Music & More

Director Ridley Scott's amazing career would ordinarily set expectations pretty high for any new movie he directs, but since this is Scott's first science fiction film since his groundbreaking Blade Runner thirty years ago, this looked to be a special movie. On the surface, Blade Runner was the story of Harrison Ford's police detective trying to find and kill four renegade androids that were so much like humans, it was hard to tell the difference. What the movie was really about was nothing less than life, death, and what it means to be human. Prometheus is well done by almost every measure. It's extremely well directed with good cinematography, breathtaking artwork, gripping special effects, excellent acting, casting, and dialogue. Noomi Rapace excels in the lead role of scientist Elizabeth Shaw, proving that her great performance in the original Norwegian version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was no fluke; she's got a brilliant acting career in front of her. ...

Music and More Re-Post: M&M favorite Courtney Jaye just wrote an interesting article detailing her best tropical experiences in Nashville (where she lives), posted this week by Lockeland Springsteen , an excellent local music blog. Courtney lived for a time in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, and while there she fell in love with the indiginous music. Courtney's unique sound reflects the influences of traditional Hawaiian music, country music, and pop. This article gives a nice glimpse into her world, and her words share more insight into how it all comes together in her music than anything we've seen. With gratitude for the permission, we are pleased to re-post the following from Lockeland Springsteen. This week, we asked local singer/songwriter Courtney Jaye to share her top tropical experiences in Nashville – after all, she’s known for her unique sound and style that fuses the South Pacific with the American South. And when you listen to The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Ja...

Gems From the Record Room: Doubleheader gems this time, as we just uploaded the first two Michael Stanley albums. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Stanley's career as a singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist, and he's still going strong. His first album got our immediate attention because Joe Walsh played on it and it was produced by Bill Szymczyk (Joe Walsh, James Gang). It didn't hurt that Todd Rundgren, Rick Derringer and Joe Vitale played on it too. It also didn't hurt that Stanley's voice was well suited for the songs, and he wrote some great ones. Here are two of them. Listen to "Rosewood Bitters" Listen to "Song For A Friend Soon Gone" The second album had the full boat of great songwriting and high wattage guest musicians starting with Joe Walsh and Barnstorm. Be sure to play "Let's Get The Show On The Road", a song that logged a lot of turntable time back in the 70's, both at home and at the radio s...

Wildest Moments Ready for Liftoff: We first picked up the buzz from London about Jessie Ware back in February . Coming off her 2010 debut as as an in- demand featured and guest vocalist, she now has a string of successful solo singles. Jessie has been called South London's answer to Sade. She has just released her fourth single, "Wildest Moments". Here is the video. 110% We posted Jessie's first two singles last time . Here is the video for the third single, "110%", released a few months ago. Devotion To say that expectations are high for Jessie's first album would be an understatement. The debut album, Devotion, comes out August 28th. Photos courtesy of Jessie Ware Jessie Ware's Website Jessie Ware's Facebook

We are pleased to offer this music mix for your Fourth of July listening pleasure. It features 27 tracks and runs just under two hours. Many of the tracks are self-explanatory but we have some notes on the mix to give you the necessary whys and wherefores. But first, here are a few songs from the mix. The Aimee Mann track is a perennial favorite on the fourth, and the Yes and Kansas tracks represent the best of what used to be called progressive rock back in the seventies. If you'd like to hear the complete mix, drop us an email. Listen to Aimee Mann - "4th Of July" Listen to Yes - "America" Listen to Kansas - "Song For America" Photo courtesy of visitphilly.Com Notes On the Mix : First things first, you've got to have some John Phillip Sousa on the 4th of July and "Washington Post" is one of our favorites, not nearly as overplayed as "Stars and Stripes" plus this is a great performance by the Eastman Wind Ensemble . Ray Charl...

Here are my choices for the five best albums of the year so far. 1. Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball Listen to "Wrecking Ball" It Takes a Village, Baby: The death of Clarence Clemons left a giant hole in Bruce Springsteen's music, both compositionally and in performance. The resulting expansion of the E Street Band was felt both on the road and on his latest album, Wrecking Ball. The loss of keyboard player Danny Federici a few years ago also contributed to the new personnel. On the Wrecking Ball tour, early on in each concert Bruce introduces the new horn section, the violinist, and the backup singers, saying "To do what we came here to do tonight, it takes a village baby." Long story short, Wrecking Ball works both on record and live, like no other Springsteen album since 1987's Tunnel of Love. Bruce made such compelling music on his first seven studio albums, that as each succeeding album grew more issue oriented, the songs became more and more like fo...

Joe Williams - I Just Want To Sing New Occasional Feature : We are in the midst of a major project to digitize our entire CD collection, and as we go we are constantly running across rare, forgotten, interesting, or just plain great records that you just don't hear much. We'll show the album, tell a little about it, stream a couple of tracks, and link to Amazon if the album is still available. This feature takes inspiration from Mike's Basement , Mike being Mike Marrone, who does one of the best music shows we've ever heard on the radio. You can catch Mike weekday mornings, 6am-Noon eastern on Sirius XM channel 30 - The Loft . We are also inspired by The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn , another essential radio show. Ben dips into his amazing record collection every week for an hour of rare, sometimes unusual, but always fabulous records. The show is well named because Ben could play anything. The show is only carried on three stations, but two of them stream their signal on...