Our favorite band of the week turned out to be my favorite band of last year, despite the fact that I only just discovered them — The Breaks Inc. and their amazing album Hotel Earth. Also, belatedly, a couple of tracks from the Chillhop Winter Essentials disc and new music from Mogwai. Not to […]
Everything Is Moving So Fast: The Sad Show
| Radio
Life was meandering along in a happy midsummer kind of way when suddenly, out of nowhere (well, almost nowhere), we were hit with a double whammy of unhappy occurrences. First, our cat Birdie, nearly 20 years old and barely awake most of the time, wandered off one evening and didn’t come back. We were not […]
Games That We Can’t Win: More Songs of 2011
| Radio
2011 had a revolutionary heart and a crazy optimism that uplifted while still flying in the face of conventional logic. We all know how Occupy ended up – park cleared by riot police in the early morning hours one day in late November. Arab Spring did not produce much in the way of obvious positive […]
Your Empire Is Burning: Songs of 2011
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 […]
On and Ever Onward: Songs of 2010
| Radio
This week on Bubble Wrap, we dove headlong into songs from 2010 which turns out to be the year when disillusionment really set in. Bjork’s exhortations notwithstanding, we had some SOS’s from the Black community with The Roots How I Got Over and Beeda Weeda’s Baserock Babies. The Scissor Sisters reminded us that we are […]
Beeda Weeda – Baserock Babies
| Songs
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 […]
I Look Psychotic In A Balaclava: More Songs of 2009
| Radio
I was ready to move on to 2010 for this week’s Bubble Wrap show, but my partner said no, so I dove back into the playlists and we came up with our usual glom of everything that we didn’t play last week. I was in an electro mood for some reason (all popped out) so […]
Swim Until You Can’t See Land: Songs of 2009
| Radio
2009 was one of those years for me. Without a lot of warning, my life turned upside down and my father died — not exactly a happy time. That’s why it surprised me when I listened to the music I collected in 2009 and discovered just how much good music there was that year. The […]
The Department of Foreseeable Outcomes: More Songs of 2008
| Radio
On Bubble Wrap, we continue our review of indie music of the recent past with more songs of 2008. It was the year of hope and change, although you couldn’t tell that from the music. 2008 brought us a few memorable debuts — Santigold put out Les Artistes that year (from her Santogold CD), introducing […]
Go Out And Love Someone: Songs of 2008
| Radio
It Was Acceptable At The Time: Songs of 2007
| Radio
One of the fun things about surveying music by year after the fact is seeing which artists carried on to greater fame. In some cases, they are not who you’d expect. When I first heard Calvin Harris’ It Was Acceptable In The Eighties, I thought it was a silly song. Then I happened to be […]
We Are The Ones: Songs of 2006
| Radio
2006 was the year we discovered that turning your back on the real world only gets you so far. Some of us travelled aimlessly. Others paired up. Politics was pointless so we ignored it. And then there was the music–ironic, alienated, a little sad. Amy Winehouse released Back To Black that year — we played […]
Star Witness: More Songs of 2005
| Radio
On March 23, we played all the songs from 2005 that we didn’t play last week plus assorted funky tunesters (Michael, Janet, Evelyn “Champagne” King). This made for what my mother calls a mish-mash, and what’s worse, I can’t really vouch for the authenticity of this playlist because of all the cross-outs… If I had […]
So It’s Come To This: Songs of 2005
| Radio
2005 was a year of resignation for many of us. It was a time to turn away from politics and get on with whatever we found important in life. There was a resurgence of love songs. Others pondered the bigger questions of life, the universe, and everything. For me, 2005 was definitely a drop-out year. […]
Enduring The Aughts: Songs of 2004
| Radio
As we struggled to figure out how to program our radio show, Bubble Wrap, we decided to focus on the indie music of the 2000s, starting with the first year for which I had a lot of music, which was 2004. To put 2004 in context, it was the fourth freaking year of the Bush […]