Monday Morning Music Shuffle - Whispered Diamonds Up Shit Creek Mix

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We are back and ready to finish off 2015 in style. I hope everyone who celebrates it had a good Thanksgiving.

After fighting off a cold for several days, I ended up pretty knocked out by Friday. I'm on meds and making a recovering. Expect my live music updates to be few and far between the first part of the week, but I will be healthy for some fun stuff coming up at the end of the week.  More on that.

On a related note, between the cold and getting ready to and going out of town, I am WAY behind on e-mails and checking out music that has been submitted.  Please be patient, but feel free to shoot me a follow-up e-mail/message.

We have a pretty awesome 8 song shuffle.

Thursday Morning Music Shuffle - For Penalty and Repentance Mix

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I'm kind of running on fumes on this Thursday morning, so I am going to try another three word Thursday and see if I can get out and get some caffeine to help get me through the afternoon. 

Wednesday Morning Music Shuffle - Fairytales and Other Legends Mix

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I'm short on time and don't really have much preliminary banter... so let's just get to the shuffle - we have a good one today!

Tuesday Morning Music Shuffle - Carry the Day Mix

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In just nine songs, with just seven different artists represented, we manage to cover a pretty wide range of styles today....  and even spread some Christmas.... er... cheer?????

Monday Morning Music Shuffle - What's He Building? Mix

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Time to ease into a new week, a new month, and for some of us a new time structure - as Daylight Savings Time ends and Standard Time begins.  It's Monday...  Let's do this shuffle thing...

Wednesday Morning Music Shuffle - Bank Robbery Mix

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So - I just received word that Those Mockingbirds will be releasing the first official single from their highly anticipated new album on October 22.  It's called "How to Rob a Bank" and we have the cover artwork post above. The cover art was hand-drawn by Bella Agnello who happens to be the 7 year old daughter of legendary producer John Agnello who was worked with Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Kurt Vile and more.  I would hit up Those Mockingbirds on FACEBOOK so you don't miss out.

What some of you may not realize, is that I give a ton of credit to Those Mockingbirds for the success of Ear to the Ground.  Here's why.  I started Ear to the Ground in May 2011 without a clue or a direction.  Over the course of the remainder of that year, I began to find my voice. Late in the year, I came across Those Mockingbirds via a Twitter follow (I think and choose to believe). I quickly became enamored with their melodic hard alt rock sound. I named them my Band of the Week.

Shortly after that, I received a contact from Don Ryan who was and I suppose still is friends with the band, his video This Town still ranks among my all time favorites. Around this time, I met venerable NJ music blogger and raconteur Popa Tunes who turned me on to Dead Exs, The End Men and so many more.  Through The End Men, I met Gypsy West and Chris Peck's band The Disappointment. Through Don Ryan, I met The Danbury Lie. Somehow, in all that, I met Skeletons in the Piano who ended up being our Band of the Year for 2012...  And in all that, I became the number one ranked Tennessee Based Music Blogger Who Mostly Blogs About Bands from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut  (an albeit lightly populated category).  Of course, I've diversified since them, and I've even been known to write about Nashville and Tennessee  bands on occasion.

My point being, Those Mockingbirds play a vital role in shaping this blog which all of you have come to know and love.  By the way, the mockingbird is the State Bird of Tennessee. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Ahem.... now that I've made this post all about me, I will turn it around and implore you to grab the new Those Mockingbird single on October 22 and keep your ear to the ground for impending details on the full album.

Today's shuffle is after the JUMP

Thursday Morning Music Shuffle - Carburetor Mix

Why Carburetor? Why not?

So, the Black Keys played a secret show in Nashville and from I can tell people were racing around all over  town to try see them. With my luck, I probably would have ended up at an Are You Randy show.*  

*Obligatory Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist reference.

To the shuffle:

First up - It's Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers doing Black Bottom Stomp  - from 1926.

 

Next, we have Nashville's own Darrell Scott from his 2008 release Modern Hymns with a Paul Simon cover: American Tune .

 

We seem to be all about The Joy of Painting this week, as we dig deeper into their Asterisk album with the song, My Personality

 

Finally, we have our second cover to the morning, this time it's Delta Spirit covering Tom Wait's for a Daytrotter Session. Come on Up to the House is from Wait's 1999 album Mule Variations.

 Delta Spirit's Cover

 The Wait's original

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Affiliated Links

The Best of Jelly Roll Morton: Piano Solo 20 pieces from this popular jazz composer, including titles featured in the Tony Award-winning musical Jelly's Last Jam. Includes: Billy Goat Stomp * Jelly Roll Blues * London Blues * Queen of Spades * Shreveport Stomp * and more.

Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters This autobiographical portrait of Tom Waits takes shape through a selection of more than 50 interviews. Starting with the first interview--on KPFK-FM's "Folkscene" in 1973--Waits speaks out on a variety of topics and shares something truly unique with his readers. In a rap that is a synthesis of inflections--Louis Armstrong, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, hobo, pool hall attendant, vaudevillian huckster, musicologist par excellence, and a fresh slathering of the organic word-ooze of William S. Burroughs--Waits comes across as well read, informed, and lucidly aware of current pop culture. He delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, brilliant, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs.

Wednesday Morning Music Shuffle - Free at Last Mix

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 44th anniversary of his death.

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Last night I was able to load an eclectic mix of 16 songs, and this morning I did a shuffle of those songs and was well pleased with the outcome... :-)


First up, we did a sneak preview of the new Elika album (Always The Light) - A full-fledged review is still to come, but today we have the first track to make it into a morning shuffle.  Elika are a Brooklyn based band recently signed to St. Marie Records. Their music is dreamy electronic pop with amazing vocals and a strong sense of song which keeps the music grounded in spite of the ethereal sounds. (I am totally going to use that in my review).  The track today is called Stay Beside Me

 

Hat tip to Popatunes yet again... I can't believe it's taken me this long to catch up with Elephant Goes West.  They are from New Jersey (damn there must be something in the water there - okay obvious statement I know), but whatever it is, in this case it's a good thing.  Like fellow NJ resident, Don Ryan, they make wonderfully vibrant carnival-type music.  theme from "Everytown" is from the band's Whirling Dervish EP which you can grab using the bandcamp widget below.

 

I'm sure we'll be hearing more from this band.


Next up - from the vaults comes a song from the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 box office disaster One From the Heart.  The soundtrack is made up of songs written by Tom Waits and sung by Waits and Crystal Gayle. Today we have Little Boy Blue  by Tom Waits.

 

And finally, we have a new track from Portland, Oregon band The Dandy Warhols.  The song is Sad Vacation. The album, This Machine is out April 24th.

 

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AFFILIATED LINKS

One From the Heart [2 Discs] After completing Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola initially planned for his next picture to be an intimate romantic musical shot on a low budget in Las Vegas. Three years later, One from the Heart had mushroomed into a big-budget spectacular, shot on

The Dandy Warhols Are Sound The Dandy Warhols opened their 2003 album, Welcome to the Monkey House, with a brief, snide dig at record industry greed and illogic that ran, in part: "When Michael Jackson dies, we're covering 'Blackbird.'" The line was obviously intended as a flip refe