Saturday, December 09, 2006

Stephen King's Top Music Picks for 2006

Entertainment Weekly's EW.com | Feature: Stephen King's top music picks for 2006: Stephen King says: "Between Chuck Berry and Nirvana, I had a passionate 40-year love affair with the kind of music my mother called ''hard swing.'' I fell out of touch for a while, during that time when all the pop singers on the radio — female as well as male — had started to sound like Michael Jackson, and guitars were banished in favor of synthesizers.

What brought me back were two radical innovations: satellite radio (my brand happens to be XM) and iTunes (also my iPod, but for me that came later still). These were digital honky-tonks where I found — to my joy — that hard swing was alive and well. I've been listening, usually with the volume turned up to 11, ever since. These are the tracks that moved me in 2006...quite often enough to get up and shake my increasingly elderly ass."

Stephen King and I don't have the same musical tastes, but this year he has some great items on his list. I particularly recommend "Snake Farm" by Ray Wylie Hubbard, my favorite song of the year.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stephen King owns THE coolest radio station in Maine, WKIT. It's the last locally owned and operated rock station in northen New England. In a typical half-hour you might hear Metallica, B.B. King, U2, Susan Tedeschi, Steve Earle, Cream and the Beatles. Good stuff. They play a lot of artists you won't find on commercial stations, like James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards. I'm just about at the western edge of their broadcast area, but I listen whenever I can.

Unknown said...

If Houston had a station like that, I might not have subscribed to XM Radio.

Anonymous said...

"They play a lot of artists you won't find on commercial stations..."

I should have said on OTHER commercial stations, because WKIT is also a commercial station.