The album that the Buzz has been breathlessly anticipating for four long years now finally drops this week, and some pretty interesting stuff drops right alongside it. David, my darling, we have missed you!
Those pesky geniuses at Now! are out to steal a bit of Ultra’s thunder with their latest brilliant compilation, Now That’s What I Call Club Hits!, which features a smattering of hard-to-find dance mixes of recent radio smashes from the likes of David Guetta (his masterful collaboration with Kelly Rowland, “When Love Takes Over,” one of summer ’09’s most intoxicating singles), The Killers (“Spaceman”), Katy Perry (“Waking Up in Vegas,” which I can’t help but kinda sorta like, wholly in spite of the fact that I think she’s utterly ridiculous), Lady GaGa (the hilariously profane “LoveGame”), and Kelly Clarkson (the puny “My Life Would Suck Without You”), among many others.
A lot of people have been cycling through here in the past few days trying to find my conversations — which were taped for Brandon’s Buzz Radio — with former “Guiding Light” head writer Pamela K. Long and “One Life to Live” star Nicholas Rodriguez. (Folks are searching for other of my show’s episodes as well, but, if this blog’s stats are to be believed, those two installments are consistently the most-often sought-after, at least of late.) For those of you who are searching and not finding the radio archive for my show, please scroll up to the top of the page, up to that pretty, colorful bar that lies just below the “Brandon’s Buzz” headline. Each of those segments of color is a “button” which takes you to a different part of this sprawling website, and the rightmost “button” — the blue one that says “radio” — houses a full archive of my show’s thirty-five (to date!) episodes. Click on that button, and you will almost certainly find what it is that you seek. (And thank you so much for coming here, everyone. The response to my show lately has been humbling and overwhelming, and I appreciate you all for your interest in what I’m working very hard to construct here.)
“Well, you know, human beings don’t change very fast. You have to keep telling these stories over and over again until we get it. We’re a rather thick group.”
— legendary actress Tyne Daly, speaking with MetroSource about the fact that the topics which “Cagney and Lacey” attacked with such vigor back in the ’80s — abortion, racism, sexism in the workplace, etc. — are still very much hot-button subjects in today’s society.
“By the time I was about to graduate, I had a fellowship to graduate school, because I wanted to be, of course, Dr. Long… But you had to take the GRE! That’s a big test, right? And a third of it’s math. Let me tell ya: I can’t do math. I had put it off every year until I couldn’t graduate unless I took the idiot math, and in the first day of the class, they said, you know, ‘Integer.’ And I’m like, ‘What?! What’s an integer?!’ And they said, ‘It means number.’ I said, ‘I am in so much trouble….'”
— the hilariously brilliant Pamela K. Long, former headwriter of “Guiding Light,” discussing her college days on Brandon’s Buzz Radio. (This is for you, A, my all-time favorite math genius.)
Forgive me for the late record store report this week: I’ve been swamped the past few days preparing for my blockbuster interview with the great Pam Long. (If you’re at all interested in the inner workings of a soap opera, from someone who’s excelled at mastering them, you should listen to this.) At any rate, it’s rather a hodgepodge of different stuff on the new release wall this week. Dig in:
The latest British import to dazzle us with a gregarious blast of giddy pop: Gary Baker, coming to be better known as Gary Go, who releases the physical version of his debut record this week. (The album has been available for the past month at iTunes, whose version includes bonus covers of The Cars’ 1984 classic “Drive” and a mellow take on Lady GaGa’s brilliant “Just Dance.”) The lead single “Wonderful” is an absolutely terrific, magnificently melodic counterpoint to some of the heavier tunes —
The Fray, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, fine songs all, but not exactly party-starters — populating top 40 radio right now. Give this a shot.
It’s Beatlemania anew this week, as all fourteen of the band’s original albums
Take a look:
Hard to believe that six long years have passed that cute moppet Howie Day released his sophomore album Stop All the World Now, which produced the monster smash “Collide,” a staple that made an entire generation of heavy-breathing prom-goers swoon. After an eternity of radio silence, Day resurfaces this week with his third studio set, Sound the Alarm, a chunk of which was co-written and produced by Better Than Ezra’s brilliant frontman Kevin Griffin. Just like pretty much every other male singer-songwriter who hit it big in the wake of John Mayer’s textbook breakthrough, Day can be a tad too earnest for his own good at times, but there’s no denying the kid’s got some chops. Color me curious on this one.
One of modern music history’s premier divas has officially launched her long-awaited comeback, as the one and only Whitney Houston returns to center stage this week with her sixth studio album, I Look to You. Last heard from — musically, at least — on 2002’s horrendous, howlingly awful slap job Just Whitney (am I the only one who remembers, for all the wrong reasons, “Whatchulookinat”?), Houston is back — hardly wizened, mind you, but hardly none the worse for wear, either — cautiously (perhaps overly so) dipping her big toe back into the water to see if time and the ever-dynamic world of pop have passed her by.
Just caught a glimpse of a calendar and realized that today would have been my dad’s 57th birthday. Still miss you like crazy, man, every single day, but I hope that you’re well, wherever you are. And also, that the deer aren’t being too shifty.
