Popular Music

With an eye still trained on the upcoming 2011 New Orleans Jazzfest, Great Albums You May Have Missed skews new school with the current sound of the Crescent City, captured perfectly on Galactic's 2010 Ya-Ka-May.

I was washing dishes at home and listening to the noise rock band Lightning Bolt at a moderate volume. I started with the plates because I find those the easiest to clean. I left the frying pan with caked on baked on grease for last. I moved on to the untensils and glasses after the plates. When I was finally ready for the frying pan I was amazed to find that it was clean. How?! The only possibility I could manufacture was that the abrasive aural nature of Lightning Bolt cleaned the frying pan. I am sharing this secret with you... here... now!

With Jazzfest 2011 on the horizon it is time to creep into the voodoo night, just before dawn and catch a Crescent City treasure when he was still a mystical mix of Cajun, beatnik and shaman. Dr. John The Night Trippers Gris-Gris is an album that needs to be experienced.

Konono No.1's sound is shockingly infectious and amazingly unique. The revolving-member group spent the last few decades playing traditional Bazombo trance music in the capitol city of the Congo: Kinshasa. Equal parts tradition, innovation, and accident, their sound centers on three Likembe (better known as the Mbira, or thumb organ) players, a rhythm section, three singers, and three dancers. Oh, but that is so not all of the story!...

My name is Jennifer and I deliver soft hitting journalism, right in your face, but it’s soft, so it doesn’t hurt. It’s like a pillow fight against knowledge… Everybody wins. Today’s topic: NIRVANA—The effects of Nirvana on a then-16 year old boy.

Long before Forrest Ackerman coined the term Sci-Fi man had imagined escaping the confines of this planet and exploring the vast unknown regions of outer space. 

Space tourism is a burgeoning field but with a cost of about $20 million for a window seat it is a trip that most of us will never make.

My suggestion is to settle on the next best thing: a visit to your local library!

Last week I finished an amazing book about Greenwich Village in the 1960s called A Freewheelin' Time. This weekend, I found out that the author of the book, Suze Rotolo, passed away on Friday. Her death also coincides with the 50 year anniversary of Bob Dylan's first arrival in Greenwich Village. I figured that such a synchronicity calls for a blog post!

As I listen to Block Ice & Propane, I recall the other possible uniform title I considered for this blog thread: “Prone to Hyperbole”; because this collection of songs may be the most evocative set of music the universe has ever heard!

For the first half of this list, see Best Creative Commons Music of 2010, Part 1 featuring recent releases by Pixelord, Girl Talk, Geotic, Kristin Hersh, and Gepel.  As with the initial post, all of the music below is available as a free download under a Creative Commons license.

Also, if you are interested in learning more, sign up for the Friday, March 18 Creative Commons Music class at Mid-Manhattan Library.

It is too dang COLD! I mean, I get it, it’s winter! It is supposed to be cold and snowy but enough already! Geez!  Perhaps, to get away from it all, you might be dreaming of a beach somewhere where palm trees sway in the breeze, where you are lying in the sand listening to music as the waves crash in front of you and someone is serving you something slushy and frothy to drink. But what would be on your playlist? Luckily, I have recently returned from a 2 ½ week vacation in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico (don’t hate) and can give you the highlights from the playlists of my iPod, beach club and party cruise. Just an FYI there’s no Mozart or 

After discussing 2010's music CD releases with the members of the Kingsbridge Library's Teen Advisory Group, I learned a few things about popular music. I learned that just because a performer was popular with teens all over the country didn't mean that this performer was popular with MY teens (like Taylor Swift, for example). I learned how to pronounce Ke$ha's name correctly (excuse me for not knowing how to pronounce something with a DOLLAR SIGN in it!)  I learned that many teens are of the opinion that "only old people buy music from amazon.com," at which point I told them to get off of my lawn while cursing my lumbago. And 

Ever wonder what has inspired the musicians you love?  Morrissey has never been shy about disclosing his influences, from Oscar Wilde to David Johansen to Shelagh Delaney.  Last August Morrissey revealed his 13 all-time favorite albums to The Quietus, an online music magazine.  Here are some that you can find in the New York Public Library’s amazing music collections.

Recently, The New York Public Library hosted JAY-Z in conversation with Cornel West and Paul Holdengräber where the rapper spoke about his newly released book Decoded. Now, this is my feedback as both a librarian and a fan.

Rapper Jay-Z is known by many as being a living legend. The truth is, with some of the best rap lyricists such as Biggie Smalls, Tupac, and Big Pun succumbing to tragedy, Jay-Z is a reminder not only of hope but of a particular generation of evolved rap music makers and their ability to artistically express their visions and perspective on life to their audience using wit, street knowledge, and a deep desire to share the world 

Do you constantly find yourself humming the tune of "The Little Drummer Boy" during the holiday season as if it were a new and infectious single by the Black Eyed Peas? For some reason, the holiday season makes me long for something a little more festive playing through my mp3 player’s headphones as I walk to the Kingsbridge Branch on a blustery New York winter morning.

My copy of Life just arrived, and while it made me doubly sad to have missed NYPL's recent evening with Keith Richards, the book more than lived up to its excellent reviews and all the prepublication hype. Any fan of rock music or great biography (and those of us who love both) should find something to delight in here. 

Pamela Des Barres, ground-breaking sexual liberator, creative muse, groupie queen, and best-selling author lets us know her top five favorite books and what she loves about them. The books, she says, are "in no particular order except Number One..."

For as long as I can remember, every Thanksgiving me, my mom, dad, and sister would pile into the family car and drive to my uncle’s house while listening to Arlo Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant. The 18-minute 34-second song tells the story of Guthrie’s arrest on Thanksgiving Day as well as his experience as a draftee reporting to the New York City induction center during the Vietnam War. The song has become as much a part of Thanksgiving to me as turkey and gravy and my uncle's amazing baked clams. Before, during, and after the song my parents always provide a running commentary, interjecting with vignettes about 1960s counter-culture, the draft, and even one 

Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. rapper 50 Cent, is known for a lot of things. To many, he's known for his controversial blunt honesty that is often especially geared toward fellow rappers. He is also the epitome of a person living the American Dream, coming from nothing in Southside Jamica, Queens and eventually becoming a millionaire mogul with his own clothing line, vitamin water drink, books (fiction and non-fiction) as well as a few acting roles (Righteous Kill also starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.) For those who don't listen to his music, he may be identified as the guy who got shot "9 times!" But 

When I asked Vince Clarke, founding member of Depeche Mode and musical genius behind synth bands Erasure & Yaz, to list his top five favorite books of all time he said, "that's impossible." Therefore, Vince shares with us (in his words) just "5 books out of 1000" that he enjoys: