Twostepcublog

Since I just can't get enough of Jaki Graham, here's the better-audio version of "Round And Round" (Click Here) And here's another video of here #5 UK hit with David Grant, "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love".

Well about a year ago today I was in New York for my birthday and popped into the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. After I got a couple things and sauntered up to the cash register there was a bin of import box sets. For 19.99. OMFG. Of course I gave in to the gods of impulse buying and dove in like Greg Louganis in 1984 at Los Angeles (and no , not like your thinking...). I did enough to control myself to just allow myself one. And of course the 80's won out. The 80's always win out. Nothing speaks of my coming of somewhat-adulthood like the crazily-coiffed bands of England. And with 108 songs, how can I go wrong? I looked at the tracklisting. One-hit wonders, check. UK songs I could never find here, check. Jaki Graham (I'll get to her in a bit), check. I'm sold. EMI gold's The Best Of The Eighties is a six-CD hodgepodge of tracks which hit at least the top100 on the UK chart (most are top 10, but a smattering of lesser hits are there). As with a lot of English ...

Where has the summer gone? Okay, folks, here's my songs for this week. As per the drill you can click on the name of the artist highlighted to bring up their handy-dandy webpage (you can rightclick to bring it up in a new window). This week Xtina spends another week at the top, and big moves are by Under The Influence Of Giants, Audioslave, and L.E.X. Saying goodbye are songs by Rihanna, Jack Johnson, and Angels & Airwaves. And yeah, Paris Hilton's on here twice now, I don't wanna hear any grief. Ciaozers for nowzers... ThisWeek Song/Artist (last week's position in parentheses) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera (1) 2. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley (3) 3. Is It Any Wonder? - Keane (5) 4. If You're Going Through Hell - Rodney Atkins (2) 5. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers (4) 6. Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall (6) 7. I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Pan...

Ahh, the things you find in the import clearance bin. Music Of The Year: 1987 is a hodgepodge in a series of apparently K-tel supermarketlike 80s throwback collections in the UK. Put together with odds and sods singles from 1987, not exactly the greatest year musicwise, it intrigued me in it's weird choice of songs enough to buy the sucker. In its 19 songs are mostly skewed towards moderately successful English singles, a lot which never got any play here in the states. Thus you can find UK top 10ers like the Style Council's totally non-Style Council-y "It Doesn't Matter", troubadour Black's "Wonderful Life", as well as Swing Out Sister's amazingly excellent single "Surrender". There is a smattering of crossover hits, most prominently Jody Watley's "Looking For A New Love", but also ABC's saccharin "When Smokey Sings", The Jet's bubbly "Crush On You", and the hard-to-find fun romp of Was (Not W...

As I had written before , getting a dance mix CD is a hit-or-miss proposition. With a tracklist that can either be obscure, boring, or frivolous, they sometimes can have a shelf life a little longer than my milk in the frig. Usually signs of a worthy one are either 1) contains hard-to-find but popular tracks, 2) a good percentage of anthemic hit songs, or 3) an interesting mix format (you can usually never find all three together). Party Groove: Soakin' Wet 2 is pretty good with two of the three. Since it's put out by Centaur Records, which pretty much is committed to dance music, the mixer David Knapp is able license out a lot of top-shelf hits, including five #1 Dance Club play songs, as well as a couple more hitting the top 5. That's half the tracks, so so far so good. The CD begins with the 2006 remix of Jody Watley's "Looking For A New Love" which darkens up the original without making it too overly tribal. Next comes Blaze's "Most Precious Lov...

