Category: Weekly New Wonders Playlist !

One of the most terrifying episodes of Twilight Zone is “The Midnight Sun” from 1961. It’s about the sun moving closer to the earth (or vice versa) and the physical and emotional breakdown of a landlady and the only tenant remaining in her building that hasn’t fled the city. The temperature is 120 degrees and conditions are becoming unlivable. And of course because it’s Twilight Zone there is a twist ( no, not gonna mention it in case you haven’t seen it, in which case, please do so asap because it’s awesome). It’s both eerily prophetic and haunting and frankly hasn’t been far from my mind during the current heatwave.  It’s the anthesis of “summer fun” which is another reason why it rules. Oh yeah, welcome to the latest Weekly New Wonders Playlist ! I’d say it was HOT but you already know that. Anyway, there are some fine pop songs that want to meet you. You can listen on Soundcloud or Spotify, links below !

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You know when a particular song/film/book/piece of art strikes you in the head and heart and after touting it’s amazingness, when you ultimately share it with others they don’t feel the same ? I was absolutely obsessed with this old movie from 1971 called “Death in Venice” ( okay, still am). Years ago they had a revival screening in NYC and I was beyond thrilled that I would finally get the opportunity to share this AMAZING THING that I LOVED with what I assumed were my like minded friends. I’d repeatedly stated how incredible it was, completely built it up, saying crazy obsessive shit like “this is one of the greatest movies ever made” and “Dirk Bogarde is so genius”.  I went with no less than 3 friends in the naive hope they would be blown away and love it as much as I did. This did not happen. They ALL thought it was f-ing boring. In their eyes, I now had a black mark on my taste meter. At the time, I was genuinely embarrassed…which is ridiculous but there you go. It’s that old cliche i.e. when you love something you want to share it and have others experience your same irrational, starry eyed joy. With that in mind it’s time for the WEEKLY NEW WONDERS PLAYLIST featuring what we think are some of the handsomest songs from recent weeks and days. We don’t expect you to love every song and want to squeeze them all, but we live in undeniable hope that you will discover something wonderful to put on repeat and soundtrack your travels this week. They’re beautiful.  (and “Death in Venice” is too). You can listen on Soundcloud or Spotify, links below!

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This is singer-songwriter Valerie Carter (1953-2017). Her first 2 solo albums ( 1977’s “Just A Stone’s Throw” & 1978’s “Wild Child” respectively) were reissued together this week in collection form as “Ooh Child: The Columbia Years” & well, she was just amazing. Anyway, while you’re “Spotifying”, “I-Tuning” or “Padora-ing” this week, please take a minute & check it out because, holy lord, she had a transcendent, shockingly wonderful voice. The nearest she got to having a hit record was when her cover of the aforementioned “Ooh Child” played over the closing credits of the bonafide cult classic of suburban teen ennui from 1979 ( & one of the best movie’s EVER) “Over the Edge”. The original version is a classic but unbelievably hers CRUSHES IT, a genuinely insane achievement. And so check that out if you haven’t before as well as the tracks “Cowboy Angel”, & “Wild Child” because they are tear-jerkingly gorgeous. Speaking of tear-jerkingly gorgeous, it’s time to glorify the BEST NEW MUSIC that’s arisen over the past week which is to say welcome to the WEEKLY NEW WONDERS PLAYLIST. We hope you find your new favorite song(s) within it ! You can listen on Soundcloud or Spotify, links are below just for you.

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Not looking to darken the proceedings of presenting the latest WEEKLY NEW WONDERS PLAYLIST featuring the MOST wonderful new music we’ve met over the past week, but want to take a minute and pay tribute to someone no longer physically with us who’s absolutely worth remembering and knowing about right about now.  His name was Jimmie Spheeris and he died 35 years ago this week in a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles. He was an absolutely amazing singer-songwriter who should’ve been better known. He looked every inch the 70’s troubadour, long haired, bearded, toting his acoustic guitar but there was something about his songs, full of summer breezes and insecurity, melodic and complex, that was utterly special which is to say jeezus damn, he was pretty amazing. Anyway, take a minute this week and spend some time with the handful of albums he blessed us with because they are all full of beauties and they’ll make you feel loved okay ? Now back to our regularly scheduled and beautiful new music…

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Normally I’d write a big intro to tout the wonderful new songs within the latest Weekly New Wonders Playlist ( and they are uniformly wonderful, swear) but I’m slightly spent from writing about this old Beatles book ( please check it out, it’s the entry after this one !)…and so all I’ll say is here are some fine pieces of new music and I hope you find your new, beautiful theme song within. Also here is a gratuitous photo of genius Francoise Hardy from back in the day just because. You can listen on Soundcloud or Spotify because we wanna make it easy. Go rock…

