W♥M (Archive)

W♥M228: Christmas Will Be Magic

W♥M228: Christmas Will Be Magic (28 mins) Read More Kate Bush British singer Kate Bush is at the start of her Before the Dawn residency at Hammersmith Apollo in London. This is her first live performance since her The Tour of Life in 1979, so it's no surprise that within minutes of the announcement .…

This is the Christmas Edition with John and Vu.

News:

Band Aid 30 has the #1 Christmas single in the UK for their remake of "Do They Know It's Christmas?", featuring One Direction, Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran, Bono, Sam Smith, Rita Ora, Emeli Sande, Paloma Faith, Sinead O’Connor, Chris Martin and Seal (with Bono being the only singer from the original to take part).

U2 (minus Bono) celebrated World AIDS Day 2014 with a full concert with Chris Martin and Bruce Springsteen.

Christmas time:

Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (1960).

Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector (1963), featuring Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Crystals, etc.

Song of the show is Kate Bush's "December Will Be Magic Again", is a one-off single released in the U.K. in November 1980.

BONUS:

Original Christmas songs, in recent memory, Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (as recently covered by Fifth Harmony) and Wham!'s "Last Christmas" (as covered by Ariana Grande).

T.Rex's "Christmas Bop" is still a favorite.

Morrissey has a bad reputation for canceling shows.

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Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on podomatic.com

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Life's a gas

Read More Amy Campbell Amy Campbell is an acoustic folksy singer/songwriter from Toronto, Canada.

But, it really doesn't matter at all.
No, it really doesn't matter at all.
Life's a gas, I hope it's gonna last.

- T.Rex

AMY CAMPBELL
amycampbell.ca

You might remember Amy Campbell from an old interview. What has she been up to? New album, called Letters Home, coming out July 24th, 2012, apparently. The album was inspired by her visit to Nashville. You can preview song the tracks on her soundcloud page, including the new song "Gasoline". The track features Don on drums, Ben on bass and Aaron on pedal steel.

See her on tour:

Sunday, July 22nd - Halifax, NS
Tuesday, July 24th - Toronto, ON
Saturday, July 28th - Yarker, ON
Friday, August 10 - London, ON
Saturday, August 11 - St. Catherine's, ON
Friday, August 17 - Kingston, ON
Saturday, August 18 - Ottawa, ON

GASLIGHT ANTHEM
gaslightanthem.com

In our chat with Matt Pinfield, he let on that his favorite song at the moment is The Gaslight Anthem's "45". Any band that Matt Pinfield likes has got to be cool, right?

Well, the band is busy. I checked on their tour schedule, it's pretty amazing. When do they sleep?

They're stopping by Minneapolis at the tiny Fine Line Café on Wednesday, July 11th.

The new album, Handwritten , is coming out July 24th via Mercury Records. I'm pretty sure fans who attend a live show can pick up the album before the official release date.

Their never-ending tour dates:

Jul 05 The Independent San Francisco, CA Jul 07 Hawthorne Theater Portland, OR Jul 08 Crocodile Cafe Seattle, WA Jul 11 Fineline Minneapolis, MN Jul 12 Bottleneck Lawrence, KS Jul 13 Firebird St Louis, MO Jul 14 Bunberry Festival Cincinnati, OH Jul 16 The Opera House Toronto, Canada Jul 18 Mercy Lounge Nashville, TN Jul 19 Cat's Cradle Chapel Hill, NC Jul 20 U Street Washington, DC Jul 22 Middle East Boston, MA Jul 23 Upstate Concert Hall Clifton Park, NY Jul 24 Webster Hall New York, NY Jul 28 Scion’s Bonzai 2012 Rochester, NY Jul 29 WKRL's K-Rockathon Syracuse, NY Aug 13 Villa Manin Passariano Ud, Italy Aug 16 Pukkelpop Festival Kiewit, Belgium Aug 18 Area 4 Lüdinghausen, Germany Aug 19 Highfield Festival Leipzig, Germany Aug 22 Chiemsee Rock Chiemsee, Germany Aug 24 Leeds Festival Leeds, United Kingdom Aug 26 Reading Festival Reading, United Kingdom Sep 11 Agora Port Quebec City, Canada Sep 12 Bell Centre Montreal, Canada Sep 13 Ce Centre Ottawa, Canada Sep 14 Multiple Venues Chicago, IL Sep 15 Riot Fest Chicago, IL Sep 16 Eagles Ballroom Milwaukee, WI Sep 17 DeltaPlex Ebeye, Marshall Islands Sep 20 Bayou Music Center Houston, TX

