WOW Wednesday Music Shuffle - No Excuse Mix

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I just recently found out that the five year old daughter of Joseph "Taco" Russell is fighting a courageous battle with childhood cancer.   #E2TG sends all kinds of love and good thoughts and prayers to the entire Taco Land family.  I sometimes think of the bands/artists, I've gotten to know as part of an extended Ear to the Ground Family, and Taco Land has been a big part of that for a good portion of our history.

Right now you can get an "Audrey Strong"  bracelet plus a free download of Heart of Texas by Taco Land for a $1 (or more) donation (proceeds go to St. Jude.)  Here is the link to bandcamp...

from Taco Land:

Support bracelet for Taco's 5yr old daughter whom is fighting childhood cancer. Bracelet is Gold. This color represents the fight against all Childhood Cancers. All monies will be donated to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Bracelet comes with free download of song "Heart of Texas" which has Audrey opening the song by saying, "I love Daddy!"

Includes unlimited streaming of Heart of Texas via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Friday Morning Music Shuffle - Alternate Reality Mix

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Shuffle after the jump:

Tuesday Morning Music Shuffle - Venus Crossing Mix

Well, my day so far has consisted of being stopped by a train which proceeded to come to a complete stop, and then (after turning around and choosing an alternate route) getting mixed up in the CMA Festival set-up. 

Our Band of the Month poll - over on the left sidebar - has less than 12 hours to go, and Sci-Fi Romance had taken the lead away from South of Ramona. Keep voting and most importantly, check out all of the listed bands.

Music:  I added 39 songs to the playlist last night.  My sources: Popatunes'  Rock Mix Volume 7, Stereogum, plus ReverbNation, Bandcamp, a direct submission, CDs purchased at Goodwill, Freegal, Noisetrade and Amazon.com.

I shuffled those 39 songs and here was the result:

1.  We go deeper into the 2003 album, The End is Now, by Los Angeles hip-hop band, L.A. Symphony.  Today's song is called, 187 on the Dancefloor.

 

2.  Sitting on Top of the World  was one of the best known songs of the Mississippi Sheiks, who were a 1930s guitar and banjo country blues band.  Today's version is off of a 2009 Mississippi Sheiks tribute album called Things About Comin' My Way, and performed by modern Old Time String Band, Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

The Mississippi Sheiks' Original

The Late Doc Watson doing a version of Sitting on Top of the World.

 

3.  Patrick Watson is a Canadian Singer-Songwriter who is also the leader of a band that shares his name. Patrick Watson, the Band, has a relatively new album  called Adventures in Your Own Backyard. This morning we got a taste of the new record via a partial track download of the song, Words in the Fire.

 

4.  And finally, we offer up a song which released just today.  It's Boyfriend which is  the A-side of a single from Brooklyn dreamy pop band, Slowdance (the B-side is called Airports). Near as I can tell, it is not a cover of the new Justin Bieber song.

 

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Mississippi Sheiks, Vol.2 (1930 - 1931) For everything you do, there's a song that hits the spot. MOG brings them all to you: a world of music on demand, unlimited mobile downloads and ways to discover music free from the limitations of Pandora. The music you love, with you everywhere you go.

Thursday Morning Music Shuffle - Get Ready Mix

Ahhhh..... Well, well, well... here we are again.  I will SPAM you one more time to ask you to please go to the Red Bull Soundstage site to vote for our friends Those Mockingbirds.  The contest ends at 11:59:59 tonight (Eastern Time I think), and you can vote once a day, so even if you voted yesterday, you can still vote again.  Those Mockingbirds are hanging on in first place, but they need all the support they can get to hold off a late surge from that other so called band.   Here is the link.

 To the list...

Robin Gibb past away last week, and most of the posts I've seen referenced the band's Saturday Night Fever era music. Many people, however, didn't know that the brothers began performing together way back in 1958.  In their early days, they were primary a pop/folk act, and Robin's vibrato voice was featured on many of their songs including our first track - I Don't Think It's Funny was on the band's debut album, The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs which was released only in Australia.  

