Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Out of the woodwork: SLAB!

2008-04-30T21:20:37Z

Just days after discovering the recent resurfacing of a member of long-lost Way of the West, I've found another blast from the past: Slab! Slab's few records, released in the second half of the 80s, are an exhilarating mix of pounding, near-indus...

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Back to the funk: Brownout

2008-04-29T02:55:02Z

I've been spending a lot of my listening time lately back in the 80s and neglecting the funk, so I sought to remedy that today. I started listening to Brownout, the Latin funk band from Austin, and as soon as I heard "African Battle" I was hooked...

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Lost 80s: Way of the West

2008-04-27T14:29:24Z

I've been saving up my Way of the West singles for eventual ripping; they were another English band who were a minor staple on the WHFS of the original new wave era, usually represented by their song "Don't Say That's Just For White Boys." I alwa...

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Miles Davis: Prelude

2008-04-27T13:57:28Z

As an addendum to my previous post, I've found a usable (i.e. under 20 minutes) edit of "Prelude" from Agharta, the electric-era Miles Davis tune that opened up a whole new area of music to me in 1991.

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Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood give me goosebumps

2008-04-26T16:00:13Z

I've liked Medeski Martin and Wood ever since I first heard them on the Get Shorty soundtrack (one of the grooviest soundtracks to a mainstream movie since the 70s), but I only ever got a couple of their albums. One that I bought was their first ...

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S Convergence: Sakamoto, Satie, Stewart, Sylvian

2008-04-25T02:29:27Z

Item 1: Mrs. Veneer buys Ryuichi Sakamoto's CD of solo piano pieces, BTTB. It's quite beautiful and Sakamoto mostly avoids the New Age clichés that plague so many piano CDs. Some of the pieces are obvious homages to classical works, such as "Opu...

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Broken Land

2008-04-23T02:45:23Z

I'm back from a non-blogging week in the sprawl of suburban Maryland with my head full of music I want to share, only a fraction of which I'll get around to. I spent one afternoon in the planned city of Columbia; you can't go to Columbia without ...

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More stealth new wave, a.k.a. power pop

2008-04-11T02:17:54Z

A couple more new-wave-leaning songs that got regular airplay on staunch AOR station WAVA were Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams" (1979) and the Motors' "Love and Loneliness" (1980). I always think of those two songs together because Tchaikov...

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My first New Wave record

2008-04-07T01:05:41Z

For a couple years, roughly 1978-80, "new wave" music could be heard on rock (or AOR, "album-oriented rock") radio stations. Either new wave had yet to forge a distinct identity, or rock fans had yet to notice anything different and voice their d...

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Gothic slap-bass

2008-04-05T14:26:19Z

Do you ever get a song in your head, that maybe you haven't heard for years, but it won't go away and you just have to dig it out and listen to it again? Sure you do. I've had this symptom this week for "Beat Me 'Til I'm Blue" by Colour Me Pop, ...

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