Brandon's Buzz

The holiday shopping season leaps toward full swing this week, which means the big guns are starting to roll out onto the battlefield. Take a look:

I somehow missed this when it was released a month ago in conjunction with the full-series DVD set, so imagine my surprise to go CD shopping yesterday afternoon and happen across a copy of The Best of Ally McBeal: The Songs of
Vonda Shepard, a solidly assembled compendium of musical highlights from the five-season run of Fox’s iconic dramedy (plus a previously unreleased track, “Something About You”). Included here: Shepard’s riveting duets with Indigo Girl Emily Saliers (“Baby Don’t You Break My Heart Slow”) and Robert Downey, Jr. (“Chances Are”), as well as those old chestnuts “Maryland” and “The Wildest Times of the World” and “Hooked on a Feeling,” and, of course, Ally’s rip-roarin’ theme song “Searchin’ My Soul,” which still makes you wanna get up and shake your ass some twelve years later. The Buzz still loves ya, gal.

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For as meek and measly, as dull and dreary as January’s slate of music has been so far, the month sure is ending with a hell of a bang. It’s a full week on tap, kids. Live it up:

And now, a very special announcement: the first two seasons of that ridiculously brilliant classic early-’90s sitcom Blossom arrive on DVD this week. Starring the spectacularly spunky Mayim Bialik — who, I just got confirmation today, will be appearing on Brandon’s Buzz Radio next week to promote this very release — as an unusually perceptive pre-teen swimming upstream against both a screwy (yet oddly loving) family — musician parents, one who stuck around (the dad, played to perfection by the hilarious Ted Wass) and one who hightailed it to Gay Paree (the mom, the gloriously gorgeous Melissa Manchester); and a pair of brothers, one ditzy (Joey Lawrence, playing dumb to the hilt, honey) and one drunk (Michael Stoyanov, edgy, ditto) — and the onset of puberty, the show’s crackerjack ensemble also grew to include the terrific Jenna von Oy (as Blossom’s best friend Six — as in, the number of beers it took to conceive her, she helpfully reveals in the pilot) and the dashing David Lascher as Blossom’s steady boyfriend Vinnie. Back in the day, “Blossom” was the butt of a great many jokes because of its occasional lapses into preachy pretentiousness, but it’s quite worth the effort for a chance to watch this cast play nimbly off of each other. As blatant a precursor to the twin triumphs that were “Dawson’s Creek” and “Felicity” as can be found, it’s high damn time this show made it to DVD. Buy it at once.

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A number of this week’s high-profile releases are dropping a day early to get a jump on the pre-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy, and though there are still a handful of A-listers in the pipeline — Miss Britney next week, and Fall Out Boy on December 16, most notably — what follows represents the meat and potatoes of ’08’s holiday slate of music. Eat up, kids.

His last American album — the unfairly ignored The Lead and How to Swing It, which featured a knockout guest appearance, done as a favor to her record label, by one Tori Amos — was released fourteen years ago, and while 1999’s Reload was an overseas blockbuster, he’s been off the radar for most of the last decade. But that all changes this week, as ’60s icon Tom Jones, the man whose slick swagger practically invented the term “blue-eyed soul,” returns with his much-hyped comeback effort, 24 Hours. Emboldened both by the back-to-basics return to form of Neil Diamond, and by the retro-soul explosion touched off by Amy Winehouse, Jones looks to find the sailing fairly smooth. All he’s gotta do now is deliver a great album.

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If you’ve not yet purchased the new Switchfoot retrospective The Best Yet, which arrived in stores two days ago, make sure you pick it up at your local Wal-Mart, whose version comes packaged with an exclusive DVD containing fourteen music videos and rare live performances. (Don’t you really hate it when stores get these red hot exclusives and then refuse to advertise them?!) Now, if you’ll ’scuse me, I’ve gotta head off to Borders to return my copy of the original version, which, praise Jesus, I haven’t opened yet.

(P.S.: Be aware that the version of “This is Home” which appears on Best is a vastly inferior re-recording, not the staggering original from last summer’s Prince Caspian soundtrack. Grrr.)

