The JayTunes Jam

Another month is upon us and that means new featured music on JayTunes!  This month’s Song of the Month is from Virginia Coalition, the Artist is arguably today’s best singer-songwriter, the Gem is from Crowded House, Chill Out is a deep track from KT Tunstall, Private’s Pick is by The Who, and Kiddie Corner features Michelle [...]

For those of you that aren’t familiar with them, Tower of Power is a horn-based funk/soul/R & B band that’s been around since the early 70′s.  They’ve only few hits on the charts (“So Very Hard to Go” was the biggest success at #17 in 1973), but they’ve been touring successfully for nearly 40 years [...]

Entertainment Weekly came out this week with a list of their Top 100 albums of the Past 25 Years.  While it’s hard to argue with Purple Rain occupying the top spot, I just haven’t heard a lot of the hip-hop, R & B, and alternative albums on the list.  Here are my 10 favorites from [...]

I was introduced to XTC when I heard “The Mayor of Simpleton” in high school.  I didn’t think much of it initially, probably because I was into syth-driven garbage at the time.  In my college years I discovered the album Nonsuch and its collection of quirky pop songs and realized that XTC was an interesting group that deserved further investigation.  [...]

Ah, those days of college, where you discover that other music exists besides what is played on mainstream radio stations.  Of course I did like some popular songs, but I also discovered some “different” artists like David Wilcox, Cowboy Junkies, Harry Connick Jr., Indigo Girls, and They Might Be Giants.  Looking back on the list of my [...]

As I was driving home today, I happened upon a new BoDeans song called “Hearing.”  I’ve enjoyed the BoDeans in the past (especially “Good Things” and ”Do I Do“), so I was surprised I hadn’t heard this one.  As it turns out, the Wisconsin-based group released a great album in March called Still.  It’s produced by T-Bone Burnett and contains a number [...]

Just released on Tuesday 6-17, Jakob Dylan’s latest album is a very nice acoustic folk effort.  While I’m only a passing fan of his old band (The Wallflowers) and his father (Bob), this album is definitely worth repeated listenings.  In fact, I’ve added “Will It Grow” to my Best of 2008 list.  Check it out [...]

Over the next few week’s I’ll be highlighting the yearly “Best of” lists that I compiled from my music library a few months ago.  Today I’ll begin by dusting off my box of cassette mix tapes to look at the best music of my high school years, 1984-1988.  Looking back, there are some songs that [...]

I remember seeing the video for “Don’t Let’s Start” in the early days of MTV and thinking “these guys are weird… but I like it.”  I proceeded to buy their first three albums and they became one of my favorite bands during my college years.  As the years went by, my tastes changed a bit [...]

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday, so I came up with a list of my favorite ”Dad” songs.  Can you guess who made the list?  George Michael, Eric Clapton, Amy Grant, Cat Stevens, and Paul Simon lead the mostly familiar cast, with surprise appearances by some hip-hop icons and a couple of lesser-known artists.  Thanks to Ferrari and Dr. Dave for [...]