R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World

The New Bleak: Trauma, Haunting And The Cultural Obsession With Darkness “Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To case upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!” John Keats, Ode To A Nightingale Dark and thorny is de pathwayWhere de pilgrim makes his waysBut beyond dis vale of sorrowLie de fields of endless days Harriet Tubman, (1820-1913) “I caught the darkness baby, and I’ve got it worse than you.” Leonard Cohen, The Darkness

Ralph Stanley - Calling My Children Home R.E.M. History[edit] Formation: 1980–1981[edit] Record producer Mitch Easter (far left) was important in defining the band's sound, producing all of their material until 1984 The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group.[9] They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens.[10] R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene.[11] Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States.

"Hunger Games," Taylor Swift reinvent soundtracks - The Hunger Games Clad in a modest dress and made up to look like she’s not made up, Taylor Swift wanders pensively through a bare wilderness in her new video for “Safe & Sound.” It’s the first single from the upcoming “Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond” and a rarity in today’s pop landscape: a true soundtrack hit. The clip, which was directed by Philip Andelman, strives for Post-Apocalyptic Rural; you almost expect to see zombies off in the mist, lumbering toward brains. But nothing attacks Swift on her walk through the wilderness, and the only activity she encounters are fires off in the distance — an omen of storms and doom approaching. Nothing much happens in the video, but its muted color palette, patient pace, and most of all that looming threat make it unusually effective. With its piercing guitar theme and the subdued production courtesy of T Bone Burnett, the song reflects that mood, even as it gives so much time over to lyric-less passages.

ReVamp - Sweet Curse Eric Church and Jason Aldean, Country Music Outlaws Mr. Church’s whiskey-soaked gospel is not quite the same as the squeaky-clean traditionalist orthodoxy that grips much of Nashville these days, but it is orthodoxy nonetheless, a belief in the fundamental roughness of country music, even its transgressive potential. And yet in spite of Mr. Church’s modest success — a couple of gold albums, a robust touring life — the masculinity crisis in mainstream country continues unabated, with soft rock becoming a more relevant touchstone for the genre than its ragged roots. That in turn made for a new archetype: the approachable outlaw, who wants to tweak the system from within but who puts little at risk.

Carrie Underwood Album, ‘Blown Away’ After that it’s a one-two punch of brutality: a quick-paced “Blown Away,” in which a young woman hides in her basement, waiting out a tornado that she hopes her abusive, alcoholic father sleeping upstairs doesn’t survive; followed by “Two Black Cadillacs,” in which a wife and a mistress conspire to kill the man they share, not a murder ballad so much as a murder celebration. Ms. Underwood enjoys rage; her huge voice, both naïve and muscular, is well suited to it. Her best songs have historically been in the range between fury and resentment. “Blown Away” is only her fourth album, but that number belies her concrete-hard place in the country firmament, with a combination of vocal ambition and toughness that recalls a younger Martina McBride.

The Centennial of Gil Evans Brings Two Big Jazz Events That’s worth remembering now, in the face of two big commemorative events. The first, Thursday through Sunday at the Jazz Standard, features the same ensemble heard on “Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans,” an extraordinary album released this week on what would have been Evans’s 100th birthday. The second, next Monday at the Highline Ballroom, will showcase the Gil Evans Orchestra, stocked with alumni and guests and led by the bandleader’s son Miles Evans. Both engagements seem likely to shed new light on Evans as a composer and arranger, which says something about the enduring mystique of his art. Evans, who died in 1988, has hardly been an obscure figure in jazz.