By Matt Harness
We’re such huge fans of Bloodshot Records here at Beachwood Media that we consider them something like a house label. And this being the 15th year of their existence, we’ve decided to make them something of a beat here on the Music page and follow their movements as best we can with our limited resources. In fact, we’re going to attempt to bring you a weekly Bloodshot Briefing – from tour diaries to new releases to Bloodshot artists (and in some cases, Bloodshot alum) in the news. Whatever we can muster. Feel free to contribute your own comments, sightings, YouTube videos or tales of drunken Bloodshot sex and raised-fist Bloodshot politics. You can do so here.
We’ll get started this week with some Bloodshot dates here in Chicago and a sampling of what you can expect to see and hear. In the coming weeks, we’ll build out our Bloodshot Briefing, hopefully with your input.

Read More

Posted on April 7, 2009

By The Beachwood Douche Or Tool Affairs Desk

“At the moment, there is a great deal of debate over whether Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan is a douche or a tool for having fired or driven away the rest of his bandmates,” Mark Arenz writes at Ridiculopathy.
Let’s take a look.
DOUCHE: “bc is such a complete thief, liar, hypocrite and fraud, at least jc is basically admitting he’s sick of being all these things,” writes commenter numnuts at Aversion.
TOOL: “[Chamberlin] can’t ‘cash the check’ but had no problem cashing the check from the terrible Visa commercials using ‘Today’ and Hyundai commercials using whatever garbage song he and the bald jerk cooked up for an ad campaign for a luxury car. That’s the least sacred treatment you could give to your music. Chamberlin turns out to be as full of it as Corgan,” writes commenter Dan at Turn It Up.

Read More

Posted on March 27, 2009

By Don Jacobson
If U.S. Highway 61, which runs from the Canadian border in northern Minnesota to New Orleans, is “the Blues Highway,” then U.S. Highway 67 – which in its heyday ran from Iowa to Mexico – is the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Highway.”
In rock ‘n’ roll terms, the crucial stretch of Highway 67 was the part in northeastern Arkansas that ran through such burgs as Batesville, Newport, Swifton, Trumann and Walnut Ridge. Not too far from Memphis, where the rockabilly explosion was centered from 1955 to 1959 or so, Highway 67 boasted a swath of funky roadhouses and disreputable dives that appealed to the earliest crop of rockers, who piled into their Chevies and worked their way up and down this strip, leaving booze-fueled, pill-popping, duck-assed mayhem in their wakes.
The reason I’m bringing all this up is that the Arkansas Legislature is on the verge of designating the stretch of the road through Jackson, Lawrence and Randolph counties as “Rock ‘n’ Roll Highway 67,” which, Rep. J.R. Rogers of Walnut Ridge hopes, will spur tourism. Its history is indeed rich and its legend got a big boost from Joaquin “Hip Hop” Phoenix’s turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, in the scenes where he and fellow Sun Records rockabilly killers, like the 1950s icons they were, were all piled into a car, speeding along in the country darkness at night, dreaming big dreams of where their powerful music will take them.
They were probably hoping it was out of Jackson County, Arkansas.

Read More

Posted on March 15, 2009

By Scott Buckner

Cover songs are the ugly step-sister necessity of bar and wedding bands everywhere, yet they also seem to attract the already-famous who are happy to use covers to suck money from the music fan trough without actually putting forth much effort. This has been a staple of American music since the 78rpm vinyl disc was invented, allowing musicians and singers to copy, refresh, or completely remake some dusty zero into a current-day hero.
The 1960s was especially littered with the corpses of gone-nowhere originals like The Olympics’ “Good Lovin'” or The Top Notes’ “Twist and Shout” being turned into monster chart-toppers by bands like The Young Rascals, The Isley Brothers and The Beatles. Or if you were Carl Perkins, you were waking up pretty much every other weekend to find out someone was scabbing your rockabilly songs like “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Summertime Blues” into records that would eclipse your own.

