Cereal At Midnight

1971's "A Cowboy's Work Is Never Done" is a spaghetti western anthem in need of a movie. With banjo, brass, and a wah-wah guitar that's feels straight from the Spanish deserts by way of Italy, it's so evocative of a certain kind of movie that it becomes impossible to distinguish where art and influence meet. The song also features cunning and suggestive lyrics that serve as a nice counter-point to the wholesome image the duo were projecting each week in their variety show. From the album All I Ever Need is You , which has still not been released in its entirety on CD, this song is so evocative, so well-produced by Snuff Garrett (who specialized in country hits), it's hard not to love.

Darkness shrouds the land. In those mystic hours between midnight and dawn, when the quiet is so imposing that it becomes a presence in and of itself, all good people are sleeping. Even the moon slumbers, obscured by shadowy clouds which cloak the fields, valleys, and towns of the hillside below in shadowy pitch. The silence is broken. Not at once, and not by a scream, but slowly, and by a low moan. It begins distant, almost as if the wind itself were uttering lamentations. Could that be thunder? The rumble grows, slowly, imperceptibly, then louder, more clear. It becomes a roar, unmistakable, unavoidable, inevitable, and with the flash of lightning and the heat of flame, the darkness is shattered with blistering brightness as Deep Purple are released upon the face of the Earth. The first track of their first album, "And the Address" heralds the arrival of something powerful and altogether new. Before giants walked the Earth in the form of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple cha...

Yours truly is on a BIG Stevie Wonder kick these days, stemming from our acquisition of Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium Vol. I  on vinyl, which we picked up at Target for a steal. Bottom line, we're digging into Stevie's catalog, and this track comes from Music of My Mind , one of his lesser-heralded albums, if there is such a thing. Despite the lack of praise for the 1972 record, released under Motown's "Tamla" label, the LP is absolutely packed with stellar songwriting, spacey synthesizers, and a funky swagger that feels playful and makes you move. "Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)" is just over eight minutes long, and it really goes to a lot of cool places, turning into something completely different  at the three-minute mark. The composition and instrumentation really takes me away to an ethereal place. This is essentially two songs in one, fused together perfectly. As the midnight hour approaches, kick back, turn out the li...

From the 2000 album American III: Solitary Man , produced by Rick Rubin, the Man in Black covers Neil Diamond with Tom Petty on background vocals. Doesn't get much better than this.

This absolutely blistering live instrumental performance of The Band's chart-topper "The Weight" was performed by Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper during a three night stand at San Francisco's Fillmore West in September of 1968 . Bloomfield is heralded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, featuring on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisted album as well being a member of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Al Kooper famously played Hammond organ on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," as well as tracks by The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones , and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The track is taken from the duo's 1969 album The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper .

This is not my video, but I'm posting it here because I love it and I think it deserves to be appreciated by as many people as possible. Fact #1: John Carpenter is the best. Fact #2: Doctor Who is also the best. YouTube's GeorgeCMusic decided to combine the two together and created something that is so awesome that I can hardly stand it. The marriage of seventies-era John Carpenter synthesizer with seventies era Doctor Who (think Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor) hits me right where I live. It's spooky in exactly the way that it needs to be and sounds JUST LIKE what Ron Grainer's classic Doctor Who theme would have sounded like if John Carpenter worked for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop circa 1978.