Sep 21 DeLuna Fest Pensacola, FL Sep 22 Riot Fest South Dallas, TX Sep 24 The Fillmore Auditorium Denver, CO Sep 25 The Fillmore Auditorium Denver, CO Sep 28 Tempe Beach Park Tempe, AZ Sep 29 Honda Center Anaheim, CA Oct 01 Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas, NV Oct 02 Grand Sierra Theatre Reno, NV Oct 04 Save On Foods Victoria, Canada Oct 06 Stampede Park Calgary, Canada Oct 07 Edmonton EXPO Edmonton, Canada Oct 15 O2 Academy Brixton London, UK Oct 18 O2 Apollo Manchester, UK Oct 19 O2 Academy Glasgow Glasgow, UK Oct 20 O2 Academy Birmingham Birmingham, UK Oct 21 Ancienne Belgique Brussels, Belgium Oct 23 Paradiso Amsterdam, Netherlands Oct 25 E-Werk Cologne, Germany Oct 27 Jarhunderthalle Frankfurt, Germany Oct 28 Zenith Munich, Germany Oct 29 Gasometer Vienna, Austria Oct 31 LKA Longhorn Stuttgart, Germany Nov 01 Sporthalle Hamburg, Germany Nov 02 Columbiahalle Berlin, Germany Nov 03 Garage Saarbrücken, Germany Nov 04 La Cigale Paris, France Nov 05 Komplex Zurich, Switzerland Nov 06 Alcatraz Milan, Italy Nov 08 Sala Apolo Barcelona, Spain Nov 09 Sala Cats Madrid, Spain

WAKE UP MADAGASCAR
wakeupmadagascar.com

I have another show the date Wake Up Madagascar is coming to town, so I've asked Dave to cover this show for me.

If you were wondering what Wake Up Madagascar is, it's a collection of artists (Razia Said, Jaojoby, Charles Kelly, and Saramba) teaming up to end illegal logging in the rainforest of Madagascar and to bring awareness to the Lacey Act in the US.

Their scheduled tour dates:

FRI-July 13 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
SAT-July 14 - Madison, WI @ La Fête de Marquette
SUN-July 15 - Chicago, IL @ Martyr's
TUE-July 17 - Toronto, ON @ Lula Lounge
WED-July 18 - Montreal, QC @ Festival Nuits D'Afrique
THU-July 19 - Somerville, MA @ Johnny D's
FRI-July 20 - Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse
SAT-July 21 - New York City, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
TUE-July 24 - San Francisco, CA @ Yoshi's Jazz Club
THU-July 26 - Pasadena, CA @ Levitt Pavilion

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic ♥ +W♥M

W♥M097: Christmas Bop

W♥M097 [download (18min, 12mb)] (alternative)

For those who aren't familiar with this band, especially people outside of the UK, T-Rex was basically Marc Bolan, who help fueled a glam rock movement in British music in the 70s.

Originally Bolan's band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, was a vision of psychedelic-folk acoustic rock, which you'd only have to listen to music in the 60s to know that this was basically the popular music of the time. It wasn't until the band released "Ride a White Swan" under the shorten (and easier to spell) name, T-Rex. The song hit #2 on the UK charts and they had a certified hit song.

Using a similar stanza of electric guitar and hand-clapping, but this time adding a bassy-bass line, Bolan released another hit song "Hot Love". The song soared to number one and was so popular that even lolita pop singer, Lio, did a cover of this song in French, and UK band The Fattellis sang a weird mashup of T-Rex's "Hot Love" and Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La".

Like I said, outside of the UK, T-Rex saw little success, mostly because Marc Bolan met a tragic end at the age of 29. I don't know how true this is, as it is written in wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt, but according to the entry, Bolan had a fear of flying and chose to travel by car... so it's a bit of an irony that he died by a car accident.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, one of the best Christmas song is T-Rex's "Christmas Bop", originally scheduled as a holiday release in 1975, but eventually it got canceled by EMI records. I don't know the reasoning behind the cancellation, but if you listen to the lyrics, there might be a small reference to the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun".... Whatever the reason, there was a few pressing of the 7" that were made available to Bolan's fan club 7" - but the song was never made commercially available. So when you listen to the song, please note the unconventional soulful backup singers and violins, this is really unlike anything T-Rex that we're used to hearing.

With any good, nay, great song, Bolan made a few demo version of the song to see how well it tested. The first demo I have was released a few years ago under the compilation "Work in Progress", and in this version, you can hear the backup singers doing "Christmas, T-Rex-mas" more clearly than in the final mix, which when I hear "t-rex-mas", it makes the song cheesy. But what it has is more bass, which I wish were used in the final single mix.

Also, there was an even more tragic version of this song. This mix of the song features jingle bells or something and generally more "christmassy" sound.

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Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on mypodcast.com

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic