Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Moldy 70s

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:18:21 -0700

Being first is everything. Bolus gets linked to from everywhere for posting videos of cheesy 70s songs as "Hell's iPod." I've been enjoying this crap for years, unironically, having made two "Moldy 70s" CDs during the Napster years. Here is a v...

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The Doors, funky?

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:11:05 -0700

The Doors were accused of a lot of things, but being funky wasn't one of them. So I am naturally surprised when I hear Doors influences in contemporary funk; who'd'a thunk it? Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators (she's from Brooklyn, they'r...

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Modern Sunshine Part 2

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:26:41 -0700

I've fallen behind on my sunshine pop theme due to spending last night sorting out the dueling MySpace players problem. Solution: no more MySpace players. If they've got it set to autostart, there's not a thing you can do about it by tweaking pa...

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Speaking of Dark Cabaret...

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:45:51 -0800

I wasn't speaking of the so-called "dark cabaret" subgenre, but Wild Bill of Ithaca College's Sharp Notes blog was on Monday, writing: Origin: Debatable. Many fans consider the first cornerstone of the genre to be Nico’s 1974 release The End. Su...

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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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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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Sorcery revisited, or jazz backwards

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:06:49 -0800

More often than not I learn about music backwards, that is, in reverse chronological order. When I posted "Sorcery" by Poland's Big Band Katowice back in October, it did not occur to me to wonder about the song's origin. It was just today, liste...

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Seeding Pandora: Moondog

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:01:52 -0800

I would love to have good music playing at work all the time, because good music is better than crushing silence, but bad music is worse. Moreover, the music I play must be backgroundable, and not grab my attention away from my work because (1) i...

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Once a spy...

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:25:25 -0700

Always a spy--I just can't get away from the spy music! Here's another Lalo Schifrin track, from his execrably-titled 1967 album There's a Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin' On: I assume that the keyboard solo is a monophonic synthesizer, and since it w...

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