No more waiting, Lavay Smith and her boyfriend, Chris Siebert have finally released their new album, Miss Smith to you! They have been talking about this for the last several years, and it's finally done. The album is a bit of a divergence from their past albums, and is a bit more bluesy. I'm still listening to it so I don't have a review yet, but check it out! They don't do bad music, and you won't be disappointed.


Update 9/12/09 - I now have the album, and I must say it's wonderful. Lavay's voice is distinctive and strong, but she purrs like a kitten when she wants and it's hard not to be entranced. My wife and I saw Lavay and the band play a few weeks ago at Enrico's in San Francisco (they play there almost every Monday night), and it happened to be the birthday of one of their trumpet players, Allen Smith. Allen has played with Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and many of the heavy hitters, and is a true icon. In addition to the normal trio and Lavay (drums, upright bass, piano), they added a saxophone, a trombone, and bongos player as the night went on, and we spent the night watching several swing dancers in their 20's beautifully and skillfully tear up the floor with some 8-count dancing. Buy the album, it deserves a place on your hi-fi.

Lavay Smith Link
Amazon.com album link

Shorts

I'm a big fan of film director Robert Rodriguez, who did the El Mariachi movie series, Planet Terror, and the Spy Kids Trilogy. His movies are straightforward and fun (if a bit gory at times), and I like that he handles his career mostly on his own terms. I especially like that he does both adult thriller and kid-focused movies, and I watch both with equal enthusiasm. He has a new movie coming out soon called SHORTS, which I hope to see, I encourage you to also.

SHORT link

For some real fun, rent his DVDs and watch some of the special features. Different movies have different features, but he includes things like a 10-minute film school and 10-minute cooking school.

In terms of music, I recently downloaded the soundtrack to the movie Oceans 11. My favorite song, 160$ million Chinese Man.

Cheers everyone,

Dan

Forgive me - confession

I know, I know, I'm a bad, bad blogger and haven't kept up with my posts. Well, it's time to get back on track, and I hope to do better next time.

That being said, I have LOTS of ideas for new posts. My goal is to do at least 2 a month, maybe even on a week on average. I'll post when I can, and will do my best to keep up with everything. Now on to the good stuff.

Remember Todd Murray? Who I showcased in a previous post? Well, I just had the opportunity to see him sing. It's a long story, but Todd is from a small town and I'm from a small town close to his, so when he made a pilgrimage home to sing I heard about it and attended. I think most of the town was there. He's a wonderful singer and a charming person, after signing a CD for my daughters they spent the rest of the evening enamored with him and we've been listening to him ever since. Please do check out his website and buy a CD, you won't be disappointed. I own both, but am particularly fond of Stardust and Swing.

Todd Murray

By the way, I DID actually complete the tiki bar. Check it out here and all the rest of the forum while you're at it.

tiki bar
tiki bar build it yourself link

Cheers everyone, more music coming in the future.

Dan

Tiki Day

I have decided that today is Tiki day.

I came to Tiki in an odd way.  Remember when I talked about podcasting?  During my obsession with swing jazz, I went searching for podcasts that played swing and neo-swing, which led me to The Bachelor Pad Radio Show (and Bachelor Pad Magazine) and the Cocktail Nation podcast.  Somehow, this led me to Tiki Magazine.

I recently subscribed to the magazine and ordered a couple of back issues that had articles on Shag (artist Josh Agle) and Tiki Bar TV (discussed in a recent blog post). Shag is incredible, I love his artwork,  which is sexy, stylish, and evocative of a 50's, 60's, and 70's mentality.  I may do a post on him in the future

Check out Tiki Magazine Here,

I'm starting to listen more to "tiki" and exotica music.  It's kid of best described as a cool version of easy listening.  I think it's generally perfect for an afternoon and evening in a beach bungalow with your significant other.  

There are several bands that seem to be favored by tikiphiles.  Remember, this is a new genre I'm experimenting with.  I'm sure there are many other great bands I'm neglecting.  Several names pop up over and over again, and these are two groups that seem to be popular.  I'm particularly fond of the Don Tiki website, where you can play a game called Virgin Sacrifice.

Don Tiki website here

Martini Kings website here

My goal over the next week is to build a tiki bar.  We'll see how it goes.........

Cheers - Dan

Podcast time again

It's time for you to try another podcast. In case you don't know, podcasts are audio files you can download. I listen to several, some on a weekly basis. Many are homemade radio shows or rants of some sort or another, some are audiobooks that are released as serial podcasts. Some are short and some are long, some are worthwhile and many are terrible.

Today's recommendation (definitely not terrible, pretty damn good) is for the Cocktail Nation podcast, broadcast from a penthouse in Sydney, Australia by a gentleman named Koop Kooper. He plays a lot of great retro and lounge tunes, tiki and exotica, spy-jazz and swing, and he seems to have a warm place in his heart for Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack. I listen to his podcast pretty consistently. While I sometimes turn other podcasts off when they start to get boring (there is simply too much available to make it worth listening to something that isn't entertaining), I listen to Koop's all the way through pretty much every week. His taste in music is spot-on in my opinion. His shows really mix it up and he has some great interviews and history that he peppers in as well. Download a few shows and give them a try.

Main site here

Tiki Bar TV

Okay, it's not exactly music. But it's pretty friggin' funny. Check out tiki bar TV here.

LINK!

Trey rules

I love Trey Anastasio. He was great when he played with Phish, and personally, I think he's even better on his own. I'm listening a lot to one of his newer albums with the "Undectet "(an 11-piece supporting band). The album is Original Boardwalk Style, and was recorded live in Atlantic City. Besides being friggin' great music, proceeds support the Seven Below Arts Initiative, a program to support arts education and artistic development in Vermont. So, buy knowing you're not only concerned with your aural sensibilities, you're also helping to support artist residencies at Trey's old recording studio (known as the Barn).

check it out here