Tag: popmusic

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One Track or Album per Week, Number 5: Harvey McKay – Black Horse.

One Track or Album per Week, Number 5: Harvey McKay - Black Horse

Harvey McKay is one of my favorites because he has an unmistakable style: a bit edgy, a bit bumpy at times and clearly more creative than most other techno producers who don’t really evolve but always produce the same musical mush.

Black Horse is not bad, but the clearly better track is Eternal. It has everything in it that I like a lot: a hard kick, some exciting sound effects and staccato chords. Have fun listening to it:

Harvey McKay – Eternal: https://youtu.be/miRNKu73Gds

Stay tuned

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One Track or Album per Week, Number 4: Russel Small/DNO P: Strawberry Letter 23 (Dr. Packer Extended Mix).

One Track or Album per Week, Number 4: Russel Small/DNO P: Strawberry Letter 23 (Dr. Packer Extended Mix).

Last week I promised a sequel to the Jackie Brown soundtrack. The highlight (for me) on this soundtrack is Strawberry Letter 23 by The Brothers Johnson.

Anyway, in my recent search for new music I found a lot of quite interesting tracks. Among others the remix Strawberry Letter 23 (Dr. Packer Extended Mix) by Russel Small/DNO P. I already thought the original was brilliant and I immediately fell in love with this interpretation of the original song. Probably available in the next set.

Strawberry Letter 23 (Dr. Packer Extended Mix) – Russel Small/DNO P: https://youtu.be/B2kYTEfK_nU

Stay tuned

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One Track or Album per Week, Number 3: Jackie Brown, Soundtrack.

One Track or Album per Week, Number 3: Jackie Brown, Soundtrack.

If you’ve ever studied Quentin Tarantino, you know that the director is a fan of the music of the seventies. Whether I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino, I definitely can’t say, but I do like some of his films. Jackie Brown is one of them.

During the movie, I noticed one song in particular that I spontaneously fell in love with. Strawberry Letter 23 by Brothers Johnson. The rest of the soundtrack is really not bad, but the song I just mentioned is the highlight par excellence:

Strawberry Letter 23 – The Brothers Johnson ( 12″ Extended ): https://youtu.be/q-ipH9Ws-zs

Next week there will be a sequel, so: Stay tuned

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One Track or Album per Week, Number 1: Frank Zappa, Joes Garage.

Frank Zappa Joe‘s Garage

Some time ago I participated in a challenge, 30 LP’s in 30 days. This was quite a demanding task, but it was a lot of fun. Fortunately in my music collection you will find other CDs and many downloads which are crying for an appreciation. I’m going to take it easy now and present one of my favorite tracks or albums every week. Let’s start with one of my highlights.

Highlight of the week: Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage.

I bought this album when I was 17, primarily because Zappa was the bourgeois terror par excellence in America at that time, because he had “interesting” lyrics and his music covered a very wide range, from chaotic and weird to catchy melodic.

When I decided to just march in the direction of punk, I sold the album. This annoyed me so much after a few years, therefore I had to buy it again as a double CD. For me Joe’s garage is the best album Zappa has produced and the perfect background music for long car rides.

Here are a few tracks:

Joe’s Garage: https://youtu.be/mz_EeEN_YXQ
Catholic Girls: https://youtu.be/KVVhsOIhnMg

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 8: Roxy Music, Greatest Hits.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Roxy Music Greatest Hits

30 records in 30 days goes into the eighth round. Let’s do the Strandsky.

Short, sweet, crisp, Roxy Music is just cool. The entry is made by Love is the Drug with a wonderful bass-line. With the bangers “All I want is you” Virginia Plain”, “Pyjamarama”, “Do the Strand”, “Mother of Pearl” the LP leads you through all the older tracks. A wonderful overview of the really exciting and interesting times of the band.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 7: Alannah Myles, the debut album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Allanah Miles, Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the seventh round, with velvetish kisses and lots of love.

Here comes my musical coming out, part 4: Alannah Myles. Yes, every time when I look at this record, I am suprised that I like something like this. I probably bought the debut album in 1990 at the same time as I got my new stereo system (big amp, big speakers, crystal clear sound, mighty boom). I had my first decent apartment in Giesing and just about nine months working behind me.

My apartment heated up pretty quickly due to the large window areas and quickly became a 1.5-room-sauna in the summer. The rocking sound was a perfect match, embodying a vinyl-pressed, shimmering, leaden heat for me.

Black Velvet in particular reminds me of the days I spent sitting on my balcony, soaking wet, enjoying life at its best. Lazy and happy. My time at the university was over. I had already started to forget about my diploma thesis, exams and all the other stuff from my studies, and the doctoral thesis was still far away.

It was a wonderful time and the artist’s sound has been inseparably linked to the mood I just described. Funnily enough, I remembered this only last year during the summer, which led to the re-procurement of this debut album as a digital download relatively quickly.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 6: Dire Straits, the debut album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days Dire Straits, Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the sixth round, with the swinging sultans from the wild west.

Here comes my musical coming-out, part 3: the debut album of Dire Straits. With this record, I travel way back in my youth. A friend of mine showed up with it one day and really wanted us to listen to it together right away. That’s how enthusiastic he was about it. It was also on my side a musical love at first sight and the record accompanied us both through many, very long nights, during which we talked about everything and anything. In the background this record was playing at least once a night. Very often more than once.

So it is always a musical memory of this phase of my youth. There is no favorite for me on the LP, it is simply excellent as a whole. In my opinion, the Dire Straits have in the following albums unfortunately no longer this unused freshness and musical nonchalance musically implement. Simply a unique piece of music.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 5: Madonna’s first album

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/ 30 records in 30 days, Madonna Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the fifth round, with holydays on a lucky star.

Here comes my musical coming out, part 2. Yes, I like Madonna. When I started picking out the 30 records for my challenge last weekend, I knew that the artist’s debut album definitely belonged to this collection. Why? The album as a whole was a musical reminder of high school graduation for me. Besides, my best friend and I listened to it until we dropped.

So I was very surprised to find out that it was released a year after I graduated from high school. Crap, now I have been telling nonsense for more than 3 decades. I noticed this error when I tried to put the records in a chronological order last Saturday.

Since then, I’ve been desperately trying to figure out what was really my high school graduation anthem. I’ve been looking at all the charts and since then I’ve been getting on the nerves of my circle of friends with the question “can you still remember 1982 …”. Over the course of the last week, a hot candidate has emerged, Tainted Love by Soft Cell. But that track came out in 1981. Well, I guess I’ll be digging around for a while. I am grateful for any suggestions.

Stay tuned