One of my favorite apps on my Android phone is
SoundHound- the app listens to music and identifies it for you. Just press one button, hold the phone up to the speaker, and presto! This is super-handy for identifying songs from the radio, incidental music from TV and movies, and in public spaces. Once it IDs the song, I simply press "bookmark", then I can go back later and buy the songs wherever I want. Unlimited uses are free, so perhaps I overuse it, but the novelty has not worn off yet.
- "Breaking The Girl" Anna Nalick sings that song "Breathe (3AM)" which I included in my last mix. I found her cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song while buying the "Breathe" song on Amazon.
- "Tree By The River" Iron & Wine
- "Clocks" An amazing salsa-ification of the Coldplay recording by something called 'Rhythms Del Mundo'. It's not a cover- more like a remix.
- "Quattro (World Drifts In)" Calexico, from their album Feast Of Wire.
- "Untitled" [live] Shockra: One of the coolest experiences of my Emerson College experience was working at WERS. One of the cool experiences of that cool experience is my three-year association with the world-funk-jazz combo Shockra. I was a host and manager of the world music show Gyroscope, and Shockra became our favorite band. We played their music every day, mostly from promo cassettes, we saw them live a dozen times across town, and they came to the studio to perform live in the studio regularly. In 1993 we released a live CD, which included this epic 10 minute track, maybe Shockra's most ambitious song. I was thrilled to be sitting in the studio for the recording, as the host of that day's live music. After their encore, the crowd in the control room went apoplectic; at the end of the CD you can hear (21-year-old) me "out-troduce" the song, then open the control room door to let in the applause.
- "Let The Light In" I don't know anything about Bob Schneider, but I heard this song on the radio, and it has a nice thumb-piano part.
- "Sound And Vision" from David Bowie's Low (1977). Fun fact: David Bowie's lead vocal does not begin until exactly halfway through this three-minute song.
- "Burning Down The House" this live performance, from Stop Making Sense, is far superior to Talking Heads' studio recording.
- "One Thing Leads to Another" The Fixx
- "On Melancholy Hill" Gorillaz
- "Les Yeux De Ton Pere" Fun story here: I used to play this Franco-Clash song ("Eyes of Your Father") from Les Negresses Vertes, regularly on WERS Gyroscope in the early 1990s. Fast forward to the MP3 era, the LP is out of print and the song is not available for 99c download. The song was also included in the movie French Kiss, and its soundtrack CD. I wasn't about to pay $17 for one song, but so I have kept my eye out for it--- until May 2011, when I finally found the French Kiss CD at a church tag sale. Persistence pays off!
- "You, Now" I heard this Greg Laswell song on the "Adult Alternative" channel on my cable TV.
- "Mandolin Rain" This recent live performance from Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers is a little too "jazzy" for me. I don't know if he has discarded most of the melodic hooks for artistic reasons, or because he's too old to hit the notes anymore, but it's not the same melody anymore.
- "Sweet Love" Anita Baker
- "Come and Find Me" Josh Ritter: As heard on the ABC-TV show Castle!
- "To Kingdom Come" Passion Pit
- "Jane Says" Jane's Addiction
- "Time To Pretend" MGMT
