Tag Archives: New York City

Chicago – Saturday in the Park (1972)

by 1970s • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Saturday in the Park” is a song written by Robert Lamm and recorded by the group Chicago for their 1972 album Chicago V, with Lamm on piano and lead vocals and Peter Cetera on bass and backing vocals. The single version hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s highest-charting single to date and helping lift the album to #1 on the charts. The single was certified Gold by the RIAA.

According to fellow Chicago member Walter Parazaider, Lamm was inspired to write the song during the recording of V in New York City on July 4, 1971:

“Robert came back to the hotel from Central Park very excited after seeing the steel drum players, singers, dancers, and jugglers. I said, ‘Man, it’s time to put music to this!’”

The line “singing Italian songs” is followed by “Eh Cumpari” and then Italian-sounding nonsense words, in the studio version of the song, rendered in the printed lyrics as “?”. Piano/guitar/vocal sheet music arrangements have often read “improvised Italian lyrics” in parentheses after this line. However, in a film of Chicago performing “Saturday in the Park,” at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago, in 1973, Robert Lamm clearly sings, “Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari,” the first line of a song known as “Eh, Cumpari!”, which was made famous by Julius La Rosa in 1953. “Saturday in the Park” has also been used in a popular commercial in Japan, advertising a marketing campaign known as “Parkhouse”. The song is played at Saturday afternoon baseball games at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Yankee Stadium in New York, and Coors Field in Denver. Comedian Paul F. Tompkins has called it: “the least patriotic song in popular culture.”




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Martin Rev – Asia (1980)

by 1980s • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Martin Rev’s first solo album is a bulletin from this time of clashing tribes and new freedoms. Released in early 1980 on Charles Ball’s Lust/Unlust label, Martin Rev is an early analogue electronic classic. Live and on record, the tension between Rev’s hypnotic, relentless drum machine rustles and Alan Vega’s wild performance artistry was electrifying. Shorn of Vega’s method vocals, these six tracks explore minimal synthetics to great effect. [Source]




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David Bowie – New Killer Star (2003)

by 2000s • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“New Killer Star” is a song written and performed by David Bowie in 2003 for his album Reality. This was the first single from the album and released on DVD only, except in Italy and Canada. While it is uncertain what the song is really about (like other Bowie songs), the lyrics make oblique reference to life in post-9/11 New York. However the video clip, directed by Brumby Boylston of National Television, tells a surreal story using lenticular-postcard like images of a spaceship almost crashing into the modern American heartland. Bowie himself said of the song: “I’m not a political commentator, but I think there are times when I’m stretched to at least implicate what’s happening politically in the songs that I’m writing. And there was some nod, in a very abstract way, toward the wrongs that are being made at the moment with the Middle Eastern situation. I think that song is a pretty good manifesto for the whole record.” There’s a reference in the lyrics of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”, which says: “There may be trouble ahead/So while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance/Let’s face the music and dance”. Gerry Leonard uses an EBow to play the repetitive guitar lick all through the song. The b-side is a cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F1-11″. The music video features lenticular images throughout.



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David Bowie – Where Are We Now? (2013)

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by 2010s • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Where is David Bowie?

New Single and Pre-Order of First New Album in 10 Years Exclusively Launching on the iTunes Store Today

New York, NY–January 8, 2013–In the early morning hours of Tuesday the 8th January, Iso/Columbia Records released a new single by David Bowie titled ‘Where Are We Now?’ exclusively launching in the iTunes Store in 119 countries. David Bowie’s first new album in ten years and his 30th studio recording, THE NEXT DAY is also available as a pre-order on iTunes with a wide release scheduled for March. January the 8th is of course David Bowie’s birthday, a timely moment for such a treasure to appear as if out of nowhere. [Source]







Listen to the single and watch the video on the new official David Bowie Vimeo channel here.

David Bowie – Where Are We Now? from David Bowie on Vimeo.










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Had to get the train
From Potzdamer Platz
You never knew that
That I could do that
Just walking the dead

Sitting in the Dschungel
On Nurnberger Strasse
A man lost in time
Near KaDeWe
Just walking the dead

Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know
You know

Twenty thousand people
Cross Bose Brucke
Fingers are crossed
Just in case
Walking the dead

Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know
You know

As long as there´s SUN
As long as there´s SUN
As long as there´s RAIN
As long as there´s RAIN
As long as there´s FIRE
As long as there´s FIRE
As long as there´s ME
As long as there´s YOU

PRESS CLIPS:

David Bowie: still the man of mystique

Neil McCormick delights in ‘the most surprising, perfect and welcome comeback in rock history’.
Bowie’s comeback places him back at the centre of the whole shebang

Blog: Where are we now? How about now?