 

 

Next  - no really, the next song is called Next it is another track from The End is Now by L.A. Symphony.  Check it out...

 

Finally, we continue to dig into The Ghost of John Henry by recent Sci-Fi Romance.  Steam Drill Blues  is about as gritty as it gets.  As the story moves forward, we find our hero, who represents mankind, facing the challenge of competing with machine in order to maintain his livelihood. We feel the pain and determination through the lyrics and the musical tapestry which weaves the simple with the complex, the quiet with the noisy. And we pull for John Henry even knowing how it all ends...

  

 Here is another track from the album...

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Bee Gees Anthology 43 of their biggest hits, including: Bodyguard * How Deep Is Your Love * Lonely Days * Love You Inside Out * Night Fever * One * Stayin' Alive * and more. Also includes discography and notes about the songs written by the band members.

Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of to Kill a Mockingbird "To Kill a Mockingbird" may well be our national novel. It is the first adult novel that many of us remember reading, one book that millions of us have in common. It sells nearly a million copies a year, more than any other twentieth-century American classic. Harper Lee's first and only novel, published in July 1960, is a beloved classic and touchstone in American literary and social history. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Mary McDonagh Murphy reviews its history and examines how the novel has left its mark on a broad range of novelists, historians, journalists, and artists. In compelling interviews, Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, Oprah Winfrey, James Patterson, James McBride, Scott Turow, Wally Lamb, Andrew Young, Richard Russo, Adriana Trigiani, Rick Bragg, Jon Meacham, Allan Gurganus, Diane McWhorter, Lee Smith, Rosanne Cash, and others reflect on when they first read the novel, what it means to them--then and now--and how it has affected their lives and careers. "Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of "To Kill a Mockingbird"" is a lively appreciation of the many ways in which the novel has made--and continues to make--a difference to generations of readers. Harper Lee has not given an interview since 1964, but Murphy's reporting, research, and rare interviews with the author's sister and friends stitch together a brief history of how the novel, as well as the acclaimed 1962 movie, came to be.

Tuesday Morning Music Shuffle - Times Like These Mix

Do you remember lying in bed with your covers
Pulled up over your head? Radio playin' so no one can see.
We need change, we need it fast before rock's just part
Of the past. 'Cause lately it all sound the same to me. - Ramones

Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice
'cause they think that it's treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.- Elvis Costello

A bunch of new songs added to the playlist last night. As of this morning there were 71 songs added in May which have not been featured on the blog.  Today, we knock out four of those 71:

There is a story of this first record.  Back in March, I was chatting with my friend, rapper and beats genius, Hayden, who was talking about this group that was reuniting for a show.  He had been listening to their music all day and posting songs to Facebook.  L.A. Symphony regardless of what I thought originally, is not the Los Angeles orchestra. Rather, they are an independent hip-hop group.  After talking to Hayden, I stopped by the local Goodwill and as I usually do, I perused the bins of used CDs. When I saw a CD by L.A. Symphony, I knew it was fated that I was to buy this, so I did.  The End.


End is Now is the opening track off the group's 2003 album called The End is Now.

   

Next, we have another track from the recent release by former Band of the Week - Nashville's own, Calicocat. The song today is called I Said and it is off the Soup Du Jour collection.

You can use the Bandcamp widget thing to download Soup Du Jour for free:

 

 Next we have a track from top ten Band of the Year nominee Taco Land.  This time, we have their excellent cover of a Ziggy era Bowie song Five Years.  I love their take on this song, which is from one of my favorite albums of all time.

 

 Bowie doing Five Years live from 1972

Here is Taco Land's Wonderful Rain

Finally, we have a new song from The Holograms  - this is a different Holograms than we featured previously. The other band features our friend Galen Wade. Today's Holograms come from Sweden, and their debut album is due out in July.  The first track is Chasing My Mind

 

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