3, VH-1 Soul, Fuse and VH-1 Classic are all next to one another), I recognized a very familiar face.

    It was Christopher Reid, AKA “Kid” from Kid ‘n Play, the rap duo who scored a hit movie with “House Party” back in the day (and briefly had their own Saturday morning cartoon..I remember watching the New Kids on the Block cartoon and then flipping over to Kid ‘n Play. I think “Hammerman” started a year later).

    At any rate, while Play soldiers on in gospel plays (he’s a born-again Christian), Kid had carved out a reasonable career as a stand-up comedian. However, the music bug came calling again…

    …and lo and behold, it’s not that bad? While KNP weren’t the greatest of emcees during their heyday (even catching a couple of disses from Vanilla Ice), Kid’s sound is refreshingly old-school (which it should be…after all, the dude is 44).

    How come Full Force isn’t singing the background vocals on this?

  • New Music In Stores & Online: 7/8/08: Beck, Yaz, Billy Joel & More!!

    Looks like the dog days of summer have arrived early, because there are very few releases of note this week. Let’s jump right into it.

    Beck's Modern Guilt

    Beck-Modern Guilt: Beck switches it up on his first album in two years, installing Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley) into the producer’s chair. On paper, the two seem like a perfect fit, and the album has gotten pretty good advance notice. Then again, do you remember any Beck album that didn’t get good reviews? Critically, he’s as much of a sure bet as any artist out there.

    http://www.modernguilt.com/

    Alison Moyet-The Turn/Yaz-In Your Room: Our very own Paul wrote a column a couple of weeks back on British synth-pop duo Yaz and their return to the concert stage a quarter-century after their split. In order to commemorate that tour, we have “In Your Room”, an exhaustive box set containing basically every note the two played and sung together. Yaz’s vocalist, Alison Moyet, also sees the U.S. release of her latest album, “The Turn”, which was released in the U.K. last October.


    Billy Joel-“The Stranger: Legacy Edition”: “The Stranger”‘s probably Billy Joel’s best-loved album, with hits like “Only the Good Die Young”, “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”, the title track, and “Just the Way You Are”. This thirtieth anniversary edition of the hit album is remastered and comes in two versions: one adds a second disc from a Carnegie Hall concert, while another includes the concert and a DVD from the old British musical variety show “The Old Grey Whistle Test”.

    Home

    Um…after that? Crickets, pretty much. Strokes frontman Albert Hammond Jr. releases his second solo album, entitled “Como Te Llama?”, and there are a couple of interesting collaborative efforts out today: one from Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis (there’s a joke in there somewhere that I can’t quite figure out), and the other from Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Patti Smith and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields. “Country Sings Disney” finds the likes of Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley tackling some of the Mouse’s favorite songs, while in the “curiosities” section, there’s a new album from Devin Lima of former C-List boy banders LFO. Yay!!

    Enjoy that Beck CD!!

    A full list of releases can be found here: http://www.pauseandplay.com/cdfront.htm

  • Is Entertainment Weekly’s List of the 100 Greatest Albums of the Past 25 Years a Purple Mess?

    I actually meant to discuss this a couple weeks ago when it was actually current news, but hey, better late than never.

    I’m a list guy. I can spend hours, days on end attempting to make sense of lists of the best sitcoms of all time, or whether “Off the Wall” or “Thriller” is the Purple Rain Cover better Michael Jackson album (“Off the Wall” is), or…well, you get the picture. Anyway, the folks at “Entertainment Weekly” published their 1,000th issue a couple weeks ago (congratulations to them), and they posted lists of the 100 greatest TV shows, movies, books and records of the past 25 years. While the TV and movie lists were interesting (book lists don’t move me), I was most intrigued by their list of the Top 100 albums. Sitting pretty at the top of the list was…”To the Extreme” by Vanilla Ice.

    Obviously, I’m kidding. The album they picked for the #1 spot was Prince’s “Purple Rain”, which struck me as sort of a strange choice. I mean, it’s logical. Hell, it’s an incredible fucking album. It’s just not a standard or expected choice. I would have expected “OK Computer” or “Nevermind” (both of which would have been as deserving…”Nevermind” didn’t even make the list), or, if the EW folks wanted to be edgy, Winehouse’s “Back To Black” or any of the three qualifying Kanye West albums. But “Purple Rain” just seems like sort of a left-field choice, or as left-field as any album as huge as “Purple Rain” was can be, considering the damn thing spent damn near six months at #1 on the charts.

    (more…)