By Steve Rhodes

Little did we know when we listened to Obama Radio on Slacker.com and posted a playlist that Slacker went all non-partisan and put together a McCain Radio channel as well. But they did.
“McCain Radio plays the favored music of John McCain including his personal song picks, tracks from his favorite artists and music played at his events,” Slacker says. “Hear an eclectic mix of tunes ranging from Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys to Hank Williams Jr. and ABBA.”
Let’s listen in.

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Posted on October 28, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Slacker.com has introduced Obama Radio, described by the station as “the favored music of Barack Obama including his personal song picks, tracks from his favorite artists and music played at his events.” I’ve been listening to it all morning and I think you’ll see from the playlist that the concept is, well, a bit of a stretch.

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Posted on October 24, 2008

By Don Jacobson

I’m not from Cleveland so I have to admit I’d never heard of Upbeat before. But now I’ve got the Internets and so I’m clued in. Upbeat was to Cleveland what Shindig and Hullabaloo later became to teen America in the mid-’60s: The TV cradle of everything that mattered in rock ‘n’ roll. Everyone who meant anything to rock’s classic era played on that show, which was syndicated out of WEWS-TV in the mid- to late-’60s. The reason they did is that Cleveland, of course, was rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest testing grounds: If you could score a hit record there, the theory went, you could score one anywhere.

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Posted on October 22, 2008

By The Inflight Music Affairs Desk

We’ve already brought you the inflight stylings of United and Delta; comes American, which compiled its attempt at a hipster playlist in the sky with the help of Paste magazine.
Featured tracks:
1. Goodbye Midnight/The Spring Standards
2. Without a Word/Giant Sand
3. Wreck/The Bittersweets

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Posted on October 20, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

1. It’s tempting to say that AC/DC is back, and they are, but as the New York Times points out in a long piece in its Sunday edition, they’ve never really gone away.
“Over the past five years, as CD sales have cratered, AC/DC albums have sold just as well or better than ever; the band sold more than 1.3 million CDs in the United States last year, even though it hasn’t put out any new music since 2000,” the paper reports.
What’s the secret of their success? Rocking.

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Posted on October 13, 2008

By The Beachwood CD Sampler Music Affairs Desk

The latest Paste magazine sampler.
1. You Stood Me Up/Benji Hughes
2. Say Hey (I Love You)/Michael Franti & Spearhead
3. It’s Alright/Dar Williams
4. Lost Coastlines/Okkervil River
5. You Won’t Be Able To Be Sad/The Break and Repair Method

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Posted on October 9, 2008

If anyone out there has been foolish enough to “follow” the self-indulgent music ramblings that Steve Rhodes has been kind enough to let me post on this fine site, they’ll know that, unlike a certain prominent Chicago daily newspaper rock critic, I’m one of those mentally straitjacketed music fans who truly believe that the ’70s were indeed the be-all and end-all of rock ‘n’ roll, both in its best moments and its worst excesses. While there’s been plenty of great popular music since then, there’s never been the same level of great rock ‘n’ roll.
The combination of the huge baby boomer pool of young talent to draw from, the pervasive egalitarian political and cultural climate, the obsession with the blues and the freely available sex and drugs made for a musical Petri dish that we’ll never again have in this country. I don’t blame Generation X or Y for being somehow lacking because their rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t have the same power and meaning – it can’t, any more than, say, cable television pundits can have the same social impact as Walter Cronkite-era CBS News did. It’s about the times and circumstances just as much than the actual creative achievements. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to completely agree with the thesis and title of music writer Dave Thompson’s latest book, I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto – I know where he’s coming from.

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Posted on October 6, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Whoever thought this song would become relevant once again – or that it had once been sung by George Michael. We have the video.
Lyrics: E.Y. “Yip” Harburg
Music: Jay Gorney
Date: 1931 – used in 1932’s musical New Americana
*
From Wikipedia: It became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee. Both versions were released right before Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election to the presidency and both became number one hits on the charts. The Warner Bros. Crosby recording became the best-selling record of its period, and came to be viewed as an anthem of the shattered dreams of the era.

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Posted on September 30, 2008

By Don Jacobson

Backyard Tire Fire’s latest album, The Places We’ve Lived, on the New York indie label, HYENA Records, is taking the roots rockin’ Bloomington, Ill., band in a new direction. Who could have guessed Ed Anderson, the band’s songwriter and chief creative force, has turned out to be “the premier pop balladeer of America’s heartland?” But it’s true. Anderson and BTF are quickly becoming the most interesting and innovative guitar-based rock band in the Midwest, and because of their very extensive touring schedule, hopefully beyond.

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Posted on September 22, 2008

By Scott Buckner

Like the public at-large, I’m sure a few of my Beachwood Reporter colleagues are probably thinking of glaringly obvious rain songs that would qualify for Song of the Moment. You know, everything from The Doors’ “Riders On The Storm” to Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” to B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” or Gordon Lightfoot’s “Rainy Day People.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with those songs at The Moment. When your next two days are going to be spent lugging every waterlogged possession – not to mention about 500 square yards of cheap-ass carpeting – from your basement to the curb, you don’t have a lot of time ponder what might be music’s perfect rain song.
Fortunately, I spent this weekend high and dry, so I had more than 15 minutes to ponder this musical question. Initially, I thought of The Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain,” Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Texas Flood,” and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia.” Only problem was, a song wishing it would rain even more seems outrageous unless there’s a drought, I couldn’t give a shit less about what happens in Texas, and nobody in Georgia with a guitar has hitched a ride on a boxcar since The Great Depression.
It was rainy. It’s Monday. So it’s not that much of a stretch that my Song Of The Moment is “Rainy Days and Mondays” by The Carpenters.

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Posted on September 15, 2008