Husker Du

20 Musical Moments to Die For

January 23, 2009 by Jim Connelly

Somewhere underneath all of that hair is Neil Young. This month, on Musical Moments to Die For: secrets, influences, and secret influences, all book-ended by the two best bands to ever come from Athens, GA.

We’ve also got the front-runners for greatest guitar and organ solos ever; Neil Young’s most despairing moment; and not one, not two, but three variations of the beat solidified by the late, great Ellas McDaniel.

As always, I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, more like traps. The parts of these songs that bring me back to them over and over again.

This is the sixth in a series: The first one had 25, the second one had 24, the third one had 23, the fourth one had 22, the fifth one had 21.

And yeah, you probably see the pattern and think you know the endgame, but I can promise you that there’s a twist!

23 Musical Moments to Die For

October 3, 2008 by Jim Connelly

James Brown, The Godfather of Soul!! You can talk about genres, artists, albums, or even songs, but sometimes what keeps us coming back to music is the discovery of the transcendent musical moment. For me, “the moment” is the part of the song that fully and utterly engages me; the reason that I keep coming back to it.

I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, because the purpose of a hook is the draw you into a song. I’m really talking more about traps: the part of a song that that keeps you there.

The is the third in a series. The first one had 25, the second one has 24, this one has 23.

Every single moment I’ve listed below kills me single every time I hear it.

Oh, and this isn’t in any kind of order, despite the numbering.

Sampling Your Way To Better Art

March 28, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

Was it just two weeks ago that I discussed darknets? Time really does fly when you’re having fun. I was reminded of that column as I read Scott McLemee’s discussion about the out-of-control litigation surrounding music sampling. Like McLemee, when I heard about the Ohio Players court case cited in the article’s lead, my first reaction was “They’re still together?”

Later in the article, McLemee notes that it usually the case that the person who owns the copyright isn’t a person — which doesn’t actually answer the Ohio Players question — it’s a corporation, generally the label. And thanks to copyright laws that increasingly favor the copyright holder — badly skewing the purpose of copyright protection — the age-old creative process is being threatened.

Okay, not really. Creativity being what it is (creative) means that artists will always find a way around roadblocks.