Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1045 in the Series) is Paul Weller, Wild Wood Operating out of an office located deep in the recesses of Buckingham Palace is a covert organization of artistically minded individuals that govern and regulate the art, artists, and entertainment content that is released to the United States. This organization known as E.A.T.M.E (Englanders Against The Music Exportation) has been in existence since the 1960’s, and is considered to be the sole ruling body in determining which artists are released to the unsuspecting U.S. public. Their mission is to keep the good stuff within the realm and export the rest. The Beatles were a “canary in a coal mine” test project where they sent...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#922 in the sSeries) is Nanci Griffith, Other Voices, Other Rooms Nanci Griffith, much like John Prine, is one of those artists that flies just under our musical radar much of the time. Even though she sounds very much like her, she does not have the name recognition of Emmylou Harris. She can stand quill for quill on the songwriting medal stand with Joni Mitchell yet you probably can’t name a song she has written, and she even has a bit of that sultry,girl next door vibe going on that we saw with Linda Ronstadt back in the day. Appearing on the scene in 1978 with her debut album There’s a Light...

Today’s Cool Albums of the Day (#s 891 and 892 in the Series) are The Bottle Rockets – The Bottle Rockets, The Brooklyn Side When it comes to game changing bands that first began surfing the banzai pipeline of the Americana tidal wave that began in the early 1990’s and gained momentum in the new millennium, The Bottle Rockets, along with The Blasters, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, and The Old 97’s, were among the first explorers to plant the Roots-Rock flag on American soil, and now, courtesy of Bloodshot records, we are treated to a re-mastered, deluxe edition treatment of the band’s first two albums, The Bottle Rockets, and The Brooklyn Side. Formed in 1992, from the not so musical...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#880 in the Series) is Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream In my favorite film, Almost Famous, Lester Bangs, as played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, warns his young protégé, William Miller, about the trappings of writing “sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars.” Going on to say “they will ruin rock ‘n’ roll, and strangle everything we love about it.” Well, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious this is a piece about the genius of rock stars and one rock star in particular, Billy Corgan, and The Smashing Pumpkins 1993 masterpiece Siamese Dream. 1993 was a magical year in music and more specifically, to what many people would refer to as “college,” or “alternative”...

Song Of the Day by Eric Berman – “Some Fantastic Place” by Squeeze Cool For Cats, Argybargy, East Side Story, Sweets From A Stranger and Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti — all of the above named albums are among the best records in the Squeeze catalog. For unknown reasons, Some Fantastic Place is a Squeeze record that stands head and shoulders tall amongst the others, but seldom gets mentioned in the same breath. Today, I officially add this album to the list of all-time great Squeeze albums, and if you’re a fan, so should you. Some Fantastic Place was the band’s tenth album released in 1993. It was the follow up to the album Play, which was possibly the weakest...

  Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Rosanne Cash’s great album titled The Wheel.  Rosanne was kind enough to share some tidbits about the album and its recording with her facebook friends today. We’ve gathered them together for you here. If you’re a fan of Ms. Cash I highly suggest that you check out her facebook page. It’s mostly run by her and she does a great job keeping every one informed about her goings on. Here’s a link. While you’re at it, her twitter account is also very lively. Here’s a link. — Larry Carta Here’s Rosanne’s tidings on The Wheel. ———————————————————— I can’t believe this, but my album The Wheel came out twenty years...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (# 450 in the Series) is The Wildhearts, Earth vs. the Wildhearts. A friend once questioned my musical tastes. “What do you do when you want to mellow out?” I believe that she was telling me that I should listen to her favorite band, the Eagles (something which I would never do). I replied “Watch television or take a nap. Rock and roll is supposed to be fast, loud, aggressive, and a bit obnoxious.” The Wildhearts debut “Earth vs. The Wildhearts” fits this philosophy perfectly. Visualize a blender with equal parts hard rock, glam, and punk in it and you would have England’s The Wildhearts. In 1993, The Wildhearts dropped their debut on...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#341 in the Series) is P.J. Harvey, Rid of Me PJ Harvey’s second album sounded like a cry for help. Which was strange really since, on the surface at least, things seemed to be going pretty well. Her first two singles, especially “Dress”, and her debut album had been met with tremendous reviews and great acclaim from fans and the critics. Even better, she was loved by the legendary DJ John Peel, a man whose seal of approval could be the making of your entire career. Those first records had been released by the relatively small London-based indie label Too Pure but such was their impact that Harvey soon found herself signed up...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#274 in the Series) is Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville. Ah, Liz Phair, one of my favorite ‘Dirty Girls’ who’s also a proud member of the lucky, born on April 17th club.  You other 99.72 percent don’t know how cool that is! Exile in Guyville has long been considered her magnum opus. She recently has been touring playing the album in its entirety.  I really endorse that concert trend. I’m quite surprised it’s actually taken this long for it to catch on.  Hey, with-out it I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing Cheap Trick perform their 1st album awhile back! In fact, NPR has a stream available of her doing one of...