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  • June is going by too fast…

    June is going by too fast…

    It’s the last month of my husband’s full time employment… June is going by too fast!

    I’ve been awaiting June 2014 with a mixture of dread, anticipation, and excitement. I dread it because it may mean the start of hard financial times. My husband, Bill, is retiring from the Army and is job hunting. Some of his colleagues have had a tough time finding work and I fear the same for him. I anticipate it because it heralds a new beginning for us. Imagine it! We’re going to start a life that doesn’t involve the government telling us where we have to live (though in fairness, the places we’ve lived have been fine). And there’s excitement, because I’m curious about what’s next. I hope it’s good. I’m glad that the chances of my husband being deployed again are pretty much nil, unless there’s some kind of crisis and he gets recalled after retirement. I’m glad he’s survived having a commission for 30 years and isn’t haunted by so many of the things that haunt veterans, like PTSD and serious injuries and exposure to chemicals.

    The past weeks have been an emotional roller coaster, though. I’ve watched Bill apply for jobs, research housing solutions, network with people, celebrate, and enjoy his time off. This week, he’s mostly watched me cough and hack and complain about my sore throat. I think I picked up a nasty bug while bobbing for apples at a “hail and farewell” event put on by his soon to be former co-workers. At least I had the pleasure of throwing an apple at the guy who organized the apple bobbing activity. That was very satisfying. On the other hand, I was dumb to bob for apples. I don’t think my immune system is what it used to be.

    Adding to my apprehension is the fact that next Friday I will turn 42. Seems like yesterday I was 21 and these 40s years seemed very far away. Anyway, what does this have to do with Pop Rock Nation? Not a lot, really, other than my getting comfort and meaning out of music, especially when I’m stressing out over a life transition. I find music by certain artists very comforting. James Taylor has always been soothing to me, but in more recent years, I’ve gotten a lot out of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s music.

    Beth Nielsen Chapman has written a lot of great songs made famous by other singers. A lot of times, I prefer her original renditions to the covers done by other people. Her songs are always from the heart and have lyrics that anyone can relate to. She’s written some particularly good songs about death and loss, having lost her husband, Ernest Chapman, to cancer in 1994. In 2000, she suffered her own bout with cancer, which inspired her to release Hymns, her own arrangement of Catholic songs she’d grown up with. The songs had given her faith as she struggled through treatment. She’s written some very good love songs and breakup songs… and songs that are nothing but good stories. She’s even written about difficult parent/child relationships and the process of becoming elderly and/or sick.

    As the days pass, I have a feeling I’ll be listening to more Beth Nielsen Chapman. Hell, I may even sing some of her songs.


    “Beyond The Blue” seems like an appropriate song for our rapid life changes.


    “Free” is a great song for cheering up… I think it might have been inspired Chapman’s experiences with cancer.


    This is my version of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s “All I Have”, which is a wonderful love song.

    In any case, I’m hoping to keep my optimism alive, despite the photo I used for this post. Wish me luck!

  • #26 album of 2013 – I Fear a New World by Cold Crows Dead

    Artist: Cold Crows Dead

    Album: I Fear a New World

    Cold Crows Dead, as evidenced on their debut I Fear a New World, play mostly-pretty music of a polyglot form that’s become modestly popular in indie rock circles. Most of the songs — we’ll get to the exceptions — combine the sort of creatively-processed Cold Crows Dead - Fearflutes/ violins/ piano/ etc orchestration that dates back to Pet Sounds; with synthesizers that convey an eerie analog feel more akin to early BBC Radiophonics experiments than to the Human League or New Order; with the mildly skewed rock energy and high, whiny, slightly-croakish male vocals popularized by bands like Pavement.

    As a combination it compares, in case this helps, to Flaming Lips’s Soft Bulletin-through-At War with the Mystics phase; to Grandaddy/ Jason Lytle, especially Under the Western Freeway; to Sparklehorse’s periodic higher-energy songs; and to Cloud Cult from the Meaning of 8 to the present. In my opinion I Fear a New World is superior to any Flaming Lips (or Grandaddy or Sparklehorse) album. Not for any deep reason, just that I think Flaming Lips are a really interesting, rightly acclaimed band that’s prone to a few terrible and/or bland ideas per album, while Cold Crows Dead fully justify each of their album’s eleven songs with specific cool ideas and good tunes. Also, without suggesting that Murray MacLeod is a natural singer in any way, he sounds exactly like Wayne Coyne would if Wayne Coyne hit all his notes, and that would be a nifty new thing unto the world.

    At its most graceful, I Fear a New World sounds like a sung negotiation with a choir of sad robots while a strolling waiter provides violin accompaniment (Ghost That Burned Your House Down); or empathetically miserable piano balladry that turns semi-anthemic (Scarred and Thoughtless); or a warped lush take on waltz-time ’50s slow-dancing (Screaming at Shadows); or like UFOs eventually rousing one of the more echoey tracks on the Cure’s beautiful-depression opus Disintegration (Gone) (I first called it the Cure’s “magnum opus”, but it ain’t carrying no firearm, just a small knife sharp enough to gash a co-operating wrist).

