The new album from Buffalo Tom has been fully funded by their fans (including yours truly). My faith in humanity has been restored.
A note from Buffalo Tom:
I used to think it was a bit sad that bands and artists I love had to resort to crowd-funding platforms to release new music. But upon further reflection, I think it’s better this way – no meddling from the suits at a record label, and a more direct connection to the fans that love their music. Rock on!
Here are a few tunes that have caught my ear lately. A Nashville cat named Ron Gallo (he’s a Napoleon Dynamite doppelgänger) did a guerrilla video on the tourist strip that is Lower Broadway:
Here’s a video for another tune from his forthcoming album:
Ron Gallo’s album Heavy Meta comes out February 3.
And then there’s Alynda Lee Segarra, who goes by the stage name of Hurray for the Riff Raff. I loved her last album, Small Town Heroes, and really liked her performance in concert at an outdoor festival during that tour. Based on the first track from the new album, it should be a good one as well:
Hurray for the Riff Raff’s album The Navigator will be available on March 10th.
And in case you were wondering (you weren’t), my house wasn’t chosen as the site for Craig Finn’s living room tour stop in Cincinnati. That’s the bad news. The good news is the place that was chosen is five minutes from my house. So nearly as convenient and I don’t have to have 50 strangers in my living room. Win-win with Mr. Finn.
As an auditory learner, a music lover, a kid from the radio era (OK, we did have a whopping 3 TV networks) and someone who spent a decade working in advertising, I’m hard-wired to like jingles. A few of those earworms that were created merely to move the merchandise are still stuck in my head decades after I last heard them.
As a kid in rural Arkansas, I used to stay up at night (and sometimes get up very early in the morning) and tune my transistor radio to WLS, a 50,000-watt powerhouse out of Chicago.
Sadly, the advertising jingle is a dying art. Now advertisers find it easier (read: lazier) to license an existing song or commission a pop knockoff. Here’s a great NPR interview with the “Jingle King” Steve Karmen. He wrote “I Love New York,” “This Bud’s for You,” “Nationwide is on your side” and dozens of other memorable jingles so it’s hard to argue with his title… although Barry Manilow got his start penning jingles for the likes of State Farm (“like a good neighbor…”) Band-Aid (“I am stuck on Band-Aid Brand…”) and McDonald’s (“You deserve a break today…”).
There’s a nice article in The Atlantic about the demise of the jingle too.
Where have you gone, “Oscar Meyer Wiener Song”? If White Hen stores were still around, and they sold cassette tapes of advertising jingles (or even 8-tracks), I’d totally buy the entire set.
You’re damn right I signed up to host the 1/18 show. Fingers crossed.
This is Buffalo Tom. One of my all-time favorite bands. 
They first caught my ears in 1992, when I was the overnight DJ at 97X in Oxford, Ohio and played their song “Velvet Roof.”
I soon listened to the rest of that brand-new album, Let Me Come Over, and thought every tune was a gem. They won my heart and we’re still together.
The intriguing cover of the Let Me Come Over album
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Buffalo Tom is still rocking. Oh sure, they’re all married with kids, and have real jobs now (lead singer Bill Janovitz sells real estate near Boston). But they have continued to put out albums that sound great.
Like many other artists whom I adore but the general public manages to ignore, Buffalo Tom is using fan-funding to release their upcoming album. http://www.pledgemusic.com/artists/buffalotom/discussion?project_id=14435
For a mere $9.99, you can get a digital download of the new album. If you don’t like it, I’ll refund your money.
Never thought I’d see the day when new episodes of Gilmore Girls were available. My wife and I loved watching the show when it was on the WB (remember that wacky network?)and later the CW back in the early aughts. It always had a reputation as a “chick flick” type of show, but that was lazy pigeonholing, probably because the cast featured very strong female characters. In my humble opinion, it was one of the best written shows going, and show creator/producer/writer Amy Sherman-Palladino and her writing partner husband Daniel are true geniuses.
The show never made much of a dent in the ratings during its seven seasons on the air. But the episodes hold up very well (due to the strong writing, naturally), so it gained a new generation of fans thanks to the magic of Netflix. So much so that they “got the band back together” and created four new 90-minute episodes which debuted on Netflix yesterday.
My wife and I watched the first one last night, and after nearly a decade away, they haven’t missed a beat. All the things that made me love Gilmore Girls were present and accounted for:
The characters and the dialogue make the show, but for a music-head like me, the songs are a great big cherry on top. As soon as I saw Grant-Lee Phillips reprising his role as the town troubadour, I knew all was well in Stars Hollow. (And the woefully underappreciated Sam Phillips – no relation to Grant-Lee – is still featured in transitional “la-la” music too!). Later in the show, we got to hear snippets of Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love”, and Kirk singing The Carpenters segueing right into the Shonen Knife version of “Top of the World.”
The Tom Waits song “Time” was a perfect choice for the scene at Richard’s funeral.
And Lane’s band (featuring Sebastian Bach from Skid Row!) rocked out a great version of Joe Jackson’s “I’m the Man.” Joe could rock it too:
Grant-Lee also chased off a competing town troubadour (his sister), played by Louise Goffin (Carole King’s daughter, who duets with her mom on the show’s theme song). But my favorite moment was when Grant-Lee was featured later in the show, doing a Fountains of Wayne tune, “Valley Winter Song.” It was probably only 10 seconds of screen time, but it truly made my day.
Here’s the original from Fountains of Wayne, it first appeared on their fantastic album Welcome Interstate Managers.
Being on Gilmore Girls has been a boon to Grant-Lee Phillips’ career too, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Here’s a quote from a recent interview:
“It’s wild. When I first started appearing on that show, I couldn’t really get a sense of how it would impact my notoriety, my profile. But what I have experienced is there’s a younger crowd especially—and this exists all over the world where I tour—they have discovered me through the ‘Gilmore Girls.’ They show up to my gig in Hamburg with their ‘Gilmore’ DVDs. I think it’s quite amazing,” he explained. “I’m very grateful for ‘Gilmore Girls,’ and the fact it’s turned on a whole new generation to my stuff.”
Here’s a clip of all of Grant-Lee’s tunes on the original run of GG:
Thank you Amy Sherman-Palladino for a wonderful Black Friday gift for every member of your cult audience: more heaping helpings of greatness. And thank you Netflix for giving Gilmore Girls a new home.
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