Come over to the dark side. We have music. A deep dive into a few numbers you might have missed so far on your journey through life. 1: “Midnight Man” by The James Gang 2: “Starless” by the Unthanks 3: “Ach heile mich” by Cassiber 4: “Opening Theme” by Morte Macabre 5: “Gotta Go” by Bud Shank 6: “Night Life” by Ray Price 6a: “Repent Walpurgis” by Procol…

Music that differed — The original series by Paul Combs, an album from every year you’ve been alive, is too much of a challenge for this septuagenarian, so I’ve narrowed the criteria a bit. My listening experience is so spotty that listing my favorite songs / albums since my birth year (1950) won’t tell…

Plethora of Pop Rate a Song Series — Leave it to Terry Barr to take what was a low point of popular music media in the 60’s-80’s (the American Bandstand’s “Rate a Song” challenge) and transform it into a fascinating series on Plethora of Pop. (For those unfamiliar with the original, here’s a sample. …

To rain on your sunny afternoon — Songstories challenge from Christopher Robin: Your Go-To Summer Song For over half a century, my favorite album to kick off the summer season has been The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. The songs are cheerier than those of other Kinks masterpieces (though with a serious dose of wistfulness)…

5 Bob Dylan spoofs (“She seemed to be a rutabaga…”) — Song parodies were popular in the 30’s-50’s (see my previous article), but the 1960's-70's’ were the golden age of musical satire (including two most serious funny groups of all time, The Mothers of Invention and The Bonzo Dog Band). The “Question Everything” generation had no qualms about lambasting even their…

The smoky, gentle folksinger doesn’t sound much like Radiohead — or does she? — When my newsfeed featured the New Musical Express headline, “Thom Yorke selects IDLES, Miles Davis and more for new Sonos mix” (whose subtitle asks “what is music or any art in such a time of death, violence and horror?”), …