Election Day is playing hell with this week’s new music slate: Hilary Duff and Dido have already blinked — their new projects, originally scheduled to be released this Tuesday, have been shuffled to Novembers 11 and 18, respectively — and the few stars who are taking the leap this week will have to do battle with strong holdovers AC/DC (whose new album has already soared past the million-sold mark) and those pesky High School Musical churren. In other words: chin up out there. It’s a slow one this week.

In the immediate wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the arrogant pricks who run radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications (which owns and operates well over one thousand stations nationwide) sent to all its outlets a memorandum which strongly suggested they strike from their playlists 166 songs that the company had deemed “lyrically questionable.” Even in such an irrational, knee-jerk climate, the inclusion of more than a few of these songs — the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” for instance, which is as harmless as a soda jingle — seemed entirely nonsensical, but none more so than that of John Lennon’s touchstone “Imagine,” one of the most powerful prayers for everlasting peace and unity that has ever been written.

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Generally speaking, at least where music is concerned, the holiday shopping season really gets going the first week of November.  But with next Tuesday being Election Day and all, and with more emphasis than ever being placed on first-day sales, the record companies are largely shying away from that as a viable release date.  Consequently, this week is beyond crowded.  I advised you all last week not to get complacent; read on to see why that was a fair warning.

The acronym’s a nifty play on those controversial print ads which made their target a pop culture buzz magnet last spring; alas, the thirty-two point letters on the album’s cover akshully stand for Original Music Featured on ‘Gossip Girl’. An entire array of under-the-radar acts fills this collection, although appearances are made by The Kooks, Junkie XL, and current flavors of the week The Ting Tings. Could be fun, could be a sprawling, self-indulgent mess.

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And tonight, one for the “you just never know” file:

If you’ve watched even a tiny measure of television in the past week, you’ve no doubt seen a commercial for the Subaru Grand Vitara automobile which is scored by the classic Switchfoot smash “Dare You to Move.” (Just watching a couple of hours of ESPN football highlights and VH-1 music videos last Monday morning, I caught the ad, like, ten times.) Apparently, I’m not the only one who has seen this promo spot, but it seems as though I am the only one who recognizes the song: behind the scenes here at the Buzz, I have access to a wonderfully educational page of statistics, through which I can learn not only which pages are being viewed most often, but also how folks are getting here to begin with, and it seems that people are rushing to their computers to Google the lyrics of the song — it begins with the lines “Welcome to the planet / welcome to existence” — in an attempt to ascertain the title and artist. And because I used those opening lyrics as a category for a post back in June, the Buzz is popping up near the top of many of those searches.

Because you’ve not found what you’ve come here looking for, I’ll happily ease your frustration. Once again, the band is Switchfoot, and the song’s title is “Dare You to Move” (here’s a handy link, s’il vous plait), and it can be found on their bold, coolly magnificent 2003 major-label debut
The Beautiful Letdown. (If you’re interested in learning more about this marvelous band’s discography, may I humbly suggest you begin with
the playlist I painstakingly crafted at summer’s start?) And, finally, whatever freak stroke of Google-determined luck brought you here to the Buzz, I sincerely thank you for your patronage, and hope you like what you see and have decided to stick around. We’re having lots of fun here discussing life and the meaning of it.

(PS: This week’s record store report is forthcoming. I swear.)

Snugly tucked amongst a handful of Harry Gregson-Williams’ soaring instrumentals (which comprise the film’s masterfully executed score) and a new tune from that infinitely annoying Russian pop tart Regina Spektor (one heifer I cannot bear, despite repeated attempts), you’ll find “This is Home” — a slightly melancholy yet uncommonly gorgeous piano-based track from one of the great contemporary bands, Switchfoot (or, as they’re better known in my orbit, “Creed with legs”) — anchoring the original motion picture soundtrack for Disney’s new The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Despite the anomaly that was “Meant to Live,” their unavoidable, slow-burning 2004 crossover smash, these guys — led by the enigmatic Jon Foreman, whose world-weary voice conveys honey and vinegar in equal measure — have flown largely (and inexplicably) below the radar in the years following their major label debut, 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown, despite a pair of sturdy, worthy follow-ups.

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