I know I've blogged about Black Tie White Noise before and that I've probably sang its praise once too often, but it's another rare album where I like every single song on it. It's so beautiful and sad and energetic and mysterious.

Surely one of his most underrated works ever, Black Tie White Noise may just have been a victim of bad timing. It came out shortly after Bowie's Tin Machine debacle (if you can call it that) and many hardcore fans with grudges were still thinking Bowie had sold out with the commercially successful Let's Dance (even if the title track is one of the most haunting upbeat dance songs ever).

"The Wedding" and "The Wedding Song" are so incredibly full of emotion, which comes as no surprise if you know that Bowie wrote it shortly after his wedding to super model Iman. "Pallas Athena" is both ominous (with its thunderous repetition of "God is on top of this") and pleasingly moving as a dance tune.

"Miracle Goodnight" and "Don't Let Me Down and Down" are lighter fare (in comparison with the rest of the material) but are so sincere in their plea for things to get better they are irresistible to anyone with a heartbeat. (On a side note of trivia, Bowie recorded the latter song in Indonesian.)

But whenever I listen to Black Tie White Noise it's always "The Wedding Song" that I return to...it's so earnest and beautiful and (just as I thought with the hit single "Let's Dance") oddly romantic and even kind of sensual...in that sensual kind of way only Bowie is capable of creating.

I'm sort of bummed to be staying inside on the 4th of July, but have to be rested up for work tomorrow...so I've been enjoying the Bewitched marathon on TvLand and mellowing in the sounds of the cd sampler from Mojo's July issue, the music magazine's collaboration with the Communion record label.

It's so rare that I like every song on every sampler or cd I get to listen to...but in the case of this one: Oh. My. Gosh. Beautiful, beautiful stuff...

Stand-outs include: Michael Kiwanuka's "Tell Me A Tale"...Ben Howard's "Three Tree Town"...Jay Jay Pistolet's "Vintage Red"...Behjamin Francis Leftwich's "More Than Letters"....Kyla La Grange's "Walk Through Walls" (sounds a bit like Florence and the Machine in the best way possible!) and Daughter's "Peter" (this one is absolutely heart-breaking)

The Mojo "Collective Worship" inset of the mag (pp. 80 and 81) mentions Leftwich's "fine knack for a melody"...of all the tracks on this album, "More Than Letters" is the one I can't get out of my heart or head. I'm so excited there's more what that came from on Benjamin Francis Leftwich's new release, Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm.

This is why music magazines can be so dangerous...you discover more and more artists whose music you just have to have!:)

Oh my gosh!! Today (and for the next few days, at least) Amazon's MP3 store is offering two amazing, free samplers...I can't decide which I like better: this one or this one...

I think one reason I'm so excited is because on The End Records sampler there's a new song by Audio Bullys, a group I loved about six years ago and hadn't really heard anything new from since....their song "Only Man" dares you not to dance...and a track on the Cantora Records album, called "Crime Pays" by Bear Hands, is simply majestic and yet oddly cynical at the same time.

So much on both samplers that I just can't stop playing...think about checking them out and have a great evening!!:)

Singer Zola Jesus once said, "I want to write songs about things that are important...like why we're here, what the future holds and the apocalypse...maybe the apocalypse has already started. If you look around America, there's a lot of sadness and a lot of suffering. Most people turn a blind eye to it. I want people to come to terms with it."

As someone who grew up loving the bounce and wackiness of so many of my favorite 80s songs, I can't help but think today's music is so much sadder. People say today's music is worse than their own generation's, but I don't believe that's necessarily true. Maybe it's just that some of the best musicians writing and performing today are more accurately reflecting what's going on around them.

There's less escape and more truth today...and that can be kind of bleak, but it can also be kind of what we need.

I can't stop playing "Is It Fair Enough" off of Kingdom Come's new album, Rendered Waters. I read about their newest cd in Classic Rock's special AOR issue. I must have missed Kingdom Come when they first arrived on the scene in the late 80s. But I probably wouldn't been ready for them anyway...I was always on the lighter side of music back then.

"Is It Fair Enough" is both mesmerizing and maudlin, heavy on the drums and sad on the guitars. Its beat is so infectious I can't get enough of it...

I would definitely recommend checking out Classic Rock magazine. They aren't just invested in the past, but in current groups as well and their reviews are top-notch (though my wallet sort of resents that fact since I sometimes end up buying their highly rated albums.)