Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Trumpet time: Nils Petter Molvaer

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:45:26 -0800

Last week I remembered I like Steve Tibbetts, so I added a Steve Tibbetts station to my Pandora account. I was listening to it yesterday when I heard an unfamiliar Jon Hassell song. Or so I thought--it turned out to be by Norwegian trumpeter Nil...

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Blues backwards: On the Road Again

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:39:31 -0800

Of course everyone knows that "On the Road Again" is a blues standard made famous by Canned Heat in 1968: But I didn't know that in the 80s; my first encounter with it was on synth band (or what in retrospect is referred to as "minimal wave") Sc...

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Naúx redux

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:04:33 -0800

I'll interrupt my Mars Volta jag to announce that I have found Naúx! On my first post about him, I wondered whatever happened to him after his excellent 1983 album Light, Traps and Exploding Wires. Thanks to Frank Eaton I've learned that he is n...

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Holding pattern: The Mars Volta

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:55:14 -0800

The new Mars Volta album (The Bedlam in Goliath) has me listening to all the old ones again, so I'm not ready to move on from them yet. Here's a video of a highly-abbreviated "L'Via L'Viaquez," one of my two favorite songs from my still-favorite ...

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The Mars Volta reminds everyone of King Crimson

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:21:28 -0800

I'm not the first one to notice that "Goliath" from the new Mars Volta album sounds like King Crimson's 1969 prog-rock classic, "21st Century Schizoid Man," but I did arrive at that conclusion independently. At just after the 4-minute mark they a...

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Prog backwards: Memories

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:08:59 -0800

Cranking up The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute album the first time was revelatory, and it had me jumping around for days. I caught up with their other albums afterwards, but none of them quite did it for me the way Frances did. And now they have...

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The Divine Comedy

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:09:48 -0800

Since Salty Miss Jill brought up Neil Hannon in the Music Lovers post, here is Neil himself singing his song with "Jill" in the lyrics: Neil Hannon is the true inheritor of Scott Walker's mantle, though he has a lighter touch: his humor is more ...

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The Music Lovers

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:07:24 -0800

I first fell in love with The Music Lovers in 2003, when I was browsing on Darla.com looking for some new music. I listened to the two-minute sample of "This World vs. The Next World" and I was instantly hooked: I bought that first CD EP, Cheap...

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GOB Bluth and the Continents

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:14:33 -0800

Mrs. Veneer and I have never been able to watch a television show regularly, at least not until we got a DVR and found a show worth watching regularly (Ugly Betty). Then along comes the writers' strike, and kablooey. But the strike gave us time ...

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Pretty Poison: in the beginning

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:31:48 -0800

Staying with the 80s theme of the last post but traveling a couple hours up I-95 to Phildelphia, here's Pretty Poison from their 1983 4-song EP Laced: More electronic toms, yeah! In the fall of 1982 I was a freshman in college, and somehow I qu...

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