The walking definition of “seperating art from artist” and “soundcloud rapper”
17 was one of the best albums in 2017, but it occupied a spot outside my official top 10. Couldn’t give accolades to the artist, not with all of the allegations. That album was some fucked up shit, but it was compelling fucked up shit. The guy was a monster who grew up from a terrible background, violent, angry suicidal, and it all ended in tragedy just like it felt it would. The whole thing was tragedy, his childhood, his horrible violence, his death.
New Michael Christmas album Role Model just dropped. I’m not really a hiphop guy, so what do I know, but I feel like this dude is flying under the radar.
RIP to George Cameron the drummer for the Left Banke.
In reality, George wasn’t much of a drummer, and they’d use a session player for the drums in the studio, and then George would just sort of try to keep up in live gigs.
BUT.
George was a founding member of the band, with Tom Finn, and those two guys met singing doo-wop as kids. So before the band added the amazing vocal range of Steve Martin Caro on lead vocals and Michael Brown on keys (and melody writing), they had two dudes who knew how to do multi-part vocal harmonies in Cameron and Finn in the band, and they handled all those arrangements – and the actual harmonies-- on songs like “Walk Away Renee” and “Desiree”.
And George also took lead vocals on a couple of Left Banke songs. This one is one of my favorite lost garage pop classics, with George and Tom showing off their vocal arranging chops:
As far as I know, there are only two surviving members of the group now. Steve Martin Caro is alive, but looking incredibly frail. Tom Finn appears to be going strong, still.
That’s sad to hear. Thanks for the informative post and for introducing me to The Left Banke many moons ago.
I put the new Gang Gang Dance album in my headphones as I was falling asleep last night. I think I got about halfway through before zonking out with the following thought echoing over and over again in my mind… “Holy shit, this is fantastic!”
I remember seeing them open for TV on the Radio some years back but never really got into them. But so far this new album sure hits the spot. RIYL Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, Sigur Ros, 4AD…
I mean…it’ll probably be barely passable as a Kinks record, but just that Ray and Dave will have patched things up before it was too late is a nice thing indeed!
I just ran across Marc Durkee while looking for something else, and he’s pretty damn good. Never heard of him, and while he’s had his album up on YouTube for a year now, it’s only gotten 387 views and two comments. I thought the album deserved far better than that, as he’s a good songwriter, singer, and player. Is it outstanding when compared to other, more commercially available albums by famous artists? No, but it’s a very pleasant listen.
This is really sad. KEXP is playing numerous songs he was involved with and, as I heard one after another, I realized this dude had a hand in a bunch of my favorite recent albums. Plus I have his early solo albums The Novelist and Walking Without Effort in my CD collection. Bought them on a whim based on the album cover. I liked the cut of his jib.
This is really sad, sad news. I was only passingly familiar with Swift’s work, but had seen his name more and more in credits…and now over the last 24 hours seeing so many artists I do love mourning his passing I’m getting a feel for just how impactful, respected, and loved he was.
Thanks for those clips. Going to explore his solo stuff.
“I think that being able to make friends with a new band, and hopefully help them have a really great musical and life experience, is more the goal than making a hit record,” Swift told Tape Op in a 2017 interview. “What you can control are knobs, faders, and being a nice person."
