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Remembering Pop and R&B vocal icon Whitney Houston (born Whitney Elizabeth Houston in Newark, NJ) - August 9, 1963 - February 11, 2012.

 

Born on this day: February 11, 1941 - Brazilian jazz pianist and bandleader Sergio Mendes (born Sergio Santos Mendes in Niteroi, Brazil). Happy 72nd Birthday, Sergio!!
 

On this day in music history: February 11, 1963 - The Beatles record their debut album Please Please Me in Studio Two at Abbey Road in London. Following the huge success of their second single "Please Please Me," the band are given the green light to record a complete album. Acting quickly, producer George Martin will have them perform material that is a part of their current stage act. Working with engineer Norman Smith behind the board, it will be recorded for a cost of only £400 ($630.24 US) live to two-track tape with very few overdubs done after the fact. They will record eleven songs in the nine hours and forty-five minutes (between 10 am and 10:45 pm with a lunch break and two tea breaks in between) it takes to complete the album. The album's iconic cover photo (taken by photographer Angus McBean) is shot in the stairwell of EMI Records Manchester Square offices in London. This location is decided upon after the initial idea of photographing the band in front of the insect house at the London Zoo is vetoed by the owners of the zoo. Released on March 22nd, the album is an instant smash, holding down the top spot on the UK album chart for 30 weeks, until it is replaced by their second album "With The Beatles" in November of 1963. Please Please Me will go on to become one of the best selling albums in history.
 

Here’s a list of our top movie sellers of the year, combining DVD and Blu-ray sales.

1. Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn’s brilliant thriller, many people’s favorite movie of 2011, featuring one of the bestselling soundtracks of the year, came out on DVD and Blu-ray in January 2012 and sold better at Amoeba than many movies with much bigger box office takes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. The Avengers

 

Joss Whedon’s The Avengers managed to deliver summer thrills and smarts in equal measure, breaking several box office records.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Bronson (2008)

Refn’s 2008 film starring Tom Hardy as notorious prisoner and fighter Charles Bronson sold well, perhaps with the release of Refn’s Drive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

As the year comes to an end, we pause to remember those who have passed this year. Click on the photos to see our bloggers’ tributes earlier this year.

 

Austin Peralta, pianist/composer

 

 

Whitney Houston, singer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

Ravi Shankar, musician

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




















      

This week sees a huge set of reissues from Blur, among others ...

At the Drive-In – In/Casino/Out
 
Though At the Drive-In’s third and final full-length, Relationship of Command, gets more attention for being the post-hardcore band’s breakthrough, At the Drive-In’s second album, In/Casino/Out, is the best representation of the band at the height of its powers. The album was recorded live to capture the band in its native environment, as the band had begun to make their name on explosive live shows that would lead to word-of-mouth expansion of their fanbase, and true to form listening to In/Casino/Out now feels like travelling back in time to when the band was playing basement shows, before Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López’s The Mars Volta would play to massive crowds in the following decade. You see the beginnings of that band in how Bixler-Zavala crams verbiage into “Alpha Centauri” and the band makes the 3:13 song feel like an epic, but the live recording makes it feel manageable, most of the lyrics spat out quickly and its movements more memorable than the Volta’s proggy opuses. It’s also easy to forget how catchy the band could be, and a run of mid-album cuts proves this, including “Pickpocket,” with its instantly memorable, if incomprehensible screamed chorus. The band would also slow down to great effect on “For Now…We Toast,” which clips the distance between the band’s more melodic and aggressive leanings. But the album stands together as a whole, as well, with song after song coming at you with a warm assault of visceral guitar attacks and complex wordplay.
 
