Exclusive Daily Download: "A Bottle of Buckie," Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' "Living With the Living" is easily one of my favorite releases of the year, and this exclusive download is one of the album's best tracks. Much of Leo's music is fiercely political, though never pedantic, but this track focuses that fiery energy onto a friendship story straight out of the Springsteen songbook and with an added Irish-folk kick. I've got a pet theory that there's something distinctively cinematic and emotional about rock made by the Irish (particularly Irish Catholics). Even aside from the obvious musical touches, this song is a good example of what I mean. Am I crazy on this one, or do you also hear common threads in the music of Thin Lizzy, the Hold Steady, U2 and Bruce Springsteen? Billy Joel counts as an honorary Irishman for the purposes of this question.
-- David Marchese
(The Song of the Day is also available as a podcast. Subscribe: iTunes or RSS)
Great literary podcasts:
"In Walked Bud"
Amiri Baraka
"The Last Days of the Suicide Kid"
Charles Bukowski
"The House on Mango Street"
Sandra Cisneros
"A Reporter's Life,"
Walter Cronkite
"An Open Heart," by The Dalai Lama
Read by Nicholas Vreeman
"Robert Frost Reads"
Robert Frost
"In Harry's Bar in Venice"
Ernest Hemingway
"The War on Drugs"
Bill Hicks
"I Have a Dream"
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"King of Horror"
Read by Stephen King
"Motherless Brooklyn," by Jonathan Lethem
Read by Steve Buscemi
"Long Walk to Freedom," by Nelson Mandela
Read by Danny Glover
"Shopgirl"
Steve Martin
"All the Pretty Horses," by Cormac McCarthy
Read by Brad Pitt
"The Bluest Eye"
Toni Morrison
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
Read by Jeremy Irons
"The Bell Jar,"
Sylvia Plath
"The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe
Read by Basil Rathbone
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," by JK Rowling
Read by Jim Dale
"Everything"
Henry Rollins
"Fast Food Nation," By Eric Schlosser
Read by Rick Adamson
"Me Talk Pretty One Day"
David Sedaris
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Dylan Thomas
"Slaughterhouse Five"
Kurt Vonnegut
"Hooking Up"
Tom Wolfe
Audiofile logo by: Aris Blevins
