Brandon's Buzz

Would you believe The Fray still hasn’t left my CD player? Luckily, it’s another light one out there this week, because I still have a pile of discs to get through, and if anyone can get me to divert my attention away from Isaac and the boys for a spell, it’s the miraculous woman who gives us the week’s marquee release. Read on:

If you missed it in theaters last fall, make it a point to catch up with Bill Maher’s laugh-riot quasi-documentary Religulous when it arrives on home video this week. A hilariously scathing indictment not of God himself, but rather of the phalanx of fables and parables which have been concocted wholly by human beings in vain and often foolhardy attempts to explain and quantify Him, the film straddles, and with a fierce confidence which sometimes steps a toe or two over the edge, a tricky line between debunking myths and outright mocking them, and while the whole affair gets a little tiresome in the third act (which contains a visit to “Holy Land,” a religion-based theme park whose daily ministrations climax with — I kid you not — a full-scale reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion), Maher scorches a wide swath of Earth (and admirably so) in a valiant stab at injecting some logic and reason into our collective faith.

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“You make other people realize that there exist other beauties in the world.”

— a lovely phrase which was the lead in a passage full of clickable Cialis links that got jammed in the Buzz’s spam filter. (I found the idea here to be not only sweet, but extraordinarily compelling, and while you who composed this failed wholly to sell me an erection enhancer, you did do nothing short of give this blog a whole new mission statement. So, at worst, it’s a draw.)

May 26, 2009, kids. Start salivating now.

“I’m bewildered. In the old days, we would have called this ‘selling out,’ but I think it’s… it’s a good way to spend a Sunday.”

— former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, accepting the Album of the Year Grammy — his fifth trophy of the night, out of a possible five — for Raising Sand, his off-center collaboration with Alison Krauss

Blessedly, this week is markedly different than the wallet-buster that kicked off this month in high style. (Good thing, too, because I find myself so hopelessly enchanted by The Fray’s riveting new disc — my early favorite song from which is track number five, the gloriously wrenching “Never Say Never” — that I haven’t had a chance to listen to anything else that dropped last week.) Take this breather as a chance to play catch-up, because that’s certainly what the Buzz is gonna be doin’.

(Incidentally, believe it or not, this marks the Buzz’s 200th (!) post. Many, many thanks to all of you who continue to allow this silliness into your daily lives. If you have as much fun reading these musings as I do writing them, we’re all having a gay old time. So to speak.)

On a high following last summer’s surprising and triumphant comeback, legendary country crooner Glen Campbell reminds his fans of the good ol’ days this week with yet another best-of set. Titled simply Greatest Hits, the record includes pretty much all of Campbell’s best-remembered classics — from “Wichita Lineman” to “Galveston” to “Southern Nights” to even “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.)” — and all of them are newly (and crisply) remastered. (Misleadingly, they’re called “remixes” here, but don’t be fooled: the songs have just been cleaned up.) Also tossed in for good measure are a pair of tracks — “Times Like These” (a Foo Fighters cover) and “These Days” (a Jackson Browne chestnut) from last summer’s Meet Glen Campbell, the man’s most successful album in three decades. And if you’re looking for some one-stop Glen shopping, the Buzz proclaims you could do far worse than this.

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Yup, it’s that time of year again: the 51st annual Grammy Awards are nigh. And while predicting the outcome is often a painfully useless exercise, simply because the Academy voters rarely use logic in choosing their winners — witness, if you will, Herbie Hancock’s w-t-f Album of the Year victory last year, to name just one bizarro choice — the Buzz has enough opinions about who should win the coveted trophies this year that I am willing to go out on a limb and try to guess who will win.

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Are you believin’ we’re already a month into the new year?! The Buzz hasn’t even fully closed out the books on 2008 yet, and ’09 has already ticked away thirty precious days of its half-life.

I know that we’re already knee deep into the new year’s music slate, and that you’ve no doubt already largely forgotten all the brilliance 2008 had to offer, but please allow the Buzz a final opportunity to sway your ears. The ten tracks which make up the playlist that follows don’t necessarily comprise the absolute best music of the year just ended — any list of that stripe which fails to include Sugarland’s fascinating cover of “Life in a Northern Town,” Kings of Leon’s incendiary “Use Somebody,” Tift Merritt’s devastating “Another Country,” or Kacy Crowley’s wondrous “The Universe” is just ridiculously short-sighted and ill-conceived — and, indeed, a great many of these songs may have slipped entirely through the cracks of your musical cognizance last year. Do seize this shot to correct that foolishness. It may not come ’round again.

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Well, the week we’ve been looking toward for months finally arrives. All that’s left to do now is pray that the final product is worthy of the breathless anticipation.

From the moment she tore onstage and ripped the roof off the joint belting out Aretha Franklin’s classic chestnut “Since You’ve Been Gone,” former backup singer Melinda Doolittle was my favorite among 2007’s “American Idol” wannabes. When she went down in a devastating, stunning defeat with an unjustified third place finish — shades of Tamyra in season one, and my darling Kim Locke in season two — clearing the way for an easy Jordin Sparks victory, we as a nation wondered if we’d ever see her again. But wonder no more: two years hence, Doolittle returns this week with her long-awaited solo debut, Coming Back to You. The album includes a sultry take on Kathy Troccoli’s underrated classic “If I’m Not in Love” which, even though it doesn’t match the original, is tons better than Faith Hill’s abominable cover of same. Welcome back, Miss Mindy Doo. We’ve missed the hell out of you, girlfriend.

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