Somebody Likes It

By now, we're familiar with the Blackalicious mojo: Gift of Gab throwing obsessive, complicated rhymes over the steady propulsive backbeat dropped by one Chief Xcel, a formula that's earned the pair accolades.

Join us this week, as we discuss Band of Horses' 2006 (turns out, debut LP, after an EP), "Everything All the Time."

Let's be honest: Hug Of Thunder, for all of its good intentions, kind of sounds like something made by Hasbro: perhaps a giant, fluffy, crime-fighting machine—the likes of which, for all we know, could actually be one of the members of Broken Social Scene.

Whatever you think of Cracker -- they've been the subject of chart busting platitudes and some indie derision alike -- it's hard to understate the importance of David Lowery's contribution to popular music.

SON!

Pioneer of "trucker country," Jerry Reed, turns out, falls in my sweet spot. The man was rapping (albeit with a country twang) before that was a thing, could finger-pick his way out of a wet burlap sack, and was pretty damn funny while doing so.

Ryan shows up carrying a paper bag from which he subsequently removed a loaf of Wonder Bread and a bottle of Cream Soda. And I get it. That's how a lot of people feel when they think about the Everly Brothers. Malt shops and shit. American Graffiti.

In this case, buzz begat buzz when Oakland's Melina Duterte drunkenly uploaded a batch of hastily recorded tracks to Bandcamp, and launched a sensation.

Few bands can claim to have at least in some part founded a genre (in this case, alt-country, a.k.a. "y'all-ternative"), but in this instance it's apt. I've heard so many bands with lineage from this it's hard to quantify.

What a … tragedy. I'm not talking about when they took Surge soda off the market, or the final season of the A-Team, or even how all the eagles died because of all the DDT. No, I am referring to Billie Holiday's life. Essentially birth to death it was non-stop sadness.

We've been spending lots of time in the 70s, it seems, almost to the point of pricing shag carpeting. Oddly, Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, their undisputed US breakthrough record and the peak of their notoriety, takes me back...to 2009.