Gang of Four: Still relevant after all these years

When I was but a young lad, listening to The Mighty Q107 here in Toronto, I heard this great riff. It was used as background music for a concert listings piece that Bob Mackowitz used to do called "Street Beat". I eventually called into the station and asked Bob himself what the song was called. He told me "Naturals Not In It" by the Gang of Four. It was on their 1979 album Entertainment. It's still a great riff to this day.



And it's in a Kinect ad.



And here's "You'll Never Pay for the Farm" from their new album Content.

John Grant: Powerful with a Light Touch

Continuing in the spirit of my post about Dan Mangan, here's a quick one about John Grant, who I was lucky enough to see with Midlake at the Mod Club last year. I found him quite a powerful performer with great songs. Here are two of them from his album Queen of Denmark.

Here he is performing "I Wanna Go To Marz" on Jools...



... and him performing "Where Dreams Go To Die" in a Parisian Cafe. Somehow perfect.

New Radiohead. Amazing.

Cool. The new album from Radiohead is out. It's called The King of Limbs and here's the first video.

Dan Mangan: I sometimes like it mellow

Dan Mangan plays a type of music that's usually a little mellow for me. However, as you know, I'm all about the passion. And Dan Mangan does exude a certain understated enthusiasm that I enjoy. Here are a couple of videos from his acclaimed album Nice, Nice, Very Nice. I'd have to agree that it is.

Here's "Road Regrets"



And "Robots"

Chikita Violenta, Indeed

Just found a cool new band by way of a free song of the day from emusic. They're from Mexico City (worst traffic in the world, but that's another story) and they are heavily influenced by indie rock. The first comparison that comes to mind when I checked out their new release TRE3S and their 2007 release The Stars and Suns Sessions is Broken Social Scene. Who knows, maybe they named it after the track "Stars and Sons" from You Forgot It In People. Anyway, they're called Chikita Violenta and I think they're pretty cool.

Check them out and see what you think.

Here are "Laydown" and "War" from The Stars and Suns Sessions





And here's "Tired" from TRE3S



They even do a cover of "Eight Miles High"