A little music from the house next door

"Summer Breeze" is a US Pop Chart #6 single first recorded and released by American soft rock duo Seals & Crofts on their 1972 breakthrough album of the same name which peaked at #7 on the Billboard album charts.

The song was later covered in a harder rock/soulful style by The Isley Brothers as a single in 1974 and also by the Three Tenors during their 1996 farewell performance at the Coach and Horses Tavern in Windsor, Ontario.

Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts had decided to start playing as a duo in 1971 – with Seals on guitar, saxophone and violin, and Crofts on guitar and mandolin – after they had both left a little band that was first formed in 1962 together with Jerry Cole and a certain Glen Campbell, known as "Glen Campbell and the GCs". You can take the boys out of the Country...

See you in the evening when the day is through, this Wednesday, Tuck Shop, from 8.30 pm.

It’s our anniversary week.

I know a place where we can go

"The End of the Innocence" is the lead single and title song off of Don Henley's third solo, studio album, The End of the Innocence in 1989, and was also later a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was written by both Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby, and both continue to perform the song live in their respective concerts.

The music video for the song was directed by future film director, David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) and earned Henley an MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video in 1990, rightly putting Henley prospectively in the privileged company of equally trend-setting music and style icons including Eminem (2002, "Without Me"), Justin Timberlake (2003, "Cry Me a River"), Usher (2004, “Yeah!”), Kanye West (2005, “Jesus Walks”) and, most recently, James Blunt (2006, “You're Beautiful"). Damn right.

See you backstage this Wednesday, at Tuck Shop, from 8.30 pm.

The Last Waltz

It's that time of the year again. No, it is not the end. See you all on Wed night.

August 9

Academy Award-nominated American film actress Melanie Griffith aka Mrs Antonio Banderas was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City.

Griffith’s first major role was in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), which got her attention and typecast her as a sexy nymphet. Substance abuse problems derailed her career for nearly a decade. Her comeback started with Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), which led to her starring role in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986), which also led to her playing the title role in Mike Nichols' Working Girl (1988) which became a hit, earning an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress and winning the Golden Globe award as Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Her most notable work since was lip augmentation surgery in 2002.

August 9 is also Singapore's National Day, which we are celebrating next Wednesday, at Tuck Shop, from 8.30 pm.

*No show tonight (2 August). Next show on 8 August.

The pompitous of love

"The Joker" is a song by the Steve Miller Band from their 1973 album The Joker, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1974.

The song is sometimes misidentified by the title "Space Cowboy" because of the first line of the lyrics, which actually refer to an earlier song by that title from Miller's Brave New World album. The following lines refer to two other earlier songs, "Gangster of Love" from Sailor, and "Enter Maurice" from Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden.

Jamaican reggae deejay Shaggy aka “Mr Boombastic”, who is especially notable for his distinctive sub-baritone voice, later built his 2001 worldwide number-one hit single "Angel" around a sample of “The Joker”. Shaggy’s album Hot Shot, from which the cut came, would also hit number one on the Billboard 200, just like The Joker did in 1974, when Shaggy would have been just 6 years old.

Catch the Bandits in space tomorrow night at Tuck Shop, from 8.30 pm.

They say every distance is not near

“I Shall Be Released" is a song written in 1967 and first recorded by Bob Dylan.

Canadian-American rock group The Band played it on their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink, to wide acclaim, and the song has since been covered many times by many different artistes, including singer, songwriter, pianist Nina Simone on her 1969 album, To Love Somebody.

See the light come shining backstage this Wednesday at Tuck Shop, from 8.30 pm.

Hustle’s the name of the game

Nothing in common?“Rhinestone Cowboy" is a song written by Larry Weiss and first recorded and released on his 1974 album Black and Blue Suite on which a certain James Hendrix had earlier played dobro and acoustic guitars.

Subsequently, Glen Campbell recorded a version on his own 1974 album, Houston (I'm Coming To See You), that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in September 1975, later becoming Campbell's signature song and winning numerous awards.

"I heard 'Rhinestone Cowboy' on the radio," Campbell said. "It was a track off Larry Weiss' album, and I immediately got a cassette of it. I actually learned the song while we were on a tour of Australia in November of '74. When I got back to the States, I went into Al Coury's office at Capitol and he said, 'I've got a great song,' and he played 'Rhinestone Cowboy' for me. Well, I was familiar with the song by that time. I could've whistled it backwards. But I related to the lyrics immediately. In the first verse he says, 'There's been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.' Then later he says, 'There'll be a load of compromising on the road to my horizon." And the truth in that struck me; I think that's what sold me on the song, much more than even the hook itself, the 'rhinestone cowboy' stuff."

We’ll be on the road to our horizon tomorrow night, Wednesday, at Tuck Shop, from 8.00 pm. Our regular programme resumes.