Y'know, with all the whiny-ass-titty-babies in the CEO offices of the maybe 2-3 music conglomerates left about the lack of growth in music sales, may I remind them that you have to release some shit to get some sales. Case in point: the dance music industry, which for years has catered to the "we're gonna only release this remix/dance song to the 50 dj's we like, and the public just has to like buying the regular song off the album. Stupid idea. Don't they realize how short a shelf life that stuff has? And do you think a club kid's gonna shell out 18$ to get the ballad version of their fave e-fueled rave-up? Nah. Some of then have got the picture, putting things out on I-Tunes, which I commend wholly. Hell it doesn't have any overhead, and you're making a buck a shot you didn't have before. Possibly even a convert to the artist. But Noooo.... some of them don't. Lookie here. India. Not exactly a breakthrough artist, whether it be in teh Latin o...

In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine put together a list of the 500 best albums in rock, which was compiled from a combination of haughty-taughty music critics, pajama'd journalists, assorted musicians, and Britney Spears. It caused a little stir not just for what it included, but what it left out. But I honestly thought they did a pretty good job, considering (Michael Jackson's Bad is on there, but no Four Tops or Temptations). In fact the top 100 is pretty solid. I made it a point to have and to write about each of the 500 as I get them. Well I have the top 90 so far, and here's the first one I've managed on here. Although to be fair, Dusty In Memphis in a fairer world would at least be in the top 20. Dusty Springfield , actually Mary O'Brien to be concise, was unlike any import from England to the states. Originally part of a folky group with her brother called the Springfields, Dusty went solo in 1963 with a sound that drew more on the girl-group sonics that the Mer...

I almost forgot to post pictures from the Liberty Gay Rodeo Association trail run from the beginning of August. I had a kick-ass time, and thankfully no Auntie Mame moments.. An hour and a half of going through hills, forests, creeks, whatnot. Below here's me trying to be all sedate on the horse. For more info on LGRA click here . We're gonna be doing a trail run about every run, with the next one probably the beginning of October.

Last Saturday a few members of the Liberty Gay Rodeo Association and I had a "rodeo play day" in southern New Jersey, when we learned a couple rodeo events, like chute dogging (wrestling a steer basically to the ground), steer deco (getting a steer over a line from the chute and tying a ribbon to it's tail), and goat dressing (running up to a tied goat and "dressing" it with briefs then running back, tres funny). It was hella fun, and totally worth it. The picture above is me getting a grip on the steers head before pulling it up to try to take it down. Here's my buddy Jeff chute dogging. Here's Mike coming out of the chute.... Here's me waiting for the chute to open for "steer deco". We're trying to get the steer stopped to get the ribbon on but he was spinning around. Priceless crazy-ass look on my face. Me and Jeffie trying to put the underwear on the goat. (Lord what a sentence to type)... Jeff and I running our butts off from the...

I just realized it's been a while since I've had a "single life" post, so here it goes...you can get the tunes here at either I-Tunes, Beatport or Perfect Beat. Click on the artist to bring up their webpage. The Killers - "When You Were Young" Well the new-new-wave is back. And with fuzzy distortion. Brandon Flowers et al leave Duran Duran-ism partially behind and head into British neo-rock, a la Coldplay and Snow Patrol. Not bad, a little overdramatic, but that's what I expected. Grade: B- The Feeling - "Sewn" I-Tunes had pushed this UK top-10 debut single from the neo-soft rock group (there's a lot of neo this week, no?) as a freebie single of the week. A real find, from a group that continues the tradition of nonassuming melodic bands like Bourgeois Tagg and Toad The Wet Sprocket. Grade: B Jason Walker - "Movin' On" The fifth hit dance single from ultra-high voiced Walker, it takes the usual "wash that bad ...

Hey boys and girls, here's my tunes for the week. Like always you can click on the name of the artist to bring up their webpage (right click to bring up in a new window). Xtina finally makes it to the summit, and leaving the list are songs by DJ Mike Cruz and Keith Anderson. Big jumps this week for Panic At The Disco, Pussycat Dolls, and Roger Sanchez. And this week has three, count 'em three songs from Rascal Flatts, though they're on different formats. ThisWeek Song/Artist (last week's position in parentheses) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera (2) 2. If You're Going Through Hell - Rodney Atkins (1) 3. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley (3) 4. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers (4) 5. Is It Any Wonder? - Keane (8) 6. Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall (6) 7. What's Left Of Me - Nick Lachey (5) 8. A Little Too Late - Toby Keith (10) 9. Move Along - All-America...

