The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Love Ain’t On The Run
One of my favourite recent political satire show on TV has been Channel 4’s 10 O’Clock Live (having ranter extraordinaire and comedian David Mitchell and the satirist Charlie Brooker on the show was a masterstroke) and I particularly liked their theme tune. Summoning the power of the internet, I found out that it was a track called Bernie by some obscure band I’d never heard of, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. The track sounded fantastic and I was immediately on itunes doing some digging and downloading more of their stuff. I haven’t gone for full albums, but their album Now I Got Worry seems to be their best work, along with the compilation album Dirty Shirt Rock ‘n’ Roll: The First Ten Years. The above track is from the latter. Utter blues magic!
Abhay - Koyal Se Mili
Trawling through my old external hard-drive, I happened upon some old music that I had dumping into it since my university days. This one is from Abhay (a film which I couldn’t even find on Wikipedia, but, I remember, had the legendary Kamal Hassan). The music is by some of my favourite Bollywood music guys, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. And of course, Shankar Mahadevan is one of the playback singers and just listening to his voice brings back so many memories from when I used to listen to him and S-E-L’s music on a regular music (these days, it’s been reduced to DCH pretty much!).
Shankar has always been one of my favourite Bollywood playback singers. There is always a poignancy in his voice, ideal for heart-tingling romantic songs. The music isn’t awesome, but it does the trick.
Hope you enjoy the track! I am now moving on to some fantastic Lucky Ali stuff that I haven’t touched in years…
P.S.: Ignore the Fmw11.com… Some of you know what it means. It was university days and I was broke.
Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke - Kash Koi Ladki Mujhe
Once every few months, I like going back to early 90s classics. Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke is definitely one of those I always scour YouTube for. The most popular song from this Aamir Khan-Juhi Chawla starrer (it’s a great movie too!) is probably Ghoonghat Ki Aad Se, but I do like this one too. Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik are supremely good!
Enjoy! Bollywood might be all plastic and obscene these days, but you can always find jewels here and there.
Jimi Hendrix - Power Of Soul
This was part of a live album recorded at one of the concerts of Jimi Hendrix with the Band Of Gypsys at New York’s Fillmore East. Bassist Billy Cox and Jimi Hendrix come up with a psychedelic mix of soul and rock. The gritty riffs are enthralling, clearly the product of an inspired and evolving Hendrix being complemented to perfection by the brilliant Cox. They almost try to possess your body and recharge it with the power of soul. Because “with the power of soul, anything is possible…”
Enjoy it! Easily one of my favourite rock tracks of all time by easily the greatest guitarist of all time, in my opinion!
Caro Emerald - A Night Like This
Heard this very catchy tune on Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 breakfast show and all the information I caught about the artist was that she was Dutch! Ten minutes of google searching later (how great is the internet!), I had found her.
She is a Dutch jazz singer and Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor is her debut album, released last year in the Netherlands, but only this year in the UK. She’s not in Amy Winehouse’s league, but she still made me hum songs which have a sprinkling of pop thrown in with the jazz even though I am not really compatible with pop.
Got the album off iTunes and planning to explore what looks like a enjoyable compilation! This will have to do while I am waiting for Winehouse’s next offering.
Hindi cinema has just welcomed a new music director from the South: Prashant Pillai. Three years in the making and Shaitan is out. As Prashant puts it himself,
If not for Bejoy (Nambiar, film maker), a hindi film would never have a death metal number, a sufi number, a Tamil rap, a rock number, a retro funk and more.
This makes the 13-track album a very novel journey for the listener. Veteran musician Ranjit Barot lends in a vital hand as well. Nasha is just one genre explored in there.
Nasha (Shaitan 2011)
Elvis Presley - A Big Hunk O’ Love
Recorded in ‘58 as a single, it’s my favourite genre that Elvis has sung in (and he’s done loads of genres), i.e, rock and roll. They don’t make tunes like this anymore! You cannot NOT move when it’s playing. My only regret is that it’s a criminally short track.
Hope you like it, and also, I would recommend rock and roll to everyone!
The Rolling Stones - Ventilator Blues
I have only recently started listening to The Rolling Stones as I continue my journey of discovery in the world of Blues. Ventilator Blues is from their critically-acclaimed 1972 album, Exile On Main St. which was recorded, not in the best of conditions, while the band were exiled in France. This gave the album a certain rawness and density to accompany the swagger of Mick Jagger and the musical dexterity of the guitarists, Keith Richards and Mick Taylor.
This is one of my favourite tracks from a tremendous album.
Hope you like it!
Nubla - Nada Se Olvida
This is a Spanish song which was used for a TV advertising campaign by Channel4 to promote a now-defunct website, trylifeinanotherlanguage.com, which encouraged learning and discovering languages other than English. I have no idea what the translation of the title or the lyrics is, but I immediately loved the light floaty music and vanilla-flavoured voice of Nubla who is described by itunes as Spain’s answer to Lily Allen.
Hope you enjoy it!
P.S: The actual adverts (there were several for various languages) were as follows:
Spanish: Shadow girl
French: Disiz
German: Neon city
Almost a decade since Kaante came out and I’m re-discovering this song which turns out to be a guest composed song by Lucky Ali himself.
Maut / मौत / Death
I used to love this! It would annoy my parents a lot, especially the way Lucky Ali goes MAUT! Slightly macabre, but great song!
