Wednesday Morning Music Shuffle - The Pause That Refreshes Mix

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Had a good time hanging out at The Basement and watching Darrin Bradbury with Tim Carroll and Cameron Carrus wow the crowd...

To the shuffle...

Thursday Morning Music Shuffle - Poorer Every Day Mix

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So, Nashville is getting a lot of hype these days... East Nashville more specifically.  Is it deserved or not? I'll let someone else answer that deep and complicated question. However, what I will do, is tell you just a bit about one particular night in East Nashville (last night to be specific), and I will let you process this information how you will....

The night began with David Olney in his penultimate* Happy Hour show at The 5 Spot opening his show with an incredibly awesome recitation of Kubla Khan, and the night ended (almost) about six hours later at Fran's Eastside with Tim Carroll and Darrin Bradbury doing a version of Freebird that made me a fan of that song (or at least a fan of their version).

We have a mixed bag of cool tunes in today shuffle, so let's do it!

Thursday Morning Music Shuffle - Beautiful and Stoned Mix

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Okay... first of all - have you seen this?!



Second,

I need to acknowledge that two of the most badass rock and rollers share a birthday which happens to be today.  Now, I know that I don't often acknowledge birthdays, but the combination of the shared birthday with the utter badassery represented... well I had to. So Happy Birthday to Matthew Hendershot of the The End Men, and Greyson Anderson of Dogs of Oz.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know The End Men, but if you joined us with the last several months, you may have missed out on Dogs of Oz - so here is a aural/visual reminder of each of the bad ass birthday boys. 




Also, as a birthday gift for Matthew (and The End Men)... why not head over to the GTR Store website to help The End Men when a whole bunch of cool stuff plus an slot at Mountain Jam 2014 in Woodstock, NY.

Whew... now we still have a Shuffle to put on...  Jump

Friday Morning Music Shuffle - Heavy Metal Drummer Mix

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Good morning - er afternoon.  After two days of Non-Shuffles, I turned the Shuffle mode back on and came up with some songs to get us through the last day of the work week...

Pre-Shuffle:  We started things off with another track from the fantastic self-titled EP by The Foresters - a track called "Alone".  Next, we had a fun little triad of songs which featured two more songs from The Lucky Jukebox Brigade's album Pretty Well Damned.  In between, "Taffy" and "Carnivultures", we had Sinatra's version of Gershwin's classic Someone to Watch Over Me.  It was really cool how well those three songs worked together.  We closed out the pre-shuffle with a track from Odd Man Out, the Killing Kuddles' album we reviewed on Wednesday. 




Coming up after the JUMP, we have a shuffle which includes two cover songs and an Arrested Development reference...

Monday Morning Music Shuffle - Funky-Ass Car Mix

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If you haven't yet, and are eligible to, please vote tomorrow.

We have a whopping six songs in today's shuffle - so let's get to it!


If Rhode Island and Alt-Country don't make much sense to you, then you need to familiarize yourself with Providence band Deer Tick, and it will all become clear.  I, myself, was late coming into the Deer Tick fold, but I've been hooked ever since that first listen.  Today we open up a jam packed music shuffle with the opening song from the band's debut album - War Elephant.  The song is Ashamed. 

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit are like an unstoppable force. Their album Here We Rest was one of the best albums of 2011.  This time, we go back a couple of years to the predecessor - the self-titled album was the first to feature the  400 Unit.  Today, we have Soldiers Get Strange.

All Mod Cons by The Jam is consistently one of my favorite albums of all time. It was released thirty-four years ago this past Saturday, and man oh man does it hold up well.  Today we have the second song on the album To Be Someone (Didn't We Have a Nice Time).

 

Elizabeth Cook was born in Wildwood, Florida.  Today, we have a song from Welder her critically acclaimed Don Was produced album which was released back in 2010. The subject of this song is the Chevy vehicle which helped me to get a letter to the editor published in the original print edition of Film Threat magazine.  In case you weren't aware, the El Camino has appeared in an incredible number of motion pictures over the years. The list is too long to mention, but if you watch movies with an eye out for the car/truck thing, you will begin to notice a trend.  Anyway, Elizabeth Cook's song is really good.

