Blog Friends

Since first getting into blogs in 2003, I have spent most of my time on political blogs. Lately, as the political situation gets more dire, I've been spending more time on music blogs. Some favorites are already in my links list: the Stepfather of Soul, the Number One Songs in Heaven, and Radio Randy. Here are some others:

Jefitoblog provides lengthy and intelligent reviews of new albums (such as Rosanne Cash's Black Cadillac), as well as lengthy and intelligent re-listens to old albums and classic artists. I especially enjoyed his Complete Idiot's Guide to Robert Palmer (part 1 here, part 2 here), even if he did like Clues a lot more than I did. Jefito also posts tracks for download.

I Am Fuel, You Are Friends also posts lots of tracks for download. The music selection there is more consistently contemporary than Jefitoblog--and more so than this blog, for certain. Still, I'm not averse to learning about new stuff--and some of the old stuff posted there is mighty interesting, too. (I happily downloaded Sly and the Family Stone's great 1973 hit "If You Want Me to Stay," for example, along with newer stuff by Josh Rouse and Lucinda Williams.) Here at this blog earlier in the week, we had a brief exchange in the comments about remixes of old songs, and whether they constitute art. Seems to me that simply throwing a light hip-hop track behind somebody else's record isn't all that creative. Last month, however, I Am Fuel's Heather Browne linked to some more inventive remixes. You gotta hear the one in which Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" meets the B52s "Love Shack."

We Get Mail: From Texarkana, reader Q-SKY checks in with a link about radio's past that will interest any other old radio types reading here, and might also interest those of you too young to remember when radio stations played records and used tape instead of running everything digitally. (It's part of a broader tribute site for station WTMA in Charleston, South Carolina.) Although the photos and text date largely to the early 70s, I can vouch for the fact that things hadn't changed a great deal by the late 70s, when I started my radio career. Although we didn't hang 45s from those pegs or anything.