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Here we see Stevie Nicks in Fleetwood Mac’s 100% stone cold classic video for “Gypsy” smirking in a mind bending-ly fetching manner. The video is full of signature Stevie moments but this moment is # 1. It wins by the tiniest of margins over the part where she runs out of the nightclub into the rain in her giant boots and wails ” enough for me to love, enough to looovvvve“. Plus there is some classic Stevie-twirling™ which is basically the equivalent of God smiling on us all. If ever you are feeling rubbish about the universe, watching this romantic, silly, and perfect video will get you out of that head for at least 5 minutes. And of course the song itself is brilliant.

We haven’t posted a Weekly New Wonders Playlist for a couple of weeks ( absolutely disgraceful, I swear I’ll be more on top of this in the future). The end result of this is that the playlist you see before contains the BEST new music from the past few weeks as opposed to just last week. And so it is a bit larger than usual. But let’s look at it in a half full way: you can listen to it on a long journey and potentially not hear the same wonderful song twice. Here’s hoping at least one of these songs inspires you to dramatically run out of wherever you are in your enormous platform boots, into the rain and wail with everything you’ve got. And with that, please enjoy this overfed love monster.

*You can listen on Soundcloud OR Spotify but please note lists are slightly different  as not all songs are available on both services ( just a few), so check out both if you are a completist and don’t want to miss anything !

P.S. Bruce Springsteen’s new album, “Western Stars”, was also released this week and is really good, completely worth spending time with so add that to your listening list too !

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It rained a ton here in NY this week and honestly it was kind of awesome. It meant I could “rock” my official rain playlist for several days and get completely immersed in a full on, all consuming moody rain experience. I am a complete rain nerd. The songs in my rain playlist are not necessarily about rain nor do they generally feature the word “rain” in their titles. Mostly they just feel like rain and have had some weird association with rain in my life. I don’t know if that makes sense but best way I can describe it is when I first heard Paul McCartney’s semi-soulful/slightly weird ballad “Arrow Through Me”, the last song on side one of 1979’s”Back To The Egg”as a young one, there was a thunderstorm happening outside. And so from that moment on it officially established itself as a “rain song”. And so as a result of this recent weather, some of the songs within the latest weekly New Wonders Playlist have the potential to end up on the old rain playlist which I swear to all the bands involved is a compliment of the highest order and not a remotely unhappy association. Rain on.

Listen on Soundcloud here:

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As a young person I loved Phil Collins. Loved him. And so I did what “every” nerdy teen loser girl does ( um, yeah): I drew pictures of him. Yes, they were my secret love songs to Phil and I showed them to no one. It was just between he and I. I especially loved bearded Phil during his Genesis years and the drawing you see here was my attempt to depict him in the most suave and romantic way possible using both pencil AND pen ( she’s crafty). Please don’t be scared, it’s only a drawing.

Now it’s time to honor THE most wonderful pop songs from over the past week which is to say here is the latest WEEKLY NEW WONDERS PLAYLIST, organized with love for you.

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Here is beautiful Michael Hutchence from back in the day stocking up. Reason he’s here is because there is a new documentary currently showing at the Tribeca Film Festival called “Mystify” about his life which is pretty special and I wanted to recommend you go check it out when you get the chance.

And so here for you is a small stack of music, a week late due to some technical difficulties here at Picking Up Rocks headquarters (that’d be my house and the culprits would be a large phone company that begins with the letter V). It’s an oddly subtle pop style playlist, both cooly insidious and mighty fine. Please dig in and find your new favorite song. They’ll never tear us apart.

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I always loved Janet Jackson’s key. As a result, I too once endeavored to use a single key as a fashion accessory. I didn’t do the ear but instead hung it from a chain I wore around my neck in an attempt to be as effortlessly cool as Janet. Needless to say, I didn’t look remotely as cool as her. The fact is when Janet was in her all black, square-shouldered, turtlenecked, booted, hatted, militaristic,disciplinary phase in the late 80’s no one looked as cool. In the same way I prefer “Papa Don’t Preach” Madonna and “brunette” Madonna, “dictator/boss” Janet will always be the BEST Janet to me. Anyway, the latest Weekly New Wonders is here ! I was just thinking about Janet because one of the fine new songs therein reminded me of those exquisite Janet ballads from the “boss” era and their accompanying moody nighttime videos. Still so good. But hey, here are some amazing NEW songs, and I do mean amazing, just for you. You can listen on Soundcloud or Spotify below…

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