Read More

Posted on March 2, 2009

By Don Jacobson

Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and a whole heap o’ mainstream love for Americana and/or rootsy-rocky music: That was what the Grammys meant to me this year – the first time they’ve ever meant anything to me, I think. I generally hate awards and awards shows because, well, so many reasons, the main one being that they rarely reflect what’s really good in the industries they’re covering and are all either popularity contests, political bullshit, or, usually, a combination of the two. But the Plant-Krauss five-Grammy sweep for Raising Sand was different in that a usually meaningless awards show this time actually accomplished something worthwhile – moving Americana pretty solidly out of the tiny niche it’s been in and into a bit bigger niche that may help thousands of worthy artists get a listen.

Read More

Posted on February 15, 2009

By Natasha Julius and Steve Rhodes

Also posted in Sports as The Beachwood Super Bowl Halftime Bracket, now with comments on Bruce’s performance.
*
OK, everyone. It’s time for the only Super Bowl wager that really matters: the half time entertainment bracket. It’s not actually a bracket, but that sounds more sports gambling-y so I’m going with it.
You don’t have to know a thing about football to participate. You do, however, have to know a little about the kind of vaguely wholesome, arena-packing, fully-clothed, non-nipple-baring musicals acts that are invited to play during the part of the Big Game most of us use to go to the bathroom. The rules are simple: choose three songs that will be played by the Super Bowl half time entertainment. Why three songs? Because that seems to be the standard number, other than last year when Tom Petty played his entire back catalog. For the record, Smitty remains the only person ever to go three-for-three, correctly predicting Prince would perform “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Baby, I’m a Star” and “Purple Rain.”

Read More

Posted on February 2, 2009

By Don Jacobson

The traditional thing here on Playlist is for me to hunt down someone’s song playlist so I can tell you what people who know more about music than me are pushing out there to their listeners, usually on podcasts or Web-based radio shows. But this time, I’m going to let you know what has made my own latest indie-rock mix CD, which is coming with me on my next cross-town bus trip. Everything I list here has recently been freely available on the Internet as promo MP3s from the artists themselves or their labels. Remember, NO file-sharing, you artist-dissing greedheads.

Read More

Posted on January 23, 2009

By Don Jacobson

Nothing quite says bubblegum pop like The Cowsills. And that’s an accurate impression of the band of late ’60s teenyboppers . . . if you stop at their first album, the eponymous 1967 Cowsills, with its still-sickeningly sweet “The Rain, The Park And Other Things.” That song forever branded them – probably rightly at time – as the safest rock ‘n’ roll band in the land. I mean, my God, their mom was right there in the band, adding the fifth voice in their five-part harmonies and constantly casting quick looks offstage to Bud, the despotic, Navy man dad, who made damn sure they all knew their lines and got to the shows on time.
Yes, the sunshine is so intense on that first Cowsills album it probably spawned a whole solar-powered pop counter-revolution of sweater vests and sensible shoes at a time when things everywhere else were getting real hairy.

Read More

Posted on January 19, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

One of the cleverest little ditties about the romantic push-and-pull ever written, though the gender politics may – or may not be – dated. The Betty Carter/Ray Charles version – provided below – is particularly recommended.
Released: 1949
Words and Music by: Frank Loesser
Charts: The version by Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Best Sellers chart.
Also recorded by: Sammy Davis Jr. and Carmen McRae; Dean Martin; Barry Manilow and K.T. Oslin; Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton; Bette Midler and James Caan; Ray Charles and Betty Carter.

Read More

Posted on January 15, 2009

By Don Jacobson

1. PRESS RELEASE –
From: Jamaica Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports
Re: The Passing of “Tata” Ford
The Honourable Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Minister of information, Culture, Youth and Sports has expressed regret at the death of Vincent “Tata” Ford, known to have been a close associate of Reggae icon, Bob Marley and who was author/composer of one of Bob’s greatest hits, “No Woman No Cry.”
“As the Minister with portfolio responsibility for music and entertainment, I was saddened to learn of the death of ‘Tata’ Ford, who was the latest of a magnificent group of music and entertainment personalities, to pass during 2008,” Miss Grange said.
The Minister described “Tata” as a brave, kind and creative person who did not allow his illness to prevent him from providing support to Bob Marley and using his creativity to pen “No Woman No Cry” and other Marley songs such as “Positive Vibration,” “Roots, Rock, Reggae” and “Crazy Baldhead.”
–

Posted on January 5, 2009