I grew up watching Leslie Nielsen movies and in my 10 year old opinion they were the funniest movies ever. Leslie Nielsen was the ultimate straight man who could deliver any ridiculous line without cracking a smile. I will forever remember the baseball scene in the Naked Gun as a nonstop laughfest. Watching this moving many years later brings me back to my childhood.
R.I.P Mr. Nielsen, you were a great Canadian and a very funny man.
Jimi Hendrix would have been 68 on November 27th. Instead, we are left with a few groundbreaking studio albums and a few dozen live recordings. To celebrate this young man's life, here's my favorite Hendrix tune.
Mr.T is so bad ass in this video he does everything from break up poker games to awkwardly pushing random dudes down an elevator shaft. I especially love the fact that hundreds of kids just show up in a dingy old factory to hear Mt.T preach about being home at 9:30 and other essential parenting advice. I wish Mt.T was my dad!
For my money, A Tribe Called Quest will always be the definitive rap group of the late 80s and early 90s. No other group brought commercial and critical success together. I celebrate all their albums (with the exception of the Love Movement) and they will always hold a special place in my heart.
The best thing about Tribe was that they were not afraid to be smart and funny at the same time. Too many rappers are always trying to be one or the other, but Tribe proved that they could do both simultaneously. On top of this, their music hasn't dated a day. So much Hip Hop of that time period has dated itself, but Tribe's sound will always remain fresh.
Sadly, Fela Kuti has been gone for nearly 15 years, but his music is as relevant today as it was when he still walked the earth. The King of Afrobeat had a way of taking a rhythm and turning it into a soulful expression of life. There are very few who could do this and the world is a better place because of him.
Do me a favour and blast this track from your computer speakers. You'll thank me for it.
My life was grey until Herbie Hancock told me to stop complaining and get the funk up. What are you doing at your computer on a beautiful day like this? Get up on your living room floor and dance to the contagious beats!
As I've said a few times before, it never seems to amaze me how so many great artists have been thrown to the wayside, while the J.Los and Justin Bieber's of the world seems to get more than their fair share of the pie. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all is Portugal's Free Pop Electronic Concept. I'll be honest with you, I don't know much about this group because there simply isn't a lot of information. The group is a collaboration between brothers Jess & James and the Belgian composer Arsene Souffriau.
How does this album sound you ask? Well, the artists describe it as "Take a third of free jazz and another third of pop music, and a third of electronic music, add several pinches of technical performances, shake and serve cold on a great record player." How awesome does that sound? This album mixes crazy abstract wierdness with beautiful motown-esque soul. The tunes are catchy, but they also satisfy my need for in your face avant-guard insanity.
I'd say pick this album up if you can, but I have no idea where you'd get it. Instead, just enjoy these beautiful snippets of love from me to you!
I'm currently writing a paper on Aboriginal representation in film and I can't get this great tune out of my head. Neil Young has definitely penned a few masterpieces in his day and this one is definitely one of them. Although this song is about an American myth, I'm sure Mr. Young was thinking about many of the issues facing First Nations people in his home country.
Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, who became one of the best-selling classical artists ever with his doleful Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, has died after a long illness at the age of 76.
"We are sorry to confirm the news that Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki has passed away," Beata Jankowska-Burzynska, an official with Polish Radio's National Symphony Orchestra in the southern city of Katowice, told AFP Friday.
Gorecki was born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, near Poland's gritty coal-mining city of Katowice. He was orphaned at the age of two when his mother, a pianist, died.
He studied music at the Katowice Music Academy, where he went on to hold a professorship and became its rector from 1975-1979.
Known for his trademark simple yet monumental musical style, Gorecki was regarded as being at the forefront of Polish avant-guard classical composers through the 1950's to 1970's, exploring Polish folk music and medieval themes.
Focused on motherhood and the ravages of war, Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 or Symphony of Sorrow Songs, gained critical acclaim and world-wide popularity after its 1992 re-release featuring American soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Having topped the charts in both Britain and the United States, it sold more than a million copies world-wide, becoming one of the world's best-selling pieces of contemporary classical music.
Divided into three movements, the monumental work is inspired by a 15th century lamentation, a Polish folksong and words scrawled by a prisoner held by the Nazi German Gestapo on the wall of a cell in the southern Polish mountain town of Zakopane.
"Gorecki's work is like a huge boulder which lies on our path and forces us to make a spiritual and emotional effort," Professor Eugeniusz Knapik, Gorecki's friend and current head of the Katowice Music Academy said.
