Thursday 3 May 2007

Yet Another Music Moment: Retro Girl Groups

I've become enchanted this week with two UK-based female vocal trios, both of whom exhibit a retro feel.

The Pipettes take Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" and bring it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. (Except for one demo track) Their recordings are not yet available in the U.S.--their album is due on domestic shores in August--but thanks to the wonder of the musical tubes of the Internet you can listen to four tracks on Last.fm, hear the music streaming off their official Website or their MySpace page, or view a variety of their music videos in glorious low-rez on YouTube:

Here's their video for "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me":



And their video for "Judy," which has a visual comic book theme:



and you'll find plenty more on YouTube as well.

Not enough? You can watch an entire concert performance by The Pipettes at Fabchannel.com!


Going even further back in retro time we find The Puppini Sisters, a trio that channels the era of The Andrews Sisters on their just-released album Betcha Bottom Dollar. Besides singing classic WWII-era songs, they also bring their style to some fun covers, such as "Heart of Glass," "I Will Survive" and "Wuthering Heights."

You can hear a feature on The Puppini Sisters on NPR; hear several tracks on their MySpace page; and here's an excerpt from an in-store performance of "Heart of Glass":

FCBM3 Day 3

Kana's IslandIt's day three of the third annual YACB Free Comic Book Month!

Today's selected entry is from Lee Fanning. The five comics that Lee listed are:

1. Uncle Scrooge
2. Mickey Mouse
3. Batman Adventures
4. Flash
5. Justice League Adventures

Lee appears to be a fan of all-ages comics, so I've chosen:

Kana's Island #1, by Mark Page, billed by its creator as "The charm of a children's book in the form of a comic."

Lee's bonus comic is the Fables #1 Special Edition, which isn't an all-ages comic but does make use of characters from old fairy tales.

Lee's comics should be in the mail by the end of the week. Enjoy!

There's still time to send in your entry for the YACB Free Comic Book Month; details are here.

Current FCBM Statistics:
17 entries
6 free comics sent so far
28 days remaining