Music of Summer

   Summer is a time for sprinklers in front yards. Dog walks in the late evening as the sun is setting. Children running to and fro. Bonfires that reach up to the night's sky. Green trees and gardens. Endless bike rides winding throughout the city. Summer is for sitting out on the rocks and listening to waves lap the shore as the stars wink in the sky. Shorts and t-shirts, water gun fights. A thousand books to read about adventures and romance and everything in between. Night kite flying, which I fully intend to do. Dancing in the street to the music in our heads and the bands playing at the street corner bars. Its a time for block parties and volley ball. Temperatures so hot the whole world feels like a sauna. Friends, long talks about nothing in particular. Road trips to the end of the world. Swimming 'til your lungs give out just to see how far you can go. Thunder storms that shake the sky as well as the foundations of building. Bubbles blown into gusts of wind. Rolled eyes at silly puns and climbing trees.

Summer is about all of these things and more, and so the music of summer should invoke these things as well. That I believe for sure. Here are some songs to get your summer started right. We'll start out with the effervescent shine put out by Kishi Bashi with his song Bright Whites. Its a song that might be about a breakup, but that doesn't stop it from making you want to get up and dance. Then we have Givers playing a wonderful zydeco cover of Paul Simon's That Was Your Mother off his Graceland album. From there we have Surfer Blood with a surf, rock, noise infused song to get to through to the other side. Finally there's The Lumineers with Ho Hey, a bit of folk rock full of stomps and claps. You might recognize the last one from the new Bing commercial.


Kishi Bashi
Bright Whites



Givers
That Was Your Mother (Paul Simon Cover)




Surfer Blood
Swim



The Lumineers
Ho Hey

Summer Revelations

I would like to start off by saying that I am pretty sure that I do more theoretical blog posts in my head than actual ones. Is that a little weird? Don't really care, or not too much anyway, just I think about great stuff to say and arrange it just so in my head, but fail to at any point in time write those beautiful thoughts down on paper, so they just get lost into the ether of my mind. Maybe its good that way, maybe I should make a conscious effort to write some of this stuff down, well I try, but its hard sometimes.

In other news, I don't think anyone ever really informed me until this year how great Paul Simon is solo. I was driving home from work one evening, one of my mixes in the car's stereo, and the song "You Can Call Me Al" as covered by Noah and the Whale came on. I have to tell you, I had no idea this was a cover until this point in time, I thought it was just a quirky song that had just been thought up and put on a set of b-sides. My Dad listening, remarked "oh a Paul Simon cover, good song", which left me a bit befuddled. I did some mental math and figured it out. I didn't really even realise that Paul Simon had a career outside of Simon and Garfunkel. So tonight I am giving Paul Simon's Graceland a full listen. Wow. Just wow, it is good. Sometimes I am really glad of these little revelations and discoveries I have every once in awhile, otherwise I would know about these things already and they would not be nice surprises.

And to top things off, there's a video for the song, which features Chevy Chase with Paul Simon, and its just Great. This is the kind of stuff that summer is about. I implore any and everyone to enjoy-

Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al