Category: Music

Remembering John Lennon: Watching the Wheels

Not long after Lennon’s death, the single “Watching the Wheels” was released.

On December 8, 1980 at around 10:50 p.m., John Lennon was shot outside his New York City apartment building, The Dakota. After being rushed to the hospital, he was pronounced dead on his arrival.  In a world where everything is a commodity, the album Lennon had signed earlier in the day for his killer went up for sale in 2012.

In the last few months of his life, Lennon was making a comeback with his Double Fantasy album and had songs in constant rotation on the radio and MTV. My favorite single from the album was released as a single not long after his death: “Watching the Wheels.”

Unfortunately, the song also makes me think of his death, but his death also gives deeper meaning to this song.  Lennon wrote “Watching the Wheels” about his years of retirement from music before returning to it.

Through my years of watching shadows on the wall since then, I have missed the music he would have continued making, but I appreciate the joy in the music he did give us.

Every year, there are various events remembering Lennon. For example, The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool remembers the anniversary by holding their annual John Lennon peace vigil.

What is your favorite John Lennon song or performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • John Lennon and Paul Simon Presenting Grammy for Record of the Year
  • The Latest and Last Beatles Song: “Now and Then”
  • Elton John’s Tribute to John Lennon: Where is the Garden of the “Empty Garden”?
  • Ringo Starr Records a John Lennon Song (with a little help from Paul McCartney)
  • “All You Need Is Love” Worldwide Broadcast
  • Sgt Pepper Documentary

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    Watch One of R.E.M.’s First Shows

    REM 688 Club 1981

    Wuxtry Records    , where R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe met record store clerk Peter Buck in Athens, Georgia, is posting videos of early R.E.M. shows. The video below is from an R.E.M. show at The 688 Club opening for Joe “King” Carrasco in February 1981, which is eighteen months before the band released its first collection of songs on vinyl and two years before Murmur was released.

    The video begins in the middle of R.E.M. covering Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” and ends with what later would be the band’s debut single, “Radio Free Europe.” Check it out. [2015 Update: The video from the 688 Club is no longer available, so below is the audio of “Radio Free Europe” from another 1981 show at Fridays’s in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 31, 1981.]

    For more information on this 40-minute set and other videos, check out the Slicing Up Eyeballs website.

    What do you think of the early R.E.M. performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • R.E.M. Calls It a Day
  • New Jayhawks Album: “Paging Mr. Proust”
  • Michael Stipe’s Tribute to David Bowie
  • Well … All Right: Buddy’s 75th Birthday Roundup
  • Micky Dolenz Covers R.E.M. Song That Was Partly Inspired By the Monkees: “Shiny Happy People”
  • “Roll Columbia” Captures Spirit of Woody Guthrie (Album Review)

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    Buy from Amazon

    All I Want for Christmas is for Mariah Carey to Sing With Jimmy Fallon and the Roots

    This week on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, as Fallon and The Roots played toy instruments, Mariah Carey joined them, along with some children, for a rousing rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is You.” Check it out.

    Although now it seems like “All I Want for Christmas” is a holiday classic that has been around forever, it was written by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff, becoming a hit song in 1994. There are a number of great versions, including Carey’s original and Olivia Olson‘s charming cover in the fun holiday movie Love Actually (2003). Now we can add this version with the Roots to the list.

    What is your favorite version of “All I Want for Christmas”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • I Wish It Was Christmas Today
  • New York Is Not “Invisible” When U2 Play on Fallon Debut
  • Pres. Obama Slow Jams the News with Jimmy Fallon
  • John Legend and The Roots Perform “Dancing in the Dark”
  • What Song Did George Bailey Sing?: A Quiz on Christmas Songs on the Screen
  • This Week in Pop Culture Roundup (11 Dec. 2011)

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    Buy from Amazon

    Take Five Dave Brubeck

    Dave Brubeck Take Five
    Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck passed away today of heart failure while he was on his way to the cardiologist. He would have turned 92 tomorrow. Other articles elsewhere will discuss his legacy, both for his music and for leading on some Civil Rights issues, for example, when he played black clubs in the South in the 1950s.

    But for now, let us listen to one of the great classics of jazz music and instead of saying “R.I.P.,” we will just say, “Take Five.”

    The above performance of “Take Five” with the Dave Brubeck Quartet is from 1964 in Belgium, with Brubeck on piano. The other musicians are Paul Desmond (alto saxophone), Eugene Wright (bass), and Joe Morello (drums).

    What is your favorite recording or performance by Dave Brubeck? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Charlie Haden’s “Spiritual”
  • Joe Ely’s “She Never Spoke Spanish to Me” (Song of the Day)
  • Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
  • Barbara Dane’s Cool Musical Legacy: “Wild Woman,” “Gasser,” “Hard-Hitter”
  • Ned Miller: The Shy Man Behind “From a Jack to a King”
  • Merle Haggard: “Kern River”

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    New Holiday Music From Sufjan Stevens: “Silver & Gold”

    Sufjan Stevens Christmas Amazon

    The prolific Sufjan Stevens has taken a break from making albums devoted to each of the fifty states to release a five-CD collection of original, covers, and classic holiday tunes. The set, entitled Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas Vols. 6-10 is a sequel to 2006’s Songs for Christmas, Vols. 1-5. So, if you have not been hearing enough holiday music to get you in the mood for the season, check out the three-hours on the collection of 52 songs.

    On his website, Stevens ponders “what is it about Christmas music that continues to agitate our aging heartstrings?” And he answers:

    “Christmas music does justice to a criminal world, marrying sacred and profane, bellowing obtuse prophecies of a Messiah in the very same blustery breath as a candy-coated TV-jingle advertising a string of lights and a slice of fruitcake. Gloria!

    “Who can save us from the infidels of Christmas commodity? Look no further, tired shopper, for your hero arrives as the diligent songwriter Sufjan Stevens: army of one, banjo in one hand, drum machine in the other, holed up in his room, surrounded by hymnals, oratorios, music charts, sacred harp books, photo-copied Readers Digest Christmas catalogs—all the weaponry of Yuletide incantations—singing his barbaric yawp above the snow-capped rooftops.”


    What is your favorite song on Sufjan Stevens’s new collection? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Mahalia Jackson: “Silent Night”
  • There Will Be Another Christmas
  • We sang, “Silent Night” All Day Long
  • Once Upon a Time in a Far Off Land (Steve Earle’s “Nothing But a Child”)
  • Christmas in Washington: A Song About Heroes
  • Happy Holidays

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