Cadillac commercial with Iggy Pop
Yesterday when I was overdosing on college football (sidenote: every team I wanted to win didn’t) I saw the new Cadillac commercial featuring the song “Punkrocker” by Teddybears featuring vocals by Iggy Pop. What a great song! I guess if you are going to have a line in your song that goes “I’m a punk rocker, yes I am” who better to sing it than Iggy Pop? I am wondering why I haven’t heard of this group yet as they are from Sweden where so many of my other favorite groups are. You can hear the entire “Punkrocker” song on their myspace site. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about Cadillac choosing a song by an old punk rocker to back their new commercial.
You can buy the song on Apple iTunes.
Here is the commercial – it is pretty cool as it goes through all kinds of old Cadillacs (although I have never seen a punk rocker drive any of these):
I also found the Teddybears video for this on YouTube featuring Iggy Pop riding around in a 70’s Cadillac. Nice.
My favorite albums of 2006
Okay I posted a new article on musicrex.com listing many “best albums of 2006″ by some of the leading bloggers and music publications. Hopefully it will help you find some great music to listen to in the coming weeks.
It is only appropriate for me to list my favorite albums of 2006 as well. I didn’t get to listen to quite as many new CDs as I did last year, but I was lucky enough to listen to lots. Of course this list is highly influenced by the concerts I attended. Seeing an artist perform live makes all the difference in my appreciation of their music.
This year saw a revival of “shoe-gazer” type rock music and a lot of the albums I liked fell into this category. Serena Maneesh, Dirty on Purpose, The High Violets and Asobi Seksu all exhibited strong influences from My Bloody Valentine, Lush and Catherine Wheel, some of my favorite bands ever.
Here are the albums I enjoyed the most this year:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
Released in April, there never was a better rock album that I heard all year. Nick Zinner is an amazing guitarist and I really like Brian Chase on drums. Of course there is nobody like Karen O at a live performance and she really outdid herself at the show I saw in Denver. This group has matured and their new songs showed real growth as musicians. I can’t wait to see where they take us next.
The High Violets – To Where You Are
Angelic lyrics, blistering guitar and strong hooks make this an unforgettable album. Maybe because it was released early in the year everyone forgot it, but it is a crime it is on so few best-of lists. More pop-oriented than the other shoegazer titles this year makes it enjoyable even if you aren’t a fan of MBV.
Silversun Pickups – Carnavas
Every song on this album is strong, but I was especially partial to “Rusted Wheel” and “Lazy Eye,” which proved just how good this group is at slowly building a tune into an emotional experience.
Asobi Seksu – Citrus
The dreamy vocals and wall-of-sound guitars made this an easy pick for me. Their concert performance was even better than the album.
Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Wow these guys are just so amazing. Even though it was released last year in the UK, it didn’t make it here until May. Incredibly fun, simple beats and songs your brother could have written. If only he had!
Dirty on Purpose – Hallelujah Sirens
A merge of two popular trends this year: they are from Brooklyn and they play shoegazer-type songs. They have a great guitarist and two guys sharing the dreamy vocals.
Tilly and the Wall – Bottoms of Barrels
This album was so much fun and went way beyond the originality of the tap-dancing percussion. Maybe it should have been the soundtrack to “Happy Feet” instead of the warmed-over stars in the movie.
Viva Voce – Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
This 2-person band from Portland blew me away in concert. Their album is more understated than the balls-out live performance, but still a great experience.
The Rainman Suite – Losing With Style
On the face they are a straight-ahead, old-school punk rock band from LA. Then they throw in the rock ballads which are incredibly strong. I probably listened to this more than any other album this year. An unsigned band with a really talented front-man in Josh Robinson.
Serena Maneesh – Serena Maneesh
Sometimes I wondered if this was just a lost album from My Bloody Valentine. This group from Norway channeled some of my favorite sounds of the last decade into a great new album.