Blur – Reissues
 
Blur releases a mass of reissues on LP today, as well as its Blur 21 box set, celebrating 21 years of the Britpop band. To these ears, the incredibly solid Parklife and relentlessly experimental 13 have always been the essential Blur albums, but I also have a newfound appreciation of Leisure, their first album. Before they were kings of Britpop, Blur were a fresh-faced band of whelps wielding shoegaze guitars and madchester beats into a neat package, no better than on the funk-inspired “There’s No Other Way” or throbbing “Bang.” Yes, Leisure is sort of Blur’s Pablo Honey, where the band was still finding its footing, but Leisure also stands on its own, thanks to the fact that Damon Albarn and co. had more personality than most of their countrymen in 1991. You saw the beginnings of Albarn’s experimentalism in the percussive elements underpinning the slow-burning alt-rock of “Repetition” and accordion riff looping under the dream-pop guitar squalls of “Bad Day.” Even at its most derivative, such as the “Only Shallow” aping riff of “Slow Down,” Leisure is still a an early ’90s time capsule of a record with plenty of pleasure to spare, and one that hinted at the heights Blur and Albarn would achieve later on. Maybe I just like it now because every song sounds kind of like My Bloody Valentine's "Soon." Regardless, all of the albums are worth checking out, including Blur, Modern Life is Rubbish, The Great Escape and Think Tank.
 
Yaz – Upstairs at Eric’s
 
In these days of excellent darkwave revivalists like Light Asylum, Yaz and its best album, Upstairs at Eric’s, seem more prescient than ever. The albums big hits all have a certain desperation that often underpins some of the best pop songs. “Don’t Go,” despite its memorable synth hook, boasts lyrics like “I turned around when I heard the sound of footsteps on the floor/Said, ‘He was a killer,’ now I know it's true/I'm dead when you walk out the door.” Vince Clarke, who penned early Depeche Mode classics like “Just Can’t Get Enough” before splitting for Yaz (and later Erasure), offers spare backdrop that favors tiny, interlocking synth riffs rather than big blankets of chords for Moyet to pour herself over. Moyet’s deep vocals hit hard throughout, especially on “Midnight” and the classic “Only You,” slow, sad new wave ballads that would be nowhere without Moyet offering some much-needed soul to a genre often saddled with wispy male vocals. Upstairs at Eric’s is a lot of fun, too, even with its more emotional tunes — Clarke’s synths mimic ’50s rock tropes and disco shimmer to great effect on “Bad Connection” and “Goodbye Seventies,” respectively, while Moyet’s exuberant kiss-offs and creepy laugh make “Situation” one of the best feel-good breakup songs around.

I recently was at Amoeba Hollywood and overheard a customer telling an employee Davy Jones had died. I hadn’t heard the news yet. She brought it up because she was buying Katy Perry records for her daughter. She said her daughter didn’t even have a record player — she just wanted every bit of Katy Perry merchandise she could get her hands on.
 
The only artist I can ever remember being that obsessive about was The Smashing Pumpkins, but that was in high school. But it got me thinking about those first tapes, records, singles etc. that everyone got as a kid.
 
For me, the first album I ever bought on my own was Ace of Base’s The Sign on cassette. I had always liked music, but at 11, I had just started to pay attention to what songs were on the radio. A friend made me a tape from the radio and “The Sign” was on it. I loved it. In the coming weeks and months, albums by Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day, and my beloved Pumpkins would follow, but really it all started with Ace of Base for me. Though if I’m being technical, I had a cassette single of Paula Abdul’s “Promise of a New Day” that I listened to constantly when I was like 9, but I didn’t buy that — I won it at a cousin’s music-themed birthday party, at which my dad dressed himself and me as Simon & Garfunkel. I had no idea who they were. I think I was Paul Simon.
 
While I’m embarrassing myself, I thought I’d extend the question to the other Amoeba bloggers: What was your first album? Not kids’ music, but not just the cool stuff, either — the tapes we once listened to repeatedly and then put away in a drawer somewhere once we realized how lame they were, though I’m still on the hunt for The Sign on vinyl. Here are their answers:
 
Eric Brightwell
My first record was Luciano Pavarotti's My Own Story, a compilation of “musical highlights of his spectacular career.” They used to heavily advertise it on TV when I got home from school, and I was hooked. My first cassette was Peter Gabriel's So. I'd liked the singles from it, but when “Big Time” came out, I was obsessed. My first CD was The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. I was introduced to it by a German exchange student named Ina. Before she left I rode my bike into town to a Wal-Mart to get a blank cassette to dub it. I loved it so much, I thought it warranted being purchased on CD. 
 

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