Hindustan Times
I’m in a once-familiar city that has changed in weird ways. The weather alternates between muggy and hot or wet and rainy. I know few people in town now and everything seems new, strange and even a bit complicated. The fact that I’ve had to make the trip in not very happy circumstances doesn’t make things any better. So, lying down in bed in the dark one night, I reached into the innards of an old iPod for something familiar.
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(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged AC/DC, Aeroplane Over the Sea, Anne Frank, argus48, Bobby Jenkins, Doors, Download Central, GarageHangover, Gloria, Good Love Never Dies, Holland, Horses, India Tobacco Company, Jades, Jeff Buckley, King of the Slide Guitar, Liz Phair, Neutral Milk Hotel, No Tears Left to Cry, P J Harvey, Patti Smith to Jimi Hendrix, R&B, Robb London, Robb London and the Rogues, Roy Buchanan, Sanjoy Narayan, Simla Beat, Style Style Council, The Jam, The Last Goodbye, Tribute to Elmore James, Twitter, Van Morrison, Wake Up the Nation
When one of your favourite pieces of music becomes Muzak, piped into an elevator or played in the background at an airport, you can sometimes feel indignant. When I heard the Garcia-Hunter track, Crazy Fingers (off The Grateful Dead’s 1975 album, Blues for Allah) playing in a muted sort of way at an American airport, I was genuinely upset. I mean, come on, when we used to listen to that album it had to be in a darkened room, everybody had to be quiet and the use of additives was, well, let’s just say not actively discouraged. And here I was at a bustling JFK terminal and I could almost hear the late Jerome J Garcia’s voice going “Your rain falls like crazy fingers/ Peals of fragile thunder keeping time/Recall the days that still are to come some sing blue….” and so on. Only it wasn’t him singing but a synthesized, unreal sounding electronic tune of the song. Read more
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Airplanes, Always, argus48, B.B. King, Bandana Blues, Beatles, Best Coast, Blues for Allah, Bobby Bland, Bonnie Rait, Broken Social Scene, Charlie Musselwhite, Coldplay, Crazy Fingers, Crazy For You, Deadhead, Download Central, Fleetwood Mac, Forgiveness Rock Record, Frank Zappa, Garcia-Hunter, Gorilla Manor, Guns ’N Roses, High Violet, Indie Music Finds, Jerome J Garcia, Jon Bon Jovi, Kristian Matsson, Local Natives, November Rain, Pitchfork, Pitchfork TV, Sanjoy Narayan, Sgt Pepper’s, The Grateful Dead, The King of Spain, The National, The New Pornographers, The Revolver, The Tallest Man on Earth, The White Album, The Wild Hunt, Together, Twitter, X&Y, Yellow
There’s a 1999 three-disc album called Everything Is Nice: The Matador Records 10th Anniversary Anthology. If you like indie, alternative bands, you ought to own that album of 43 excellent tracks by a bunch of super talented bands and musicians. If you’re a die-hard indie fan, I’m sure you probably have the Matador anthology or, at least, have heard of it. If not, here’s a sneak peek at that 12-year-old album. Artists featured on the album include indie star acts like Pavement, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power and Modest Mouse but also lesser known bands such as Chavez, Bardo Pond, Solex and Khan.
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(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged argus48, Bardo Pond, Cat Power, Cate Le Bon, Challengers, Chan Marshall, Chavez, Chris Lombardi, Communist Daughter, Cornelius, Download Central, Dylan, Electric Version, Everything Is Nice: The Matador Records 10th Anniversary Anthology, If You’re Feeling Sinister, Keigo Oyamada, Khan, Mass Romantic, Matador, Mission of Burma, Modest Mouse, Obscure Sound, Pavement, Perfume Genius, Richard Hawley, Sanjoy Narayan, Shibuya-kei, Slanted & Enchanted, Solex, Sonic Youth, Stephen Malkmus, Take Belle and Sebastian, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, The New Pornographers, Together, Twin Cinema, Twitter, Yo La Tengo
Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 and it became an instant hit, selling 45 million copies and remaining on the Billboard charts for 741 weeks, which is a record that is still unbroken. I don’t know how many million people have tripped on Dark Side over the past 37 years. I know I did back in the mid-1970s. And although I don’t really like Pink Floyd very much (except maybe for 1967’s The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, the only album released while the band was still helmed by Syd Barrett), it was de rigueur in my high school days (yes, yes, in the 1970s) to own a copy of the album, which, incidentally, I still do—on vinyl, on cassette and on CD. It’s a different matter that I can’t recall when was the last time I took any of these out and played them. Read more
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Friday, July 9, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Alligator, argus48, Bonnaroo Music Festival, Boxer, Dave Matthews, Download Central, Fluxblog, High Violet, Kris Kristofferson, Local Natives, Lotus, M Ward, National Public Radio, No-Neck Blues Band, Phish, Pink Floyd, Sanjoy Narayan, Stevie Wonder, Summer Tours, Syd Barrett, The Dark Side of the Moon, The Flaming Lips, The National, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, The Temper Trap, Tim Reynolds, Twitter, Wayne Coyne, Yonder Mountain String Band, Zooey Deschanel
During a bit of downtime at work the other day, I put on The Gaslight Anthem’s new album, American Slang, on the sound dock I have in my office (yes, you could say I enjoy some privileges at work by way of being a somewhat higher form of pond life) and a colleague dropped in. He heard a few bars, stuck up his nose, saying, “Very nineties,” and left, going back to his own lair presumably to listen to the recently re-mastered (and issued with 10 additional, hitherto unpublished tracks) 1972 album by one of rock’s most famous bands. Read more
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Allan Jones, American Slang, ang Goes the Knighthood, argus48, Berber language, Bonnaroo Music Festival, Boys of the Desert, Brian Fallon, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Coquet Coquette, Divine Comedy, Download Central, False Priest, Glastonbury music festival, Guns ‘N Roses, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Imidiwan, Mali, New Jersey, Of Montreal, Sanjoy Narayan, Spirit of Jazz, Tamashek, Temper Trap, Tennessee, The Clash, The Gaslight Anthem, The ’59 Sound, Tinariwen, Tom Petty, Tuareg tribes, Twitter, U2, Uncut magazine, Van Morrison