How to find the Best Music of 2006
December is my favorite time for music discovery because that is when everyone makes their lists of favorite music released during the past year.
Traditionally, few new records are released in January and February, but that never bothers me because I am always busy catching up on what I missed the previous year.
How best to take advantage of this deluge of music recommendations? Well, I start by searching out best-of lists that have titles on them I am already familiar with and then check out the albums on those same lists that I have never heard.
Also, you might want to check out albums that are getting lots of buzz from many different critics. Metacritic is a particularly good place to start. Metacritic is a site that compiles lists of music reviewed by major online and offline publications.
Once I find an album I am interested in checking out I often go first to the artist’s myspace site to listen to a few songs. Often the artist’s web site will also have tracks to download or listen to. In fact, you would be surprised at how many artist web sites stream an entire album so you can check it out.
Once I find an album I want to listen to more often and buy, I usually check eMusic
to see if it is available there. I have a monthly subscription at eMusic that allows me to download many more albums each month than I would be able to afford otherwise. One of the great things about eMusic is the tunes are all in mp3 format and will play on any computer or digital music player.
If an album is not on eMusic I will often check out Amazon to see if it is available at a good price as a used music CD. You would be surprised at how many great new releases are priced at less than $5.00 on Amazon if you search the used merchandise. This happens because many albums don’t get airplay and are not well-known, but there are still hundreds of discs distributed by the record companies as promos. A lot of these end up saturating the used market the first few months after the release of an album.
In the coming days I will link to as many best albums of 2006 lists as I can and label them according to style or preference of the reviewer to help you navigate them.
Also, later this week I will list my favorite albums of the year too.
Viva Voce concert review
Viva Voce
Hi-Dive, Denver, CO 10-24-2006
One of the joys of going to live concerts is discovering a band that you immediately fall in love with. It doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does there is no feeling like it. Last night watching Viva Voce warm-up at the Hi-Dive in Denver I had no idea what to expect from this two-person band from Portland, Oregon. Perhaps that is a big part of the joy – the surprise of it all.
A casual sound-check on the small stage unexpectedly turned into an assualt by Anita Robinson, whose deft fingers squeezed a satisfyingly scrunchy sound from her guitar, overwhelming the crowd. From the first chord it was obvious who was in control. The crowd immediately submitted, open-mouthed, to her talented fingers.
There is a dichotomy between the way Anita looks on stage and the way she plays her guitar. Just to look at her you might think “kind and gentle,” but your ears say “guitar-shredding goddess.” Interestingly, her singing is more in line with the initial assessment, providing a dreamy backdrop to the guitar-driven plot of each song.
It took a few minutes to wrest my attention from Anita’s guitar to her husband who was providing the drumbeat, assorted vocals and occasional yelps of joy. He took over lead vocals on several songs and provided more direction to those tunes than the dream-driven songs Anita sang lead on.
But I was smitten by Anita’s guitar, and wanted more of her ministrations. Bands are often more style than substance and it is rare to find somebody who is as apparently accomplished as this couple are.
An obvious comparison is with The White Stripes, who also feature a drummer and talented guitarist. But where Jack White is shredding and screams, Anita is deft and subdued, more psychedelic than metal.
Viva Voce used backing tracks to provide a bass-line on several songs. At some stops on this tour they have had a live bassist on stage to replace the soundtrack, but in a way I am glad I was able to just focus on the two of them.
Of course now I am delving into their back-catalog of albums, in addition to their new 2006 release “Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
The rawness of the two of them on stage is not to be missed if you enjoy real guitar-driven rock by a band who obviously enjoys what they do.
- Mark Tatum
MusicRex is about finding good music
MusicRex is about finding great music to listen to, no matter what style or genre you like. Today there is more music than ever being made, but hardly any of it gets played on the radio. How do you find it? Well, there are all sorts of great internet sites to help you find music you will like. MusicRex.com will explore them and show you how to find them.
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