Weekly Album of the Week #6

This album's history is almost as interesting as the album itself. In 1966 the Beach Boys lead songwriter (and arguably one of the only good singers in the group) Brian Wilson has a nervous breakdown. The cause: too many drugs and too much competition from the Beatles. Their 1966 album Pet Sounds was the impetus behind the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper and Brian Wilson was working on his "responce" to the Beatles entitled "SMiLE" (Wilson was even featured on Leonard Bernstein's show playing some songs that would have been on SMiLE).

Long story short: The album became increasingly incoherrant as Wilson also became increasingly incoherrant and eventually Brian Wilson took a vacation from the Beach Boys at which time he was replaced by Bruce (whatever his last name is) and SMiLE was released as a vastly inferior Beach Boys album and effectively took them off the radar as an important band.

Fast forward to 2003. Brian Wilson is approached by his biographer and asks him if he would ever consider revisiting the songs he wrote and rerecording them the way he intended them. It took awhile to convince him but he eventually relented and the result is one of 2004's most incredible albums. SMiLE is an awesome piece of work and full of symphonic beauty that really caught my ear. Check it out here. The new version of Good Vibrations (with different lyrics than the Beach Boys version) is my favorite.

Happy Happy Birthday!

Every dog should have his day so I would just like to shout out a Happy Happy Birthday to my Bro! May your day be as happy as this dog's was.

Weekly Album of the Week #5

This weeks Weekly Album of the Week is Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. It represents Dylan's transition from folk balladeer to wanna-be rock star. This is the album that had coffee drinking folk-niks thumbing their fingers and shaving their goatees in anger at Dylans use of electric guitar and a backing band (no longer the loner with the guitar and harmonica) and has helped me appreciate what a bunch of idiots those folk-niks really were.

Weekly Album of the Week #4

Well folks, I really agonized over which album to post this week. I thought maybe I would post The Killers debut album or Modet Mouse's Good News for People Who Like Bad News... What to post? Both worthy choices. I finally decided on The Divine Comedy by Milla Jovovich. Sure she is kinda whackey and hard to figure out. I don't think she even makes albums anymore. (This one may even be the only??) But there is something about it that I like. The Gentleman Who Fell has some interesting things musically and her voice isn't what you'd expect. But I guess what I really enjoy is there is this slightly Russian flavor that runs through the whole thing, which I guess makes it more suitable for a November WAOTW, but who cares? The final song is my favorite. Listen to it here.

EDIT: Looks like she has another album which looks interesting. Checkit out here.

Weekly Album Of The Week #3

This weeks Weekly Album Of The Week is an interesting choice. It represents the end of Tom Waits career as a lounge singer/songwriter and a few songs even tip-toe on the edge of some of his more edgier weird stuff. And on top of all this it features Crystal Gayle.... Which is really quite strange in itself. The best track is actually an instrumental titled "Presents." If you ignore the cheesy vocals by CG it is quite a cool album and worthy to be featured on my lofty blog. Check out more info here. (this time it actually does have audio samples!)

And doesn't Tom look alittle embarassed to be sharing a cover with Ms. Gayle?