I just listened to a really fun segment on "The Next Big Thing":
Texas-based band Brave Combo plays an eclectic blend that’s part polka, part punk, part habanera and much more. Here, cooking show meets performance chat when Brave Combo band leader Carl Finch shows host Dean Olsher how the band mixes all these ingredients together.
Do you know these guys, hayden? "Know of them," I mean. Not that I expect you to know every band, but you are our man on the ground. (Note: the stream was pretty bad when I listened, but the music was a blast.)
I love Skynyrd. Ronnie VanZant was a huge loss. Gold and Platinum, a retrospective compiled by Gary Rossington and Allen Collins (two of the three guitars going at it on "Free Bird") after the plane crash that killed VanZant, guitarist Steve Gaines & his sister, backing vocalist Cassie, seems to be out of print, but this is a good intro if you aren't familiar with them. Cheap, good selection, not comprehensive but a good place to see if you like them. For some reason I find myself singing "Gimme Three Steps" just about every time I go running. Wonderful song.
Pink Floyd was about as hard to miss where/when I grew up as Skynyrd, Zep IV & Who's Next. But I was still surprised, stunned even, the first time I saw Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees, and after thinking "what IS that?" for most of the credits, realizing that it was "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon. (Click on the second link to get some sense of how out of place -- not wrong, just surprising -- that it seemed.)
I've had a Todd Rundgren song stuck in my head since 8 this morning.
We gotta get you a woman
It's like nothin' else to make you feel sure you're alii-iiive...
Okay, maybe that's not the one. Good song, though.