Essential Sounds

For all your alternative music listening pleasure.

• The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms
  
  
• Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes
  
  
• R.E.M, Murmur
  
  
• Replacements, Let It Be
  
  
• Husker Du, New Day Rising
  
  
• Big Black, The Rich Man’s Eight-Track
  
  
• Throwing Muses, Throwing Muses
  
  
• Dinosaur Jr., You’re Living All Over Me
  
  
• R.E.M., Document
  
  
• 10,000 Maniacs, In My Tribe
  
  
• Ministry, The Land of Rape and Honey
  
  
• Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
  
  
• Michelle Shocked, Short Sharp Shocked
  
  
• Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking
  
  
• Soundgarden, Louder than Love
  
  
• Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff
  
  
• Pixies, Doolittle
  
  
• Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine
  
  
• Nirvana, Nevermind
  
  
• Pearl Jam, Ten
  
  
• Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
  
  
• Pavement, Slanted & Enchanted
  
  
• Beastie Boys, Check Your Head
  
  
• Beck, Mellow Gold

Source:

http://wm03.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=19:T578

It just goes to show that most of the writers these days need to research more. R.E.M.’s frontman, Michael Stipe mentioned something about his being gay with Spin Magazine. What’s funny about that article was that, it became news in the blogging and print media. Sites like Stereogum and US Magazine covered it like it was his first announcement. Likewise, they received quite a lot of comments from readers that Stipe’s sexual orientation was already known for more than ten years already.

The news reached both Spin and R.E.M. Spin got an article off of it, Stipe got a good laugh. He even decided to give a small news conference with People Magazine to mock the hot news� of his going out of the closet . In the video, he declares that his band mates are heterosexual and that he is proud that they have finally declared it in the open.

Who says intelligent and artistic rock stars can’t make a funny?

Video

Source

Having been out of the music scene for many years, I only rely on album reviews to have a glimpse of the type of songs that I can expect from an artists record. So far, none of the album reviews have failed me but sometimes it saddens me to know that some critiques can be very harsh on some of my favorite artists.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you right now the album that I really am very intrigued about because of the good reviews that I’ve read about it, Leona LewisSpirit. The only song that I’ve heard from this artist is her song Bleeding Love and I still can’t figure out what’s special with her though her vocals are good. However I can’t say yet that its her best. I guess I still need to listen to more of her music.

The Axl Rose had finally finished the Chinese Democracy and its been sixteen years in the making. Many things have changed ever since and most of his fans are have moved on back in the late 80s to become corporate employees. Is the Axl Rose still relevant to the new millennium.

Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an acclaimed American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Known for his ethereal singing voice, Buckley was considered to be one of the most promising artists of his generation after the release of his critically acclaimed 1994 debut album Grace. At the height of his popularity, Buckley drowned during an evening swim in 1997. His work and style continue to be highly regarded by critics and fellow musicians.

via [Wikipedia]

One of my Favorite Song that’s written and sung by Jeff Buckley’s Last Goodbye and as another post from the blog site And She Writes entitled it as the Best BreakUp Song Ever.. Well, it depends on how you listen it, you may get different meaning and interpretation to it. Anyways I love this song, this song rules.

There are still some good songs that Jeff Buckley wrote and performed but this song really topped the charts for me.

So is there any song in particular that Jeff Buckley wrote that you like?

We’ve seen the future of Rock & Roll and its name is no longer Bruce Springsteen. The band on stage at New York’s Ritz sounds like an ailing vacuum cleaner riding roughshod over a madrigal choir. Nonchalantly the musicians step out of the stage-divers’ way as waves of high-intensity drone and retina-piercing white lights wash over the crowd. On the one hand, there exists a fossilizing corpse called classic rock-a four-decade-old mummy grown stale and tired, a once vibrant part of mainstream culture now reduced to background music for car commercials and Olympic events. Imagine a major motion picture in which characters sport faded Mudhoney T-shirts, pull Replacements albums from their record collections, and go hear Alice in Chains, and you’ve scripted Singles, Cameron Crowe’s look at love among the ruins in Seattle (due Sept. 18). Then there’s the Lollapalooza ‘92 tour, a seven-band alternative- rock circus stuffed with the Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam.

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Source:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,311492,00.html

We all know that Mandy Moore started her career at a young age and her albums then were of the teeny bopper kind. Some people even say that she is better off as an actress than as a singer. However, with her latest album ‘Wild Hope,’ Mandy proved her critics wrong.

The once young, teeny bopper singer has matured and has turned into a young woman. Her voice which has deepened with age fit the sound of her songs and her singing style more especially in the song ‘Can’t You Just Adore Her?’ Also, Mandy had some of the songs co-written by herself which in some cases show the maturity of a singer. Wild Hope surely proves that there is hope for Mandy to stay in the music industry.

By the start of the 1990s, the music industry was abuzz about alternative rock’s commercial possibilities and actively courted alternative bands including Dinosaur Jr, Firehouse, and Nirvana.

Nirvana’s surprise success with Nevermind heralded a “new openness to alternative rock” among commercial radio stations, opening doors for heavier alternative bands in particular. Many pop punk bands such as Green Day and The Offspring were also labeled “alternative”. The New York Times declared in 1993, “Alternative rock doesn’t seem so alternative anymore.

Source:

Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “American Alternative Rock/Post-Punk“. All Music Guide.

Azerrad, Michael. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Doubleday, 1994. p. 160 ISBN 0-385-47199-8

Rosen, Craig. “Some See ‘New Openness’ Following Nirvana Success.” Billboard.

3. Stone Temple Pilots

One grunge band from outside of Seattle is Stone Temple Pilots. STP had so much going on for them that made it as one of the more prominent names in the genre of 1990s alternative. The group had over 17 million albums sold in the United States alone, fifteen singles topped the Billboard charts, a Best Hard Rock Performance” Grammy award, and a number of American Music awards.

Alongside STP’s fame was a load of harsh criticisms against them. They rose so quickly upon the release of their debut album Core� and their fans grew more and more. The Rolling Stone magazine declared them as the Best New Band� but their music critics said otherwise Worst New Band�. However, before actually disbanding in the year 2002, the group released four more albums that were all successful, and this made STP leave a deep mark in the grunge music scene.

The rise of alternative rock in the USA. From its early underground days where bands like Black Flag drew inspiration from the DIY ethos of punk, Left Of The Dial traces the history of the network of fans, clubs and fanzines that sustained the scene and launched the careers of bands like R.E.M., The Pixies and Husker Du. The film takes a fresh look at the explosion of the Seattle scene, culminating in the success of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and the tragic loss of Kurt Cobain, an artist whose triumph and tragedy continues to cast an inescapable shadow.Source:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/sevenages/programmes/left-of-the-dial/