If done well, country music should be darker than death metal. It is introspective music that cuts to the soul of melancholy. It should be honest and true. While there are few artists on the scene that epitomize this mantra, Bonnie Prince Billy is definitely one of them. His music is pure, honest and heartfelt. Although commercial success has not come easy for him, he continues to put out great albums that meld traditional country music with the DIY attitude.
Here's a sample of his work with "I See a Darkness"
The queen of folk and one of Canada's greatest artistic exports is 67 today. Joni Mitchell has become an icon, an international superstar who pens clever songs that transcend generations. Her songs know no boundaries and mix jazz, folk , pop and blues together into one of the most distinctive voices in music. There are very few artists that I can say this about, but Joni Mitchell's songs will be sung for generations and will remain a staple of 20th century popular music.
Most of you know Bob James as the lame-ass smooth jazz composer who collaborated with equally lame ass musicians to make boring and contrived records that don't really go anywhere. Rest assured that that is the truth. However, in 1965 a young Bob James collaborated with the great ESP Record Label to put out an electronic-free jazz album that exceeds your wildest expectations. The albums is noisy, disjointed and sounds absolutely nothing like your father's Bob James. I can't recommend this album enough. It's a gem of an album and definitely a Bob James album that you shouldn't be embarrassed to own!
Sadly, we have been Johnny Cashless for a few years now. The man in black is no longer of this earth and is undoubtedly watching us right now and wondering why we're making such a huge fuss over him. Fortunately for us fans, his music still lives on and we were blessed with one more American Recordings album this year. While I didn't really have high expectations for it, I have to say that it is surprisingly one of the best. It is a collection of many traditional tunes that give a giant proverbial middle finger to death in a way that only Johnny could. Additionally, we have the Johnny Cash Project. Over 250,000 Cash fans drew over every frame of the Ain't No Grave video, to give a graphic illustration of what Johnny meant to them. While the man in black means a lot of things to a lot of different people, we all share a common bond of love and admiration. Johnny's not gone, he's just hiding in the shadows, waiting to kick our ass when we greet him in the afterlife!
Jimi Hendrix would have been 68 on November 27th. Instead, we are left with a few groundbreaking studio albums and a few dozen live recordings. To celebrate this young man's life, here's my favorite Hendrix tune. 
No one can smear like Bill Hicks and there is no one more deserving of a character smear than Rush Limbaugh.
Sadly, Fela Kuti has been gone for nearly 15 years, but his music is as relevant today as it was when he still walked the earth. The King of Afrobeat had a way of taking a rhythm and turning it into a soulful expression of life. There are very few who could do this and the world is a better place because of him.
As I've said a few times before, it never seems to amaze me how so many great artists have been thrown to the wayside, while the J.Los and Justin Bieber's of the world seems to get more than their fair share of the pie. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all is Portugal's Free Pop Electronic Concept. I'll be honest with you, I don't know much about this group because there simply isn't a lot of information. The group is a collaboration between brothers Jess & James and the Belgian composer Arsene Souffriau. 
If done well, country music should be darker than death metal. It is introspective music that cuts to the soul of melancholy. It should be honest and true. While there are few artists on the scene that epitomize this mantra, Bonnie Prince Billy is definitely one of them. His music is pure, honest and heartfelt. Although commercial success has not come easy for him, he continues to put out great albums that meld traditional country music with the DIY attitude.
The queen of folk and one of Canada's greatest artistic exports is 67 today. Joni Mitchell has become an icon, an international superstar who pens clever songs that transcend generations. Her songs know no boundaries and mix jazz, folk , pop and blues together into one of the most distinctive voices in music. There are very few artists that I can say this about, but Joni Mitchell's songs will be sung for generations and will remain a staple of 20th century popular music.
Most of you know Bob James as the lame-ass smooth jazz composer who collaborated with equally lame ass musicians to make boring and contrived records that don't really go anywhere. Rest assured that that is the truth. However, in 1965 a young Bob James collaborated with the great ESP Record Label to put out an electronic-free jazz album that exceeds your wildest expectations. The albums is noisy, disjointed and sounds absolutely nothing like your father's Bob James. I can't recommend this album enough. It's a gem of an album and definitely a Bob James album that you shouldn't be embarrassed to own!
Sadly, we have been Johnny Cashless for a few years now. The man in black is no longer of this earth and is undoubtedly watching us right now and wondering why we're making such a huge fuss over him. Fortunately for us fans, his music still lives on and we were blessed with one more American Recordings album this year. While I didn't really have high expectations for it, I have to say that it is surprisingly one of the best. It is a collection of many traditional tunes that give a giant proverbial middle finger to death in a way that only Johnny could.
