Fleetwood Mack fires Lindsey Buckingham

How is this possible? (Click on screenshot): Beyond what’s below (and a new piece on the band’s history of breakups), no information is given: Fleetwood Mac has fired Lindsey Buckingham after a disagreement over the band’s upcoming tour, Rolling Stone has confirmed. The band announced Monday that Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Neil Finn […]

“Don’t Get Me Wrong”

I may have put this up before, so sue me if I did. It’s my favorite Pretenders song, featuring the inimitable Chrissie Hynde on vocals.  “Don’t get me wrong” (1986) was also of Hynde’s composition, and I like it because it has some SCIENCE in it. But mainly I like it because it’s a real […]

“And When I Die”

“And When I Die” is the last song of Laura Nyro week and, I suppose, my favorite of all her compositions, despite its ranking as just #3 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “10 Essential Laura Nyro Songs“. It was written when she was just 17, which truly amazes me. In fact, I […]

“Stoney End”

Two more days remain in Laura Nyro Song Week (we’ve skipped a few days). Nyro had many good songs, and I’m just putting up my favorites. This one, Stoney End, was made famous not by Nyro, but by Barbra Steisand’s cover on her eponymous album. That version isn’t nearly as good as Nyro’s version—despite Streisand having […]

“Save the Country”

“Save the Country” is one of my favorite songs by Laura Nyro. Most if it is just her and her piano—no other instrumentation until about 2:23. And she makes a lot of noise—lovely noise! (You can see a live performance here.) Again, it was much more of a hit for The Fifth Dimension, who covered it, […]

“Sweet Blindness”

Laura Nyro released her song “Sweet Blindness” in 1968, when she was 20; it appeared on her well-known album Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. But it was a bigger hit for the Fifth Dimension—who recorded many of Nyro’s songs—in the same year, reaching #13 on the Billboard charts (their version is here). Nyro’s is better, but I doubt […]

“Wedding Bell Blues”

I forgot to post a Laura Nyro song yesterday, as I was busy trying to find my ducks (it was cold, and they didn’t appear). If you were of music-appreciating age in the Sixties, you either loved Nyro (as did I) or ignored her. To my mind, this is Laura Nyro’s best song, and it’s also number […]

“Blowing Away”

I want to start the week with a Laura Nyro song, “Blowing Away“, from her 1967 album “More Than a New Discovery”. The Fifth Dimension recorded this two years later, but I like Nyro’s version better. She was born in 1947, so the oldest she could have been when she wrote this song was twenty. […]

The best Beach Boys songs

I don’t know how I got onto this, perhaps because I came across The Beach Boys song “Heroes and Villains” the other day. I immediately thought of the group, which I liked a lot as a teenager, and wondered “what were their best songs?” And so I pondered a bit (I don’t really have to […]

The Staves’s new album

I haven’t heard much from the Staves lately, though I used to post their music when I found it online. It turns out they’ve been on tour, but they’ve also been making a new album, “If I Was” (a line from their wonderful song, “Blood I Bled”). The album is now out, and here’s a […]