Songs

Posts about individual songs

Wee Willie Waffle Iron – June 5, 2024

| Songs
Wee Willie Waffle Iron

It’s hard to say what we were on about this week. There was a sense of doing the Charleston on the deck of the Titanic, and also one of “Look, how beautiful, it’s June!”

A certain nostalgia prompted us to revive the Lemonheads, Uncle Tupelo, and Unrest, not to mention the still very active Mountain Goats, currently on tour everywhere. We played “Jaipur” from The Coroner’s Gambit — classic Mountain Goats with all the trimmings including Darnielle’s trademarked* pissed-off vocals.

Baffling number of the week was “Good Luck, Babe” by Chappell Roan.

Best of 2021 – Parts 1 and 2

| Featured, Songs
New Year decorations in Moscow 2021

It’s that time of the year when people trot out their best of lists, and we’re no exception to the rule. In contrast to 2020 when everyone was sadly recording alone in their bedrooms, 2021 was a bit more upbeat. The first 6 months of the year saw a lot of new releases, including some backlog from 2020. The result — a bumper crop of great new tunes.

Bombs and Threats of Bombs

| Songs

I woke up this morning humming “Woodstock,” the old Joni Mitchell song from back in the late ’60s.  I wasn’t actually humming her version — I was humming the CSNY version which is harder and more conventionally rhythmic.  Joni’s Woodstock is sadder and more desperate — “I have come here to lose the SMOG,” she […]

Whatever The Party Calls For, Part 2 – More Best Of 2016

| Radio, Songs

It’s never easy to pick the best songs of any time period — there are always songs that rise above the common herd of new music without attaining top status.  That’s where Disc 2 comes in.  It’s a place to record that second tier of great tunes aren’t quite great enough on their own to […]

Whatever The Party Calls For – Best Songs of 2016 Part I

| Radio, Songs
's_Make_America_Stronger_Together_installation_at_Trump_Tower

This year was the first in three years that I’ve bothered to put together a year end best of compilation annual CD, as we had for so many years before.  For whatever the reason, I got bored with current, nowaday music.  I started listening to classical!  It was bad.  This year, maybe because of the […]

A Wintry Mix – December 7, 2016

| Radio, Songs
Snow Town

On Bubble Wrap radio this week, we tried to stay away from Christmas without being totally unseasonal in our selections.  The end result was a wintry mix of new stuff just in and songs from past years with the words “winter” or “snow” in their titles.  I know, it’s a cheap algorithm but it works, and gives […]

Summer of Black Lives Ending – September 21, 2016

| Radio, Songs

There were more police killings of black men this week, including Keith Scott and Terence Crutcher, bringing a sense of frustration and grief that can’t go away because they don’t stop happening…  This week’s Bubble Wrap show featured lots of funk, r&b, hip hop, and even some disco (imagine that), mostly addressing the black experience, […]

If I were from the Big Town, I would be calm and debonair: Summer Sounds

| Radio, Songs
Charlie's Tavern, NY

It’s August here in the small Vermont town where I live, and even here, in the so-called north country, we’re experiencing a bona fide heat wave.  To celebrate, we watched Seven Year Itch while eating take-out sushi and drinking basil vodka.  Yeah, it’s that kind of summer night.  This week’s Bubble Wrap show was not […]

Your Empire Is Burning: Songs of 2011

| Radio, Songs
Rome Burning

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was pop music in 2011.  In the larger world, there were eruptions of populist sentiment accompanied by chants and machine gun fire, depending on what part of the world you experienced “spring” in that year.  Arab Spring rolled through the Middle East […]

Beeda Weeda – Baserock Babies

| Songs
Beeda Weeda - Producer DJ Fresh

One of the better songs of 2008 seems to have vanished without a trace — Baserock Babies by Oakland’s Beeda Weeda. Like The Roots and How I Got Over, they don’t bother to sugarcoat the reality of urban life for people of color.  Sure, the song is funny in a grim kind of way but […]

Live at the Future: The Suitcase Junket, Bella’s Bartok, Wooly Mar

| Music, Songs
Suitcase junket - Matt Lorenz

The Future Collective keep bringing us great music. Their latest show featured The Suitcase Junket, a one-man band led by Matt Lorenz, a Vermonter now living in Amherst who’s already getting airplay on The River.  In addition to having an amazing voice and top notch songs, in a quirky folk vein, he also knows how […]

Channeling Rimsky-Korsakov On The Simpsons

| Music, Songs

The other night, I happened to be listening to Pan Voyevoda by Rimsky-Korsakov when, to my surprise, out popped the Simpsons theme song. Not literally, but the theme R-K used to open his suite is the same, almost note for note, as the theme to the Simpsons.  It’s slower, to be sure, and unsyncopated, but […]

Dent May – Best Friend

| Songs

It’s a little hard to believe that all this gorgeous 60s style vocalizing is coming from one guy, but it is, and that guy is Dent May.  May got his start in Mississippi where he started writing songs at the age of 12, according to his label.  He later attended NYU Film School, but dropped […]

Sweet Life by Frank Ocean

| Songs

Not that many records have impressed me  this year, but there’s something about Sweet Life by Frank Ocean that stuck with me even though lyrically, it’s completely alien to my life.  Somewhere between rap and R&B, Sweet Life takes you to a land of milk and honey somewhere in Beverly Hills where happy young people enjoy […]