Category: Reblogging

Reblogging: NPR’s Decade In Music ’00-’09

Last week we at NPR Music launched a two-week long jaunt looking into the decade in music from 2000-2009. Focused primarily on Carrie Brownstein’s awesome blog Monitor Mix, we delve into all sorts of topics regarding the most important news events, recording industry and business issues, technology changes, the relevancy of labels, big overarching trends and most important recordings of the decade…oh yeah and ‘American Idol.’ Plus so much more, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Here are a few of my own personal contributions:

— Interactive Multimedia Timeline: The Decade In Music

— Song Of The Day: The Decade In Music: OutKast’s ‘So Fresh, So Clean’ (2001)

— All Songs Considered: The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings (Here I write about TV On The Radio, The Flaming Lips and Animal Collective.)

— Monitor Mix: The Decade In Music Timeline: What Did We Miss?

— All Songs Considered: Missing The Cut: More Important ’00s Music (Here I nominate Girl Talk’s uber-mashup, Night Ripper)

— A Blog Supreme: The Decade In Review: Jazz And The Mash-Up (In which I considered Norah Jones, Ornette Coleman and Floratone — among others — as helping define the decade in jazz.)

Reblogging: 50 Great Voices Audio Slideshows

Here are links to two different promotional audio slideshows I made for NPR Music’s upcoming 50 Great Voices series. They are my two first multimedia projects to go live on NPR.org so they’re a tad rough (though the second one is substantially better than the first effort).

Functionally, these two videos were intended to let our audience hear a few teases of music and interact with some of the great musical voices in recorded history. Personally I don’t think they’re a complete success in the goal interaction because the user is more or less tethered to the viewing experience of rather static images for the duration of the video.

But the music mixes do give an effective sense of flow between the different iconic voices.

Anyway, take a look (click on the images below to go see the videos):

Reblogging: Flaming Lips First Listen

So I had the noble task of hearing the new album from The Flaming Lips, Embryonic, about a month ahead of time and then getting to write a short entry about it for NPR Music.

We are featuring the album on the website, in its entirety for the next few days, so take a listen and see what you think. Me? I think it’s awesome.

Reblogging: Jazz Now!

My cohorts over at NPR Music’s jazz blog A Blog Supreme have been curating a series of lists of some of the best jazz records from the last decade as a means to introduce new people to jazz. In the process we’re also sort of introducing a new modern canon of classic jazz records.

Now entering it’s second week, my list — which features MMW, Dave Holland, Marc Ribot, Dave Douglas and John Zorn — finally went up. Check it out here.

Reblogging: Jazz Labels That Matter And The Dead Weather

I had a few more things I’ve written go up in the last week to shamelessly promote. Here’s a three bulleted rundown:

On Monday, All Songs Considered asked the question ‘Do Labels Matter?‘ While they discussed that in their show and blog, I helped spotlight two jazz labels that DO still matter for A Blog Supreme: Tzadik and Nonesuch.

Then today, we put up a ‘First Listen’ for The Dead Weather’s fiery new album Horehound. You can hear that here and read what I had to say about the record.

Here is the video for their single “Treat Me Like Your Mother:”

The Dead Weather – Treat Me Like Your Mother

Oh and if you haven’t checked out my John Vanderslice review on Song of the Day, here it is again.

Reblogging: A Remembrance, A Weird Sax, And A Song For America

Again, I have a few new things go up this week on NPR:

For NPR’s jazz blog, A Blog Supreme, I wrote a quick blurb about Kansas City artist and musician Mark Southerland, and his incredibly weird saxophone creations.

I also wrote a remembrance of jazz bass legend Ray Brown, who died July 2nd 2002, seven years ago today.

And finally, I shine a spotlight on a song by Talking Heads in honor of the Fourth of July.

Reblogging: Icons and Record Club

Had a couple new things go up on the NPR blogs in the last week or two, but thought I’d continue to share them here as well.

Last week, I interviewed the filmmakers behind a fantastic new jazz documentary Icons Among Us. In part one, I talked with one of the co-directors Michael Rivoira for NPR’s jazz blog, A Blog Supreme.

In part two, I talk with the executive producer, John Comerford.

On the All Songs Considered blog I wrote a quick bit about a new Beck project, where he and bunch of musicians and friends will start covering albums in their entirety, starting with the classic The Velvet Underground and Nico. You can read that, and see the first song “Sunday Morning” here.

Since I heard Beck cover this song, I have been revisiting this album, and even learning to play “Sunday Morning.” It’s such a great simple pop song. Check out this cool, rare footage video of an early version of the song:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cWzxJvgWc8[/youtube]

UPDATE 6/26: Beck has posted the second song from The Velvet Underground and Nico, “Waiting For My Man:”

Reblogging: Fiona Apple Plays Piano Bar Tune And It’s Good!

Wrote another piece for the NPR jazz blog, A Blog Supreme today (well I wrote a few weeks back, but finally published for the fans).

This week, a look at Fiona Apple’s glorious cover the Cy Coleman-by way of- Frank Sinatra standard “Why Try To Change Me Now.” Read that piece here.