Detroit Rapper Danny Brown released a non-album single earlier this year.  Grown Up has a sweet, nostalgic bent to it.  It's good stuff.

And we close out this long set of music with the opening track off The Plimsouls second album, Everywhere At Once.  Shaky City highlights the band's signature brand of power-pop. 

 

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The New Avett Brothers album, The Carpenter is $5.99 today only at Amazon:


 

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Friday Morning Music Shuffle - Questionable Mix???

Well, there is nothing questionable about the songs in today's shuffle. Once again, I did not have to walk up the hill into the office, hence I did not actually get to listen to today's shuffle... I decided to hit up my kind of Hall of Fame playlist again today.  Yesterday's shuffle had a decidedly political theme to it.  I'll leave it to you to extract a theme from today's shuffle.  Theme or not, though, it's a truly great mix which will hopefully lead some readers to discover or rediscover some great songs. 

First up is the opening track from Minneapolis post-punk/alt-rock band Soul Asylum's major label debut, Hang Time. Down On Up To Me remains a personal favorite.  I had the good fortune to see Soul Asylum twice in the early 90s.  

 
I can't believe I couldn't find Down on Up to Me on YouTube,  but here is another song from Hang Time:

Next up we have a Traditional American Folk song which was made famous by the iconic Lead Belly in the early part of the 20th Century.  The version of Goodnight, Irene in today's shuffle is by Les Paul (the inventor of the solid body electric guitar) and his then wife and collaborator, Mary Ford.  ""sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown" 

 

Here is Deer Tick's version of the  song

I don't know how many time's this song has come up in shuffles since I began writing Ear to the Ground, but don't expect me to stop featuring it anytime soon.  Son of a Preacher Man  by Dusty Springfield from her amazing Dusty in Memphis album.

Next up we have a 1993 cover of a 70s era Village People song, Go West. Pet Shop Boys recorded the song for their 1993 album, Very. We have the Pet Shop Boys version in the shuffle today.

 

Here is the original version

Finally we have another cover, that many people do not know is a cover. Lost Highway which reached my teenaged, punk rock brain via Jason and the Scorchers' version from the 80s.  The song's most famous version (and the one often credited as the original was recorded in 1949 by Hank Williams.  Leon Payne actually wrote and first recorded a year earlier.


 

 

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Tuesday Morning Music Shuffle - Ill Communication Mix

"Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music." - Leonard Cohen

And we go Marching on into a new month.  I loaded my first songs of the new month last night, and thus have a brand new playlist from which to shuffle.  Shall we?

Riceboy Sleeps is the title of an album by Jonsi (Sigur Ros) and Alex Somers.  It is also the title of this soundcloud discovery dedicated to the pair.  Riceboy Sleeps, the song, is by Jonas Obermuller, a young German composer and sound designer.  You can check it out and download by using the player below:

Riceboy Sleeps (a tribute to Jónsi Birgisson & Alex Somers) by Jonas Obermüller


  (to check out the album by Jonsi and Alex Somers click the adjacent picture)


Next we have City Lights by  Radio Moscow an Iowa-based Psychedelic Blues band. The song comes to us via Popa's Tunes and is off of the band's 2009 Brain Cycles album.

(to check out Brain Cycles by Radio Moscow - click the pic to the left)

Next, I stumbled upon a cool Leonard Cohen cover last night.  It's Chelsea Hotel as covered by Nashville's own Lambchop.  It's on the intriguing 2011 Leonard Cohen tribute album which you can check out by clicking the pic-link below:

(Leonard Cohen by En Boca De - which features k.d. lang, Jackson Browne and others )

Next, we have a song for triskaidekaphobes everywhere.... it's Rhode Island's own Deer Tick doing Friday XIII from their 2009 Born on Flag Day album.



(Born on Flag Day by Deer Tick @ Amazon.com)


Jolene Song is on Taco Land's Heart of Texas album, but all credit here goes to Joseph Russell's young daughter.  Beautiful.

(Heart of Texas by Taco Land)

Finally we have a solo track from Indigo Girl Amy Ray. The song is on 2008s Didn't It Feel Kinder.

