Blog Posts by Robert of the Radish

FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios rightly calls itself "The Heartbeat Of The Muscle Shoals Sound". If you're not familiar, "the Muscle Shoals Sound" is a distinctly Southern soul sound that came out of the Muscle Shoals, Alabama area, and is just as important as other regional movements that may be more well-known to the modern masses. Artists connected to Muscles Shoals reads like a music legends list.

FAME Studios was founded in the late 1950s, and is still going strong today, fueled by its deeply influential history and reputation for quality. FAME is a veritable hit factory, and for this playlist I've selected 20 songs that were recorded at, or published by FAME. This list only scratches the surface, so if you like what you hear I would highly suggest a deep dive.

FAME Recording Studio Sampler - Muscle Shoals, Alabama

1. What Kind Of Fool (Do You Think I Am) - The Tams 

2. Hold What You've Got - Joe Tex

3. Tell Mama - Etta James 

4. When A Man Loves A Woman -

I've been listening to the new Henning Ohlenbusch album Henning Goes To The Movies. The record contains nine songs, each written to correspond with nine different movies. Ohlenbusch said this about the project, "Like everything in life, movies are experienced differently by each viewer. On this record, I tried to express in music how these nine films impacted me personally. At the outset, I established one rule: I was not allowed to revisit a film until I composed and recorded the song that it inspired me to write. In this way, I hope that each piece genuinely conveys the ways in which each movie has stuck with me throughout the years." Well, it should be no surprise to anyone who follows this blog that I'm a fan of Henning's approach. So for this list I've lifted the first song off Henning's new album, "Joe Versus The Volcano" and then selected nine more tracks that were directly inspired by, or share the name of a film starring Tom Hanks. 

So, what would you add?

Tom Hanks Movies:

Last week I discovered what I think may be the holy grail for online music and playlisting. It's called The Echo Nest, and they're doing what I've been dreaming about for a decade now. There's no denying that online digital music has made it possible to easily pull playlists together, in a plethora of new and exciting ways, but it has mostly been a manual slog. The missing link? Having robust and detailed song-level metadata that is easily searchable. Want to create a playlist of songs in 10/4 time, or songs produced by John Boylan? You better be ready to sit down and spend some serious time on research. I understand this first hand as I've done it for hundreds of playlists here at the Y! Music Playlist blog. But The Echo Nest is finally building the platform that will take music archiving, search and discovery into the future -- we're talking Star Trek stuff here.

Here is a description of what The Echo Nest is doing as pulled from their website:

"The Echo Nest platform is powered by

This past week Neal Schon has delivered the tabloids and gossip freaks mana from heaven! The story starts with ex-Real Housewives D.C. "star" Michaele Salahi, who continues to miraculously find ways to get press. In 2009, Michaele crashed a White House party with her husband Tareq in what would touch off a firestorm of publicity. Ever since then the scheming socialite has been working hard  to score another reality series. And she may have just succeeded with her newest endeavor. Journey guitarist Neal Schon. Rumor has it that the two have been engaging in an adulterous affair for quite some time, and have finally come clean about their undying love for one another. Michaele's husband actually called the police because he thought she was abducted after she ran away with Schon, and Neal leaves his 4th wife behind to pick up the pieces of his infidelity. Yep, 57-year old Neal Schon certainly gets around! But not just with women. Along with his DNA, Schon has also spread his musical seeds

Radar is a pretty cool technology that we take for granted all the time. It warns us of dangerous things like storms, enemy bomber planes, speeding motorists, or fastballs through the use of radio waves. Of course, musicians are pretty in tune with radio waves, so it makes sense that radar has been included in many worthy songs. Big Joe Turner describes his girl as having "radar eyes", meaning that if he fools around, he'll surely be detected. Golden Earring used radar to describe a spiritual love affair with lyrics like, "She sends a cable comin' in from above / We don't need to talk at all / We got a thing that's called radar love". And The Bottle Rockets tell the story of an over zealous cop and his beloved "Radar Gun". These are just a few excellent songs that use radar as a main theme, but there are many others. This playlist includes 15 in total, and I've certainly overlooked a bunch.

So, what would you add?

Radar Songs

1. Radar Love - Golden Earring 

2. Radar Gun - The Bottle

I was looking through the music on my hard drive today for something to play and stopped at Tom Petty. I've always considered him one of rock's finest songcrafters, but I realized that I'd not sat down and listened to a full Tom Petty album in quite some time. So, I put on Damn The Torpedoes and then proceeded to burn through five more Petty albums before I ended my day. Considering his influence, and the strength of his hits, I thought it was about time to put together a playlist of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers cover songs. To build it, I found a quality cover song for each of the tracks featured on his 1993 Greatest Hits album. I apologize in advance to you Taylor Swift fans for not including her version of "American Girl", but I could not bring myself to use it over Everclear's version.

What would be in your Tom Petty covers list?

Tom Petty Covers: The Greatest Hits

1. American Girl - Everclear

2. Breakdown - Grace Jones

3. Listen To Her Heart - The Pietasters

4. I Need to

I don't keep up with what the latest country hits very well. And it's not because I dislike country. In fact, I count some classic country artists, like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, as all time favorites -- of any genre.  But I do tend to avoid the mainstream, and instead, search for new music based on personal recommendations and positive reviews. It works well for me. But sometimes I start to feel out of touch, and that's not good for a music writer. The worst is when my kids start singing some new hit song, and I have no clue who it is. I've always been the unstumpable one, and it drives me nuts when I realize  there's a lot of new music I haven't heard, even though I dedicate time every day to new music. Contemporary country tends to be a genre I ignore too much, so I've put together this playlist of the current top 10 country songs according to Billboard. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, not bad at all. And I was happy to see some George in there.

Current Top 10

It's a sad fact of a changing world -- magazines don't have the power they once did. There is an incredible amount of excellent and focused content available for free on the Internet today, and magazine circulation has been in a steady decline for years because of this fact. And there doesn't seem to be any relief in sight for the decline in hard copy sales of magazines. Some believe tablet computers, specifically the iPad, may be a saviour for the magazine industry, but no matter how they're delivered, magazines will always have a place in popular culture. Along with newspapers, they're a great way to read up of subjects that interest you without having to invest too much time. The magazine has been used by the songwriter in thousands of songs, and for this playlist I've pulled together 15 magazine related tracks. There are certainly a lot more.

So what would you add?

Magazine Songs

1. Cover Of The Rolling Stone - Dr. Hook

2. Magazine - The Hold Steady

3. Dirty Magazine - Joe Henry