Nat King Cole

NPR's excellent series, 50 Great Voices, has featured some incredible singers over recorded music history, from a variety of music genres. One of our favorites, Nat King Cole, gets his due props as what we think is possibly the greatest voice of the 20th Century (oh and he played a mean piano to boot!). Check him out here laying it down with jazz giants Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins.

Another Music Loss - Malcolm McLaren

First it was Alex Chilton, then Mark Linkous, now Malcom McLaren has passed away. An important figure in the birth of punk rock in the 70s, he went on to produce and record some really great stuff. From our dear friend Peter "Dishy" Ambrose in NYC: Malcolm McLaren was most likely the biggest influence on how we hear music today. He manufactured a band - The Sex Pistols - out of nobodies - and he changed the face of music. From svengali to visionary, Malcolm was destined to stir the pot. Taking the political British tempest in a teapot of the late 70s and throwing into the soup an anarchistic group of establishment rebels (all self created) - he opened up the punk movement which either spawned (the Clash, The Damned) or spurned on the other side of the pond (Ramones, Blondie) to bigger audiences - this man took the shallow pond of rock and roll and created an ocean of possibilities...... After the pistols he managed Adam and the Ants and then took some of the ants, grabbed Annabella Lwin from a dry cleaner and created bow wow wow - more of the similar tribal rhythms the ants were using but with a more ferocious marketing. UP YOURS! BONDAGE! Bow Wow Wow were an instand success in the UK (which later had a brief slot on the US charts)......however the man had to move on...he created the iconic Duck Rock LP in ____ which was a mixture of NYC underground rappers and scratchers - using snippets from radio shows and sampling all types of sounds into his groove - BUFFALO GALS was an international smash - followed by DOUBLE DUTCH - the sidewalk skip rope game girls in the NYC ghetto were skipping to. He literally introduced the entire idea of sampling and blending - which we should thank him for and also hate him for - see the current hip hop scene. He didn't stop there - his next solo venture was a mix of pop and opera! Imagine that!!! The album FANS had the internanional smash MADAME BUTTERFLY which blended beautifully the aria of butterfly with a smart rap....it still sounds as current today for it's individuality and beauty as the day it was released......McLaren followed this with his WALTZ DARLING album - which he wanted to blend old time waltzes with pop...not as brilliant as FANS, however he did DEEP IN VOGUE - a song about Vogueing - a year before Madonna's Vogue. This man was always ahead of his game. His later releases were either regurgitations of his Do Ya Like Scratchin's Days or Bow Wow Wow rhythym puzzles....he released a BEAUTIFUL 2 CD called PARIS all about his love for the city. The first disc had 'vocals' by the lieks of Catherine Deneuve and Sonia Rieke;, the second a gorgeous instrumental. His influence is grand. He created the idea of men creating a britney spears. Obviously there were manufactured bands in the past (The Monkees - who of course grew out of the factory that created them), The Archies ( a cartoon) and The Partridge Family (A tv show) ...however McLaren knew how to take a potential "client" and groom them into his idea of expression. And that is what he left us with. A great burst of energy. There would be no Soiuxsie & The Banshees, The Cure, Joy Division, The Clash, Echo & the Bunnymen...there would have been no NEW WAVE for the music industry to respond to the raw sounds of the sex pistols so we would have had no Duran Duran, Human League, OMD.....you can lead this up to every band who has ever sneared or given the middle finger to a camera. There are only two big influences on the scene since 1970 and they have dominated everything - Kraftwerk and Malcolm McLaren, death of butterfly