LWA Blog — music

Happy 65th birthday (born 30 July 1958) to one of my all-time favourite weirdos and overall super cool lady. Above is a pic of her filming in a water tank for a video sequence (for The Ninth Wave suite) that was included in her Before the Dawn shows in 2014. Probably the greatest concert I've ever attended. The word "concert" doesn't even do it justice. I also just made a 9-track playlist, 1 song from each album (Director's Cut doesn't count in this exercise). Kind of a sampler, I guess, for the uninitiated. You know, if anyone actually reads this and...

Julie Byrne's last album, Not Even Happiness, was my first encounter with her. Read a blurb and listened to it on a whim and it really clicked with me. If I remember correctly, the album came out in the fall of 2017. I looked her up and saw her tour was hitting SF in early 2018, so I just made it a point to try to make the gig and pick up the record there. The show finally arrived, she was the middle act on a three band bill. She was as good as I hoped she would be. After...

Happy birthday to Björk's Debut, released 30 years ago on this day (5 July 1993). I had followed The Sugarcubes at the start, I saw them on Saturday Night Live, wondering who was this girl and her incredible voice. Eventually saw them supporting U2's Zoo TV tour (92, I think). Then this album came out and what an unexpected turn this took. A cornucopia of influences on this album which somehow totally work, and it still sounds fresh today. Just an excellent album, through and through. Give it a shot if you haven't yet heard it.

  Happy 78th to the legend (born July 1 1945). The is one of my fave pics, I think it was in the running to be the cover of Parallel Lines. Her autobiography, Face It, was published in 2019 (it's a fascinating read) and I attended the San Francisco stop of her book tour that year. She and Chris Stein were there, they were so funny and they had some great San Francisco stories. And I got a signed copy of the book. Nice to see she is still performing. She and Nick Cave just dropped a new duet today, which...

Very much enjoying PONY's Velveteen, which was released about a month ago. Kind of super catchy buzzsaw power pop, which is right up my alley. Give it a spin here if that sounds interesting to you.