(Didn't It Feel Kinder by Amy Ray)

We grabbed the song and others from Noisetrade (See widget below)






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Affiliated Links:

Jónsi We believe it is important to preserve what makes music special, and make it easy to craft listening experiences. At MOG, browse millions songs and play them instantly. Or just turn on radio where you can stop and replay songs. You can also create playlists for any occasion, and even download songs to your mobile. We are dedicated to employing the cleanest but most powerful technology so you can enjoy music as much as ever.

Deer Tick We believe it is important to preserve what makes music special, and make it easy to craft listening experiences. At MOG, browse millions songs and play them instantly. Or just turn on radio where you can stop and replay songs. You can also create playlists for any occasion, and even download songs to your mobile. We are dedicated to employing the cleanest but most powerful technology so you can enjoy music as much as ever.

Indigo Girls/Rites of Passage This Indigo Girls "two-fer" from Sony Legacy features the duo's eponymous 1989 record and 1992's Rites of Passage. For most listeners, their first introduction to the music of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers was 1989's smash single "Closer to Fine," and while f

TFIF (Thank Frigg It's Friday) Morning Music Shuffle - Underage in This Funky Bar Mix

It's always fun to look at my blog stats* and see what kind of searches bring people to my site. Recently, a search for Appalachian culture brought people to yesterday's post.  I've had several searches for former Band of Week - Sealight's Dead Letters EP which I reviewed here. I also had a recent search for Elvis Costello telling Whitney Houston to let him write some songs for her. :-)

*Not that I obsessively and compulsively check my stats, because that would be lame.

Got some diverse and fun tracks in today's shuffle, so let us get to it:

Tons of Johnny Cash news lately - the previously mentioned museum set to open in Nashville this summer, plans for an 80th Anniversary of his birth celebration and probably more...

Today we have one of Johnny Cash's classic songs.  A few years ago, at a church talent show, the young son of some friends' of mine did an amazing and funny as hell version of this song.  A Boy Named Sue was written by Shel Silverstein and was inspired by the humorist Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story) who was taunted as a child for his feminine sounding name.

<-----check out Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969) at Amazon.com

We shift gears entirely now - In 1991, P.M. Dawn released their debut album, and this song helped unleash an entirely different kind of hip-hop on an unsuspecting world.  Spandau Ballet is sampled heavily.  Today I heard a live version of Set Adrift on Memory Bliss - sublime!

<----check out the debut album from P.M. Dawn at Amazon

Deer Tick who hail from Rhode Island make stunning and wonderful alt-country music. Twenty Miles which comes off of the Black Dirt Sessions album is one of my favorite songs not only by the band, but of all time - not faint praise for a song less than two years old.

<---check out The Black Dirt Sessions at Amazon.com

And finally - a song that goes way back to 1980 - when I was a wee lad of 14, and a song I know I heard quite a bit on the radio back then (it reached #6 on the charts in the US).  Paul Simon released his fifth album which served as a Soundtrack of sorts (different songs and versions of songs) to the movie which share its name, One Trick Pony.  The song is Late in the Evening - great lines like my mother laughed the way some ladies do, I turned the amp up loud and I began to play and the line borrowed for the subtitle of this post.


<---check out the 2011 Remaster of One Trick Pony at Amazon.


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P.S. - if you've been thinking of buying a Kindle Fire connect to Amazon through the link at the top of this page and help out Ear to the Ground.  :-)

One Trick Pony Jonah Levin knows what it's like to sit atop the world of pop music. But chart-topping hits (as well as enduring marriages) are harder to come by - and nothing he ever knew could prepare him for the skid to the bottom. Playing Jonah, the enduringly talent

Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison/ At San Quentin (The Complete 1969 Concert)/ America (3 Pak Cube) - MP3 Download This Johnny Cash download is available in DRM-free, MP3 256kbps format. Johnny Cash MP3's will play on iPod(r) and all MP3 players. Individual tracks and samples of the songs from this album are available by clicking on the product image on the left. Need help? Click here and search for "downloads" to learn more.