    Deadheads and Killer Party trade a small amount of grace to get back a large enough injection of rock music that we can guess Cold Crows Dead don’t mind listening to Pixies albums, even if on shuffle with Brian Wilson’s Smile. Men in Bleak is an experiment: slow and massively echoey, big goth bass riff swaggering in the background as slam poet Stephen John Kalinich orates, alternating with MacLeod’s most ragged, insistent, angry singing. Hold It Together is another experiment, a shuffling dance tune in 7/4 time where the sing-song urgings are mild intrusions over long-held vocal notes that dissolve meaning into pure sound. My Shovel is either an experiment or a gag, with its periodic unraveling into Limp Bizkit style roaring about “My shovel! My shovel!”; it makes me giggle happily.

    I didn’t mean to do the song-by-song description thing, but it ended up fitting my point: Cold Crows Dead haven’t invented anything new, yet, in the indie rock world. Sad, lush, pretty, sorta rock, sorta weird: that’s been done before. But in eleven songs, I Fear a New World presents eleven different reasons for doing it again. I’d hate to be so jaded that this wouldn’t delight me.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2013 page!

  • Sexy sax songs…

    Sexy sax songs…

    I would write about something more serious today, but I have sexy sax songs on the brain this morning…

    I’m actually hoping someone out there in Internet land can help me out. You see, I often have songs running through my mind and sometimes they are songs I haven’t thought about in ages. Consequently, I have this stream of music in my head that I can’t name. I don’t know what the title of the song is. I don’t know who played it. Actually, it’s not even really a song. It’s an instrumental that I used to hear a lot on Delilah’s radio show. It’s very sexy… and I feel pretty certain it wasn’t done by Kenny G. For one thing, I think it was played on a tenor sax.

    Yesterday, I went searching on YouTube and iTunes for that song in my head. I was unsuccessful in my quest to find it. However, I did find a few other songs that qualify as sexy sax songs, most of which are from ages ago and most of which actually qualify as songs because they are sung.


    I wonder what ever happened to Quarterflash… This is a pretty great song from 1982 or so, which makes me old as hell. Check out the sax solos, though… sexy!


    Years later, Candy Dulfer and Dave Stewart collaborated on “Lily Was Here”. Oddly enough, I remember hearing this a lot back in the day, but I didn’t know the title or who played it. I guess my fruitless search wasn’t all for naught.


    “Songbird” has the distinction of being the only thing by Kenny G I can tolerate for longer than a few seconds. I actually really liked it when it first came out in 1987, but then the soprano sax became more popular and it began to annoy the fuck out of me.


    No sexy sax songs list would be complete without this entry from Men At Work and their first hit, “Who Can It Be Now?” I used to love this song and that band when I was growing up.


    “Tender Years” was a hit by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band from the film Eddie and the Cruisers. I have always loved this song. I think this band probably benefited from and were cursed by Bruce Springsteen’s success in the 80s. They had a couple of hits and seemed to fade away. Still, this is one sexy sax song.


    I’ve also always loved “The One You Love” by Glenn Frey, who really seems to love the sax and uses it in most of his hits. “You Belong To The City” anyone? Seriously, I have a compilation album he did and one thing I noticed was just how much sexy sax Glenn used in his songs.


    And then there’s “Urgent” by Foreigner. A hit in 1981, this song had a blistering sax solo that practically put into music the act of ejaculation… I picture a horny 19 year old getting it on like gangbusters with his girlfriend when I hear this song and its sexy sax.


    James Taylor wrote the beautiful “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” in 1972 and the original version of that song had a sexy sax solo. Since then, James has replaced the sax with keyboards. Then the late Michael Brecker, saxophone player extraordinaire came up with this brilliant cover which includes James’s vocals… I think it’s sexier than the original.


    Really, I could have picked almost 80s era Bruce Springsteen song for my sexy sax songs list, but I chose 1975’s “Born To Run”. The Boss was famous for using his trusty sax player, Clarence Clemmons, on his best 70s and 80s era anthems. “Born To Run” may not be as sensual as “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” is, but it’s definitely got a raw sexuality about it. Who wouldn’t want to climb on the back of some wild guy’s motorcycle and ride off into the sunset? Don’t answer that!


    And finally there’s Dire Straits’ elegant song, “Your Latest Trick”, which has always been one of my favorite songs off their 1985 album, Brothers In Arms. This is kind of a sad song, but the sax solo sizzles with sexuality.

    It’s been fun hunting for all these sexy sax songs, but I still haven’t run into the piece that actually inspired this piece. On the other hand, most of the songs on this list are better than the one that’s stuck in my head. Oh well, I’ll find it eventually. When it comes to music, I’m like a Mountie and I always get my song.