Tune of the Week(-ish)

Update: OK I admit that calling this page Tune of the Week is pushing things a bit. I have been very lax in my updates and maybe Tune of the Quarter would be more appropriate. I make no apology, just haven’t been inspired by much music lately. I am inspired today though…

This week I am mainly listening to:  Fabulous French singing duo Brigitte. They are haunting, sexy, retro-chic folk pop, whatever and one of them has very large spectacles. Quality! For more info (and a couple more songs) see this post about Brigitte on my main blog, and meanwhile listen to this one.

In previous weeks I was listening to:

• The unbelievable loveliness that is “The Girl from Ipanema.”  The trouble with this song is that it was so good that everyone loved it in the early 1960′s and over the following decades a thousand cheesey cover versions from Sinatra to lift muzak left us thinking it was, well, cheese.  But listen to the Getz/Gilberto original and imagine you live in the early 1960′s in a world that feels it’s on the brink of nuclear war.  It’s soothing, it’s cool, it’s beautiful…

• The beautiful Corrine Bailey Rae singing “Like A Star.” I love it so much I’m embedding the Youtube video here now.                   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oS1SHjhPU
• A great CD I got for Christmas called Featuring Norah Jones. She has such a fab voice and on this collection of collaborations you can hear her sing with everybody from Willie Nelson to Belle and Sebastian and Herbie Hancock to Q-Tip. Just fabulous!
• OK just one song with only two words this week:  “Riverside” and “Motherf***er” – bit rude I suppose but what a great sound!
  
• The Ballad of Old El Paso by Marty Robbins, and A Little Less Conversation by Elvis, dah retro schmetro.
• Arctic Monkeys again, this time it’s Riot Van and Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts. Great songs!
• The Clash classics, Should I Stay Or Should I Go and LondonCalling. Fabulous!
• More Than Words by Extreme
• King of the Swingers from The Jungle Book
• When the Sun Goes Down by the Arctic Monkeys
• The Stranglers version of Walk On By
• Eartha Kitt singing “Santa Baby” (well it was Christmas)
• Mas Que Nada (without the Black Eyed Peas) and a bit of Town Without Pity by Eddi Reader
• Jump, Jive An’ Wail by Louis Prima

I also added this to my listening list. Actually it’s for sending musical e-cards that play all the UK number 1 records from all your birthdays, but it’s free to sample so you can put in your date of birth, or any other date you fancy, and listen to the number 1 records from that date for each year. You’ll easily get the hang of it. It’s all the origianl records. They call it the birthday e-album, I call it listening to free music!

 

Have you ever noticed how limited most radio presenters/programmers are? For instance their fixation with numbers. Almost every radio station in the world has a feature where they play a certain number of songs at a corresponding clock hour. One at One, Three at Three, Seven at Seven, and so on.

And have you ever noticed how limited most radio stations are. Mostly they play about 150 to 250 songs over and over again until you go completely nuts! I wrote a little haiku about it which I will post on my main page.