Husband-and-wife led Pomplamoose have found an atypical business model that works for them–to the tune of about 2 million YouTube subscribers.
Where artists have historically promoted physical product with music videos, Pomplamoose have subverted the dominant paradigm in that their videos are the songs. “Videosongs”.
There is no lip-syncing. Every vocal is performed on camera. Every instrument you hear, you will see.
Literally what you see is what you get.
Jack and Nataly Conte and friends want to demystify the music process and a culture that seems to put artists and bands in some rarified realm.
Their videos remove the “smoke and mirrors”, as they put it, replacing fakery with authenticity, the pedestal with accessibility. The only rarified thing here is their talent.
While most of the material they perform is cracking covers and brilliant mashups, “Bust Your Kneecaps” is an original. It’s a charming, darkly comic ode to the dangers of breaking up with the wrong girl.
From Earle’s last MCA studio album (the label decided to cut him loose after the live record that followed).
After losing his record deal Steve got clean while serving time for drug and weapons charges, though he’d done some of his best work while his personal life was going off the rails due to cocaine and heroin addiction.
This song peaked at #37 on the Mainstream Rock charts. It would be a decade before Earle would crack a US chart of any kind again.
The machine gun drum fill at 4:28 is the kind of emotional impact moment that owed more to arena rock than Nashville. Earle’s songwriting stretched country’s envelope, and often sat more comfortably in a rock arrangement.
Listening to Shivaree is like looking through a prism of musical facets and moods. The torch song sensibilities are overlaid with Cowboy Junkies alt country leanings. It’s dark. It’s creepy. It’s coffeehouse vibe. It’s smokey late-night last call. It’s jagged with reverb and Tom Waits cacophonous clash. It’s smooth with a sultry R&B feel. Wait, was that a banjo?
Pulling it all together into an appealing blend is the voice of Ambrosia Parsley, she of the Wednesday Addams besuited cover photo, whose interesting past is explored in the post linked below.
Shivaree disbanded in 2007 after four full-length albums, 2 EPs and various singles.
John Denver’s credentials as a songwriter are impressive. He is also the subject of a unique bit of music trivia in that his first two top 40 hits have been adopted as official state songs.
Colorado recognized “Rocky Mountain High” as such in 2007. And in 2014 “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (co-written by Denver with Bill Danoff and Tammy Nivert) was given the same distinction by the state of West Virginia.
But Denver wasn’t averse to putting his stamp on other writers’ work if it spoke for him.
And Randy Sparks’ moving ballad “Today”, a #17 hit in 1964 for Sparks’ folk group the New Christy Minstrels, is one of the most sublime songs Denver ever sang.
Denver’s beautifully recorded live double LP An Evening with John Denver reached #2 on the pop album chart and was a #1 country album in an era when double and even triple live albums cracked the top 10 with regularity.
Adolf Fredrik Girls Choir: “Varmlandsvisan” (1993)
Choral music from one of Sweden’s most acclaimed and awarded choirs, representing the Adolf Fredrik Music School in Stockholm.
The choir is comprised of girls from grades 6 to 9, so membership turns over each year, but the spirit and sound remain consistent, and consistently excellent, through the years.
She just turned seven yesterday. Seems young, but some seem to gather in more in seven trips around the sun than others. She’s always looking for the next thing to love, the next thing to dive into. Like her mom did at seven.
A musically-obsessed grandpa throws a lot of things her way. Certain things have stuck, become obsessions of her own. She loves Herman’s Hermits, Veggietales, Vivaldi, singing cats, the Cowsills, Julieta Venegas, ABBA, Veruca Salt singing “I Want it Now”, Lennon’s leather-tonsilled “Twist and Shout”, McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, this video, and, most obsessively, “Maybe” from Annie.
She’s long been enamored of the two better-known songs from this musical. She’s watched the “Hard Knock Life” movie clip on YouTube countless times. And when we visited a community park with an old bandshell she took the stage to give her grandpa an exclusive performance of “Tomorrow”, taking immense pride in holding the final note even longer than Andrea McArdle did.
Finally this year the off-Broadway production of Annie came to town. We knew that “Tomorrow” and “Hard Knock Life” would be highlights.
What we didn’t know was that an unfamiliar song would be the highlight.
In the show’s first number, lead character Annie is quieting a younger housemate who’s had a bad dream. The conversation turns to their dreams of being taken in by a real family. Annie, who holds onto hope that her parents will return for her any day, sings the heartbreaking “Maybe”.
Grandpa and granddaughter alike were, apparently, blindsided. Enthralled. That moment, that song, that performance–it was magic. The kind of moment you wish could last and want to relive over and over.
So by the end of intermission she’d made sure I’d put “Maybe” on the Spotify playlist she curates on my phone. And on the way home from the theater we heard one song on repeat. And after every play she asked me if I was sick of it yet. And I answered honestly that I wasn’t.
A couple days later we went to our favorite coffee shop for chai and to the roller rink. It’s become a semiregular routine of ours and involves a bit of a drive. We stopped at Chipotle to pick up some dinner, then to my house to eat it, then back home for her. I think I heard “Maybe” over 30 times that day.
“Are you sick of it yet?”
“Nope”
And even if I was, I wouldn’t say it. She’ll get no wet blanket from me. It’s a joy to see the joy she gets from music. In a young person there’s no pretense and no posing; the love of music is luminous, instinctive and real.
Even when the car contains two older brothers, their devices, their more contemporary urban music tastes and their propensity to tease her for her musical sensibilities, she only sings louder, completely undeterred.
This is the gift of being inside the music, coupled with that of being too young to feel shame about loving the stuff you love.
Annie has become a bit of an obsession for both of us. The next musical obsession will come along of course, but until it does we watch YouTube Annie performances and compare the Annies over the years (she prefers Brooklyn-accented Lilla Crawford while I’m partial to the original cast’s McArdle). We rate which girls sing the best versions of this song that stole both our hearts unexpectedly.
We can’t wait until another production of Annie comes to town, and this time “Maybe” will be the most anticipated moment.
Every Moment Has A Song 