Jonathan Ross, self-declared big Bowie fan, relishes the return of the old-school showbiz supremo

The inside story of how David Bowie made The Next Day

David Bowie’s ‘The Next’ Day’ Album: A Track-by-Track Preview

Yoko Ono – Goodbye Sadness (1981)

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by 1980s • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Season of Glass is a 1981 album by Yoko Ono, her first solo recording after the murder of her husband John Lennon. The album was released less than six months after Lennon’s death and deals with it directly in songs such as “Goodbye Sadness” and “I Don’t Know Why”. Season of Glass charted at number 49, making it Ono’s highest-charting solo album to date. The front cover features Lennon’s bloodstained glasses positioned next to a half-filled glass of water, with a view of Central Park in the background. A young Sean Lennon features on the track “Even When You’re Far Away”, recounting a story his father used to tell him. A music video was created for “Goodbye Sadness” featuring footage of John and Yoko together. The video was screened on the first episode of Saturday Night Live’s seventh season.



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Goodbye Sadness, goodbye..goodbye..
I don’t need you anymore.
I wet my pillow every night,
But now I saw the light.

Goodbye, goodbye, sadness,
I don’t need you anymore.
Goodbye, goodbye, sadness,
I can’t take it anymore.

Goodbye Sadness, goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t need you anymore.
I lived in fear ev’ry day,
But now I’m going my way.

Goodbye, goodbye sadness,
I don’t need you anymore.
Goodbye, goodbye, sadness,
I can’t take it anymore.

Hello Happiness, wherever you are,
I hope you hear my song.
Never want to cry again
Or hold my breath in fear again.

Goodbye, goodbye, sadness,
I don’t need you anymore.
Goodbye, goodbye, sadness,
I can’t take it anymore..

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John Lennon – Imagine (1971)

by 1970s, The Beatles • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

“Imagine” is a song written and performed by the English musician John Lennon. The best-selling single of his solo career, its lyrics encourage the listener to imagine a world at peace, without the divisiveness and barriers of borders, religions and nationalities, and to consider the possibility that the focus of humanity should be living a life unattached to material possessions. Lennon and Yoko Ono co-produced the song and album of the same name with Phil Spector. Recording began at Lennon’s home studio at Tittenhurst Park, England, in May 1971, with final overdubs taking place at the Record Plant, in New York City, during July. One month after the September release of the LP, Lennon released “Imagine” as a single in the United States; the song peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the LP reached number one on the UK chart in November, later becoming the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Lennon’s solo career. Although not originally released as a single in the United Kingdom, it was released in 1975 to promote a compilation LP and it reached number six in the chart that year. The song has since sold more than 1.6 million copies in the UK; it reached number one following Lennon’s death in December 1980.




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Sean Lennon – Dead Meat (2006)

by 2000s • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

After the demise of Grand Royal Records in 2001, Sean Lennon signed with Capitol Records (whose parent company EMI has released the vast majority of his father’s musical output, group and solo), yet no solo material surfaced until February 2006, when “Dead Meat” was released as the first single from his new album, Friendly Fire. A promotional trailer for the CD/DVD package of Friendly Fire was leaked online in early 2006. The trailer featured scenes from the film version of the album, a DVD of music videos comprised into a film. The videos were actually screen tests for Coin Locker Babies, another project on which Lennon is working which became a cinematic counterpart to his new album.




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Yacht – Second Summer (2012)

by 2010s • Tags: , , , , , ,

“Second Summer is a state of mind: overcoming obstacles in order to be close to what you love, a temporal place where sun never goes out no matter what season it is in your hemisphere. Like the original Summer of Love and its acid house revival, the Second Summer of Love, our aim is true: to create environments of total freedom.”










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Touche – Wild Horses (Prefab Sprout Cover Version) (2012)

by 2010s • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Los Angeles duo Touché (aka Bram Inscore and Alex Lilly) will be in NYC soon for a couple shows, happening at Glasslands on December 19 with Rarechild and Yalls and then Cameo on January 4 with Tippy Toes and Future Screens. While we wait for those dates to happen, check out a new recording from the pair — a cover of Prefab Sprout’s “Wild Horses” which is making its debut right here. While Touché’s version doesn’t veer much from the almost glitchy R&B of Paddy McAloon’s original (from their 1990 opus Jordan: The Comeback), it is lovely in its own right and does shed light on the pair’s influences. Plus, you just don’t hear that many Prefab Sprout covers. [Source]