Dr. John’s newest album, Locked Down, was released today. Incredible stuff from Dr. John, he’s definitely ‘back’ with the help and sound from producer and Black Keys band member, Dan Auerbach. From the NPR blog:
The album is the brainchild of 33-year-old musician and producer Dan Auerbach, the singer and guitarist for the indie-rock group The Black Keys. He says Dr. John was a big influence on the band’s music.
“I’m such a huge fan,” Auerbach tells NPR’s David Greene. “I think he is sort of underappreciated. I knew the timeless quality of what he did. I just felt like, if I went down and met him and his head was anywhere near where it used to be, it just might be fruitful.”
With that vague idea for a record, Auerbach got on a plane for New Orleans to track down Dr. John.
The whole album is great. Here is the title track and the first release,Revolution:
Welcome to our new series ‘Missed and Found’ where we reveal music and other media that we just totally missed or ignored but have now (re)discovered for your listening pleasure. My first admission is a big one, Maynard James Keenan, originally with Tool, then A Perfect Circle, and currently, Puscifer (not to mention his various roles as music producer and yes, wine maker).
Close friends of mine have been trying to get me to listen to Keenan’s music since Tool but he only came on my radar when I picked the Puscifer album “C” is for (Please Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference Here). The best way I can describe Puscifer is ‘progressive trip-hop alternative rock’. Anyway, I love most all the Puscifer library but have honestly been getting a little burnt out on the songs. Keenan has a great sounding voice so I thought I’d (finally) see what I’ve been missing all this time and picked up Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle, and well, it’s now on my everyday rotation and I owe everyone who suggested Keenan a beer…here’s the seventh track, The Outsider:
Warning: non-Star Wars fan geeks may want to skip this…. but another bit of media goodness I’ve missed recently is this blogpost about what order to watch the much hated/beloved Star Wars movie Episodes. I was staunchly in the Release Order camp but I’m convinced with this Machete Order argument is the way forward. I definitely plan to introduce my kids to the remainder of the movies they haven’t watched in the Machete Order (they’ve seen Episode IV & V so far), though they have also watched the first season of The Clone Wars and have somehow gained the knowledge that Annakin is Luke’s father from friends at school.
I was ruing the day when I would have to sit through Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace with them, but now I feel like I finally have the solution I’ve been looking for…
Presenting the Internet Archive, hands down the best resource on the internet for public domain audio recordings of live music, books, old time radio shows, and more plus a huge library of public domain books, often in a variety of formats. Whatever your poison, be prepared to spend your next several hours, if not days, browsing, searching, and playing files you find in this incredible archive.
With a few vacations still upcoming this year that involve a lot of driving, I thought I’d stock up on some audio books for the car which the whole family can listen to and maybe a few concerts I can listen to while the wife snoozes and the kids fire up their portable dvd players. So far I’ve only been roaming the archive of old time radio shows and have found more than a few gems worth checking out:
Dimension X – (From the description) “Dimension X was first heard on NBC April 8, 1950, and ran until September 29, 1951.Strange that so little good science fiction came out of radio; they seem ideally compatible, both relying heavily on imagination. Some fine isolated science fiction stories were developed on the great anthology shows, Suspense and Escape. But until the premiere of Dimension X — a full two decades after network radio was established — there were no major science fiction series of broad appeal to adults. This show dramatized the work of such young writers as Ray Bradbury, Robert (Psycho) Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut. In-house script writer was Ernest Kinoy, who adapted the master works and contributed occasional storied of his own.”
X Minus One – (From the description) “X Minus One aired on NBC from 24 April 55 until 9 January 58 for a total of 124 episodes with one pilot or audition story. There was a revival of the series in 1973 when radio was attempting to bring back radio drama and it lasted until 1975. The show occupied numerous time slots through out its run in the 50’s and thus was never able to generate a large following. X Minus One was an extension of Dimension X which aired on NBC from 1950-51. The first fifteen scripts used for X Minus One were scripts used in the airing of Dimension X; however, it soon found its own little niche. The stories for the show came from two of the most popular science fiction magazines at the time; Astounding and Galaxy. Adaptations of these stories were performed by Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts. They even wrote a few original stories of their own. The writers of the magazine stories were not well known then but now are the giants of today. These stories came from the minds of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Poul Anderson to name a few.”
Here’s Episode 32 of X Minus One featuring The Roads Must Roll:
Biographies in Sound – This one is a can’t miss if you’re into biographies. Check out the link for the full listing of guests but it mainly features giants of literature and music, plus other leaders and scientists, all discussed by the people who knew them.
Next time I’ll take a look at the Live Music avialable; here’s a teaser, the first track from The New Orleans Suspects Live at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park on 2011-10-22:
Edit 2: Audio fixed.
Edit: Sorry, the audio files may take a minute or two to buffer!
On March 5th NPR ran it’s 200th concert in it’s Tiny Desk Concert series. I ran across this treasure trove of live music shorts last year and meant to explore it further. Well, here they are at 200. What a great concept and NPR pulls it off nicely; each concert is well executed and recorded with guitars and vocals coming across very close and warm. Here’s the link and the video for their 200th show, featuring the smoking hot voice of Laura Gibson.
Actionsuit Alert! 