I was sent to London on a work assignment in 2019. While watching TV one night, I came across a broadcast of some of the performances at Glastonbury Festival, which was taking place at the time. A band I had never heard of before called IDLES was being featured. I only saw a couple of …
Gordon Lightfoot was an artist that pretty much passed me by most of my life. I can’t remember a single time that I ever heard something by him on the radio. Hell, for the longest time I thought that “Me And Bobby McGee” was originally released by Janis Joplin. That is, until I heard the …
The Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite band from junior high all the way up through college. When they brought Jimmy back in 1999, they did a handful of shows called The Arising! tour, the first of which was on April 10th in Detroit at Saint Andrew’s Hall. The place only held about a thousand people. …
“Sour Times” was probably one of the first trip-hop songs I ever heard. For me though, the song really got lost in the shuffle of all the other great songs that were happening around that time. Later, I had a buddy in high school who was really into trip-hop and exposed me to a lot …
My dad and I used to see movies at the cheap theater in our local mall. Seeing Nothing But Trouble was a memorable experience, and the scenes with Digital Underground were a big part of that fun. Speaking of fun, who has more than Kool Keith? Song: “Same Song”Artist: Digital UndergroundSongwriter(s): Gregory Jacobs, Tupac Shakur, …
In high school jazz band, we would have a concert at the end of the year called Big Band Bash. All of the seniors were required to do a senior solo. They could pick any song they wanted and pick the players to play with. A buddy of mine at the time picked the song …
Seeing the movie Batman was probably my first exposure to Prince. We had the “Partyman” single, and I used to play that record over and over again in our basement while jumping between two couches we had down there. At the time, I really had no idea who sang the song. Honestly, as long as …
If you want to talk about songs that have a special place in the heart, these are two that absolutely occupy that space for me. At some point in listening to these, I always seem to have a moment where I just close my eyes, bob my head, and really feel the songs coursing through …
Now that I’ve fulfilled my Michigander obligations, I figured I’d travel across the Atlantic to the UK. When I mentioned this idea to Carlos, my brother from another mother, he suggested that I pick a couple of solo artists instead of bands. When he said that, these were the first two that popped into my …
“Respect” was really the only Aretha Franklin song I remember hearing on the radio with any regularity as a kid. It wasn’t until I saw the movie The Blues Brothers that I finally heard another song from her. We had a VHS tape with The Blues Brothers, Rambo, and Rocky IV recorded from the television …