The newly released video from Johan Agebjorn, “Watch The World Go By,” is a disco-slick summer breeze perfect for top-down cruising or late night dj sessions. Featuring Le Prix and Lake Heartbeat, it’s about as light a tune as you’ll hear all year. The single is taken from his debut album, Casablanca Nights, which features collaborations with CFCF, Steve Moore (Lovelock, Zombi, Miracle), Sally Shapiro, Fred Ventura, Lake Heartbeat, and Le Prix and is available now on Paper Bag Records.
If you missed the first single from the album, it’s another summer anthem with the appropriate title “The Last Day of Summer”:
The news today of the death of saxophonist Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band wasn’t a shock, given that he’d suffered a stroke a week ago; the lack of surprise doesn’t make it any less of a loss to those of us who grew up listening to Clemons’ wailing solos on classic Springsteen albums, however.
As a middle-schooler more into music already than much else, having my cousins turn me on to the already well-established Springsteen was nothing short of a revelation. Obsessive collecting followed for years, including live bootlegs when one still had to find them on vinyl at a flea market. It was listening to those live shows that revealed the personality and importance of Clarence Clemons to me, as he was the onstage foil and a balancing presence that lent both levity and musical emotion. Listen to the solo he takes on “Jungleland,” or the story of how he and Springsteen met (a tale that typically preceded the semi-autobiographical “E Street Shuffle” in concert) for examples.
As an adult, I’ve seen Bruce and the E Street Band a handful of times in person, from a 1988 Chapel Hill show where I was all the way across the arena to a couple of the recent tours in the general admission, standing room only pit in front of the stage. Even though his role was not as prominent on many of the newer songs, I’m having a hard time imagining a concert without Clarence as a part of the E Street Band–The lights are definitely out on E Street tonight.
Just hearing tonight that pop songwriter and musician Andrew Gold passed away on June 3rd from a heart attack, he was only 59 years old. Most of us know Gold from his 70′s hits “Lonely Boy” and “Thank You For Being a Friend,” the latter of which was used as the theme song for the Golden Girls television series. I had the albums those songs came from, and I even remember liking his 80′s collaboration with Graham Gouldman of 10cc called Wax, which hit with “Right Between The Eyes.” Click here for coverage of his passing and some more credits from his role as a multi-instrumentalist for Linda Ronstadt and others.
Gold’s music lives on, of course–here’s the three songs mentioned above, easily found on Youtube:
