Music for Coders: June 15
Two heavy-weight releases this week.
- Instant Karma - The Campaign to Save Darfur
- The Traveling Wilburys: The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Remastered)
The first is an album to raise money to help end the human rights crisis in Darfur. Amnesty International and Yoko Ono enlisted 34 top artists to record John Lennon tracks. U2, R.E.M., Lenny Kravitz, Corinne Baily Rae, Green Day… it’s a long list. It is an interesting and worthy project and I’m sure several of the super-group songs will be hits, but from a purely musical perspective, even the most well-crafted of the covers can’t compete with the originals (it’s not their fault, most covers can’t). There are, however, a few stand out covers. I pick: Jackson Browne’s Oh, My Love, Black Eyed Peas’ Power to the People, Jack Johnson’s Imagine, and Rocky Dawuni’s Well Well Well.
I’m surprised that The Traveling Wilburys re-issue is selling more than Instant Karma on iTunes and Amazon right now. I guess there was a lot of pent up Wilburys demand… To me, these guys are great, but I was always disappointed that they never lived up to the sum of their parts. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. It just felt like they should have shaken the earth, but instead they put out two very good albums. And this re-issue includes both albums in one package.
New Band (well, new to me)
My wonderful wife was listening to Pandora this week and discovered a group we love—El Presidente. (I’m listening to it right now.) It’s not new music. They are a Scottish band that’s been around since 2002, and their self-titled album on iTunes came out in 2005 but didn’t make it to iTunes in September 2006. To my ears, they sound like many of the 70’s groups I love: Big Star, T-Rex, Nazareth and Fog Hat, mixed with modern groups like Scissor Sisters, Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand, and Louis XIV. I had heard the track Rocket before and loved it but forgot to follow up. Their new album (possibly to be titled “Late Night Binges”) has been completed and should be releases in August or September of this year. I can’t wait.
Other New and Notable This Week
- Buddy Guy: Vanguard Visionaries
(The legendary Buddy Guy was on several labels over a long career. This is some of his best Vanguard material.) - Datarock: Datarock
(Think Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, Devo, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah; from Norway) - Fiction Plane: Left Side of the Brain
(Notable because the lead singer, Joe Sumner, is Sting’s son. This album doesn’t stand out though.) - Hotel Costes - Best of By Stephane Pompougnac
(A better bargain than buying all nine CDs, but since it’s always been music that is fashionable and “of the moment”, some of the older material is starting to sound dated.) - Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris
(Like the music, LOVE the album art—notice the worn ring from a vinyl record.) - Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation
(Re-release of their 1988 album, one of their early, great records. It has the 14 original tracks plus 19 more live, demo and bonus cover tracks—all for $14.99.) - Van Morrison: The Best of Van Morrison, Vol. 3
(I think you would better off buying his original early albums instead. These aren’t even the best versions of some tracks.)
