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Tag: The Smiths

  • Awesome Free Download! The Postelles “Summer Undercovers”

    The Postelles ''Summer Undercovers''
    The Postelles are one of my favorite new bands – a New York City quartet who play great little three minute rock ‘n’ roll tunes that sound like they were made to be heard on 45s. They have all the big beats and melodic guitar lines of a Ventures instrumental, circa ’63; and in lead singer Daniel Balk’s vocals, all the boyish sweetness and vulnerability of the 1910 Fruitgum Co., that illustrious Kama Sutra Records bubblegum group who had a huge hit in ’68 with a song called “1,2,3, Red Light”. The latest single by The Postelles is called “123 Stop”. I don’t think that’s purely coincidental.

    Just weeks after the long-anticipated release of The Postelles’ self-titled debut album, the band has released a new EP called “Summer Undercovers” for free download via their website. And it’s exactly what the title would suggest: four covers that together sound like a ten-minute day at the beach with Frankie and Annette(‘s grandkids).

    It starts with a surfed-up version of The Smiths’ “Ask”, a song that Morrissey first sang in a languid moan 25 years ago (probably before these guys were born) – spending warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse to a bucktoothed girl in Luxembourg. The Postelles play it like a teen idol love letter, and follow it up with an appropriately rawkin’ take on Joe Jones’ (by way of The Rivieras) “California Sun” (an actual surf-rock classic), and UK pub-rocker Wreckless Eric’s yearning “Whole Wild World”. Capping it all off is a live version of The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat”. Not only is it great to hear these songs given such a fresh treatment, it’s a nice taste of what the band does on their originals, which sound like covers of classic surf-bubblegum-punk-new-wave songs from an alternate universe.

  • The Tuesday Morning Awesome: Electronic “Getting Away With It” (1990)

    The James video last night got another great song lodged in my head – this one by the Manchester synth-pop supergroup of New Order’s Bernard Sumner, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, and (for a time) Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant – collectively known as Electronic. Their debut 1990 single “Getting Away With It” applied classicist songwriting to a house music sound, and even briefly hit the U.S. Top 40. 20 years later, it still sounds sweet.


    Electronic – Getting Away With It
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  • Buffy, Godfather, Lil Wayne and Gitmo – Saturday in the Park 2

    “Losing My Religion” cover
    Did this song torture anyone?  Image via Wikipedia

    The snarkfest known as Saturday in the Park begins here:

    Get your pompadours straight. Crooner Al Martino died recently. Multiple generations remember him as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather. Paul Sorvino is the character with the hot daughter who kind of looks like Martino. Martino=Godfather; Sorvino=Oh God!   Got it? Good. Sorry to hear of his passing. Now I keep thinking about the song Spanish Eyes and bottles of red wine on checkered tablecoths.

    Music and acting continue mingling when Buffymeister Joss Whedon helms an episode of Glee this season. Recall that Buffy once featured an entire episode of singing a la 1950s musicals and that Wheedon wrote the theme to Firefly, which later was rebooted as the movie Serenity. With Dollhouse on the ropes again – his third straight series to get smacked down – perhaps it’s time for Joss to head to Broadway, a good idea if things turn bad for

    Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, diagnosed with prostate cancer shortly after announcing a Phantom of the Opera sequel would be set in turn-of-last-century Coney Island. Not suggesting that the disease is a sign from any higher beings, but get well, Sir Andrew. You deserve a chance to sit back and enjoy life. Please don’t write this show. And if you do, please collaborate with Jim Steinman again so at least the lyrics are biting.

    ALW isn’t the only sick Brit running around either. One Steven Patrick Morrisey, yes, the Morrisey who brought you The Smiths, collapsed during a concert after one song. Morrisey, who also turned 50 this year, was in and out of the hospital in a day, but no word on remaining dates.

    Morrisey had a better time of things then Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell who was killed by a coyote while camping in Canada. Just saying. Didn’t know her music, but that’s an ugly death for someone coming on the scene. I learned about her death on CNN the same day I read that 82% of that site’s visitors said in a poll that they weren’t ready to let Chris Brown move on with his career. I hate domestic violence too, but when one pays their debt to society… Tell you what, stop buying songs that objectify and demean women and then you can vote in the poll. Or maybe the 18% were the people who buy those tracks. Hmm. Let the kid do his punishment and if it happens again, lock him in a cinderblock room with some Rhianna fanboys and see what happens.

    Maybe Lil Wayne can join them. He apparently has the firepower. At least that’s what he told a judge when he copped to a weapons possession charge. Lil Wayne plays Folsom County Blues in early 2010, but at least he has time to be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live when Taylor Swift is hosting. True justice would have Lorne Michaels book Kanye and then let Taylor pull the plug, but Kanye would probably get mad and spray the place with, uh, credit cards.

    Speaking of music acts getting a little chummy around money, what were classic dinosaurs Mick Jones and Lou Gramm doing horsing around the New York Stock Exchange? Yes, we get the fact that Foreigner just added some shekels to a music label’s coffers, but not that many. Could it be that the guys and gals trading on Wall Street now went to prom when the theme song was I Want To Know What Love Is?

    That would beat the theme music down at Gitmo, which better not have been anything by Pearl Jam or REM. Seems the bands along with more than a few others have filed a Freedom of Information Act request. They want to know if their songs were among those blasted at detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Stipe used the word “torture”. Honestly, Losing My Religion is only torture the fifth time some classic rock station plays it that week. It’s catchy, got a nice beat you can dance to. I give it a 78, Dick.

    Remember, now only 56 days until Christmas, whch means This is It starts pre-orders for the DVD. Be nice to others.