Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

The 80s are coming back

2008-05-13T02:50:27Z

They've been coming back for quite some time now (since 1990), of course, but now my 1980s are coming back. Since my recent post on Slab!, band member Stephen Dray has announced their imminent reformation (in the comments on this blog post), or r...

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I'm still listening to Nine Inch Nails (and Peter Hope)

2008-05-09T23:03:47Z

Here I am saying The Slip is the best Nine Inch Nails album since the first one when I haven't really listened to any of them since Broken. So I've been trying to catch up, going from recent to older; Year Zero and With Teeth are actually better ...

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Moldy 70s reworked

2008-05-03T12:31:52Z

Of course I remembered even more Moldy 70s songs immediately after I posted my Moldy 70s video collection, but one of them led to an unanticipated discovery. Looking for Starbuck's "Moonlight Feels Right" on YouTube, I found instead a live perfor...

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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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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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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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