Loading ...In honor of Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary today, here’s the smooth-jazziest rendition of the Sesame Street theme, as sung by Joshua Radin. Can’t you just imagine Oscar the Grouch wearing a beret sipping an espresso while listening to this play in a piano bar in the West Village? Or maybe that’s just us?
Take a jump to check out the PBS show’s top 5 pop-star appearances: More »
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On The Tube
Happy 40th B-Day, Sesame Street!
2:43 PM on Tue Nov 10 2009 by Becky Bain
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No. 40: Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and the Wu-Tang Clan, “For Heaven’s Sake 2000”
1:00 PM on Mon Oct 26 2009 by Christopher R. Weingarten
At least when Limp Bizkit made rap-metal, they had a vague understanding of what “rap” was. More »
Programming Notes
Weather Channel Gives Smooth Jazz A Pretty Crappy Forecast
3:00 PM on Mon Jul 6 2009 by Maura
The saxy smooth sounds that accompanied the Weather Channel’s Local On The 8s forecast breaks became so synonymous with the cable network’s identity, there were even Weather Channel-branded CD compilations. But it’s a new day, and the sultrier side of jazz is being abandoned by program directors en masse–and the Weather Channel, no stranger to which way the wind is blowing, has decided to follow suit. (“We wanted music that would get their attention–and this has,” an exec told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) So what’s on the channel’s new, up-to-date playlist? Glad you asked! After the jump, the station’s daytime music picks for June 2009. More »
News
Chicago Will Be Smooth No Longer
10:30 AM on Fri May 22 2009 by Maura
At the top of the hour, Chicago smooth-jazz stalwart WNUA will flip from its 22-years-entrenched format to the Spanish-language programming design known as “Mega,” in the latest example of the decimation of the format beloved by so many cabbies that’s taken place over the past two years. But for the first time in my extensive reading on this topic, I’ve found out just why radio companies seem to be fleeing from the sultry sounds of “Piano In The Dark” in droves: More »
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No. 50: Optimo’s Mix CDs
3:00 AM on Tue Dec 16 2008 by Jess Harvell
If pressed, I’d probably claim Optimo—the Scottish DJ duo of JD Twitch and JG Wilkes—as my favorite 21st-century musical act/group/collective/whatever. Optimo’s mix CDs—the fleet-but-schizoid groove-hopping of 2004’s How to Kill the DJ; the deranged mix of acid rock and acid house on 2005’s Psyche Out; the brooding rhythms of 2007’s Walkabout—virtuosically entwine supposedly dance floor-unfriendly tracks with records with from across the pan-global history of disco, house, and techno. If that sounds simple or commonplace, ask yourself why so many DJs desperately cling to the easy-to-mix 4/4 stomp of the latest identikit dance smash, whether they spin for screaming bridge-and-tunnel house crowds or furrow-browed minimal techno aesthetes*.
David Cook: American Idol Or America’s Next Top Model?
3:30 AM on Wed Sep 24 2008 by Maura
OK, first of all: The picture at left is the promotional picture that Sony/BMG is distributing with material regarding American Idol winner David Cook, and, um, what happened? It’s like they decided to blast away his bartender-next-door looks (and his apple cheeks!) with Photoshop’s “airbrushed makeup” filter. I found said picture next to the stream of Cook’s new, Chris Cornell-assisted single “Light On,” which is over at PopEater. Unsurprisingly, I was pretty much right on the money about it being the soundtrack to every late-night drugstore run you’re going to embark on over the coming months, but I was surprised at its overwhelming resemblance to a lite-rock staple of years gone by.
MGMT: Bringing Smooth Jazz To The Underground?
12:00 PM on Tue Sep 9 2008 by Maura
While I was in Los Angeles, a song that sounded like it had somehow escaped from the Muzak of the late ’70s, and subsequently been grunged up by being loose on the streets during the intervening 30 years, kept entering my field of hearing–on car radios, in-hotel Muzak, ambient music in restaurants. (Somehow it didn’t crack the playlist of the two Rite Aids I visited during my visit (I always forget something when I got away), but that could have been the timing.) The track was fine at first, and it slowly grew on me thanks to its sleazy end-of-the-night vibe; by day four, the thing was lodged in my brain, and I wasn’t really minding all that much. As it turned out, the track in question was not from some lost album from the ’70s, but rather “Electric Feel” by the commenter-section-igniting MGMT. More »
Philly Is Lacking In Smooth Today
10:30 AM on Tue Sep 9 2008 by Dan Gibson
As part of Idolator’s extensive coverage of the demise of “smooth jazz” radio, it’s our duty to inform you that WJZZ in Philadelphia, owned by the Greater Media group, flipped away from the format yesterday. More »
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Idolator Takes On The Warped Tour: Free Hugs, Five-Dollar Water Bottles, And Many Other Ways To Spend Money
2:00 AM on Mon Jul 28 2008 by Maura
About one-third of my Saturday was spent in the general environs of Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, whose parking lot played host to the New York area stop of the skate/punk/emo/exercises in branding festival known as the Warped Tour. Not only were there some 100 bands playing condensed sets during the course of those eight hours, there were merch tents (one for each band on the traveling bill), signings, acoustic sets, petitions to sign, skaters performing tricks, free energy drinks, pro-vegetarianism propaganda, shutter-shade vendors, and a store with Barack Obama-branded items. Not to mention the chance to play Rock Band alongside the session musicians backing up this country’s current No. 1 song. After the jump, a rundown of the day. It will be somewhat disjointed, in honor of every single one of my joints aching after being subjected to parking-lot asphalt for most of the time.
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Honky-Tonk Laments, Horror Rap, Robotic Princes, Universal Haters, Hawaiian Brothers, And Some Positive Soul
1:00 AM on Wed Jun 18 2008 by xhuxk
Each week, dozens of songs and albums from up-and-coming (or just plain unknown) bands debut on the world’s music charts. Some of these bands will never be heard from again; some may become the next little thing. That’s why every two weeks Chuck Eddy will be exploring the world beyond the Billboard 200, where he’ll look for diamonds in the MySpace rough. This week, his roster of up-and-comers includes some not-very-speedy Dutch “house/house/house,” a band that named itself Rehab way before the celebrity-rehab trend hit, some Vincent Price-influenced Juggalo rap, world-hating Poughkeepsie residents, and a Philly outfit who wants to stop the violence with the power of their music.
