Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Saturday Night Is Partyin' Time

2009-12-06T01:18:27Z

Around 1979 I was a big fan of the Saturday night radio show on WAVA FM 105, one of the DC area's major AOR stations. The intro music was an a capella piece with a bass ostinato keeping the rhythm, and lead vocals singing "Saturday night" and "Sat...

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The seventies are the new retro-modern

2009-12-02T22:19:36Z

It's been a year and a half since my last big post on soundtrack music; after gorging on Ghost Box albums last week, it's time for another one. The Ghost Box label purveys music in the style of "modern" 70s library music, a nouveau retro-futurism...

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Get It On!

2009-12-01T23:34:46Z

I onIy ever bought one hits album that was advertised on TV--it was so good I never had to buy another one! Ronco's 1974 compilation Get It On! boasted "20 ORIGINAL HITS 20 ORIGINAL ARTISTS", and it is a wonderful cross section of the popular mu...

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Arranged

2009-12-01T01:13:49Z

On the other hand, a lavish arrangement (i.e. with lots of instruments) can be very enjoyable, conjuring up classic soul from the 70, sunshine pop of the 60s, and bittersweet areas in between. Platters That Matter Records turned me on to Liam Haye...

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Overprocessed

2009-11-30T03:34:05Z

Spending seven hours in a car with a broken CD player on Wednesday and another seven hours today gave me plenty of time to survey the contemporary radio landscape, and what a dismal scene it is. There were a few bright spots (every one of them a c...

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SLAB! in the raw

2009-11-30T01:33:04Z

The reactivation of the mighty SLAB! continues; if not as quickly as diehard fans like me would like, at least it's still on. Frontman Steve Dray has just released a zip file of a rehearsal session for the band's final single, "Death's Head Soup",...

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A Claire Hamill selection

2009-11-20T11:57:55Z

Paul DiFilippo's recent post on wordless singing brought Claire Hamill's Voices album to mind, which I wrote a post about two years ago (so for background on my adoration of Claire Hamill, see that post). Poking around on the web for more Claire H...

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Instrumental Action Soul

2009-11-13T03:34:12Z

With an album title like Instrumental Action Soul to announce their intentions, how could I not love the Diplomats of Solid Sound? With a Hammond-centric sound courtesy of Nate Basinger, this band from Iowa City delivers a spot-on mix of Booker T....

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My cop show theme

2009-11-08T00:40:28Z

In 1993 a left-hand keyboard exercise I came up with evolved into a full-fledged cop show theme, which I called "Theme from Gunnerman" because that sounded suitably unsubtle for a 70s cop show. I got to play it with the band (Cafe de los Muertos),...

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A deep funk travelogue from Breakestra

2009-11-05T01:32:05Z

Getting back to this year's bumper crop of deep funk releases, I found that L.A.'s Breakestra has done in one song what I attempted to do in blog posts two years ago: give a worldwide overview of the deep funk scene. Many of the acts name-checked ...

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