I'm gonna tackle the first "essential disc" from Rolling stone's 500 that I'd be writing about very soon, but until then I'm reminiscing with this tidbit - Dusty Springfield performing "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" from Top of the Pops. Gives me the chills. In a good way.

Sorry, little lazy right now, since I'm just done working for 10 days straight. But here's the new and way-cooler-than-cool Scissor Sisters video. Enjoy!

I totally have to thank Michelle Collins of You Can't Make It Up for posting this, but I couldn't help putting it on here for y'all to see. Behold the power of Warner Bros.

I love me some Mai Tai. The only British based female group of Surinamese (?) heritage that I can think of, they had 2 top-10 songs in England, which I absolutely adored. I used to get the " Now That's What I Call Music " tapes imported from the UK back in the 80s, and along with cheese like this exposed me for the first time to the Smiths, Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, just to name a few. Click here to hear their #9 song "Body And Soul" from 1985. and here's the video for "History" which made #3 on the Dance chart and #8 in the UK..

So Senator George Allen of Virginia had this little stump speech out in the western part of the state. Attending, as happens a lot in campaigns, was a staffer from his opponent Jim Webb's campaign. He was just there filming it, which is reasonable, they want to know what each other is campaigning on. Not to disrupt, or say a thing. Just to record. Well Sen. Allen had to "call out" the young man to the crowd. I guess he was trying to guess the young man's name, kinda like how the girl at Six Flags guesses your age and weight, and came up with.... Macaca. Now Allen has been offering a slew of explanations on this, most prominently that it looked like the man had a "mohawk". Here's the man, SR Sidharth. Nice mohawk. And how in the world do you get Macaca from mohawk? You don't. Apparently, macaque is a type of monkey, and a slang word in white North African neighborhoods as a slur to mean "dark skinned Arab". mmm. George Felix Allen's mot...

I get a chuckle at the "I listen to everything....but rap" cliche I read online soooo many times. It's understandable, given the violent, misogynist, homophonic, and basically puerile crap that is spoonfed to the masses on "pop" radio. Between the series of penis-extension braggadocio and indecipherable grunts, the poetry of the streets has become it's worst nightmare at times because of its own success. However, the hip-hop story doesnt start and end with 50 Cent, Master P, and Lil' Jon. Throughout the last 25 years or so of the evolution of the genre, there was been an underground to the underground, a niche of alternative hip-hop music which not only emphasizes the poetry and beat structure so vital to rap, but infusing influences from different musical styles to create more of an eclectic musical experience than most of anything seen before. A Tribe Called Quest were essential artists in this aspect, bringing jazz and free-flow poetry inspirations t...

Is it me, or has Lance Bass done something really freaky nip-tuck like to his face. I'm just sayin'.

Hey folks, it's that time again. As usual you can click on the name of the artist to bring up their webpage (right click to bring it up in a new window). This week finds Rodney Atkins on top for the third week, and says goodbye to songs by Tim McGraw, Mariah Carey, and Sugarland. Big moves are by 30 Seconds To Mars, Dierks Bentley, and Jessica Simpson. This Wk Song/Artist (Last Week In Parentheses) --------------------------------------------------------- 1. If You're Going Through Hell - Rodney Atkins (1) 2. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera (4) 3. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley (3) 4. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers (2) 5. What's Left Of Me - Nick Lachey (5) 6. Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall (6) 7. Get Together - Madonna (8) 8. Is It Any Wonder? - Keane (11) 9. Look On The Floor (Hypnotic Tango) - Bananarama (10) 10. A Little Too Late - Toby Keith (13) 11. Miss Murder - AFI (14) 12. S...