I always felt that Leonard Cohen modelled his vocal style and sense of melody on Jacques Brel. Not his lyrics though.
This was and still is, along with 12:30, one of my two favourite Mamas&Papas songs. Never out of date.
Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello My rating: 4 of 5 stars For memoirs by notable figures, different criteria need to be applied in terms of writing style. Basically this is a 650 page string of anecdotes arranged very loosely in chronological order. It’s probably better written than most memoirs, and the quality of the writing is not bad, and even quite good at times. But the Attraction here (bah-boom) is not the quality of the prose, but the life of its subject.And that is what makes this a very interesting read. Aside from being a prolific songwriter and musician, Costello is also a connoisseur of song. If you are the kind of person who likes discussing the music of everyone from…
I have a lot of fun doing this. This year I reviewed, in whole or in part, hundreds of videos in order to compile this list. Again, the rules are: 1) must be a video of a performance session or concert, which disqualifies most “official” videos, and 2) must be in the folk or rock genre, liberally applied, and 3) I reserve the right to make exceptions to the rules.
This year I had to exclude a few favourite performers who had new CD releases, but whose videos were not that great, so I’m going to do a separate playlist of out-takes at a later date.
There are 32 videos. I tried real hard to get the list down to 30, but I was at the point of cutting stuff I really hated to see go.
A few of the more well known names include: Adele (at #32), Mumford and Sons, Bryan Adams, and even the Bieb, and quite a few you’ve probably never heard of. [Note: Two videos have been removed by youtube since 2015.]
Comments are invited; I usually get around 500 views for these lists, so don’t be shy. Sure, tell me the Bieb is crap if you like, although I disagree. I don’t include many popular artists (over 10 million views say) but for him I make an exception. And for Adele, although I was very tempted not to.
The list is in reverse order. So Adele is #32, and Frazey Ford is #1 this year. Basically, it’s a countdown.
Viewing tip. I seem to get fewer ads, if I press the PLAY button and then go to full screen. Keeps the video out of youtube’s ad clutches. This may not work for you.
Viewing tip #2. If you’d just like to see who made the list this year, click the three bars in the top left corner of the video link to scroll the playlist.
Gesprek.net by Artsfols