Monday, June 4, 2012

Road Trip! The Ocean State

Rhode Island, as it turns out, should be ashamed of itself.  It has a couple of really unfair advantages, the Newport Jazz Festival (where Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. have performed) and the Newport Folk Festival (where Bob Dylan was loudly booed for going electric) among them.  Then there's Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.  Then there's Dicky Barrett.

Never heard of Dicky Barrett?  Born and raised in Providence.  This is him, lead singer with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones doing "Someday I Suppose" from 1993.  The Bosstones are actually based in Boston but I figured I'd wait till here because, you know, RI is small, how many bands can really be from here?  Right, sometimes I'm really dumb and this is one of those times.  Anyway, Dicky Barrett.



So, more people proving me wrong wrong wrong include Blu Cantrell -- "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)"




Jeffery Osborne -- "You Should Be Mine"



John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band -- "On the Dark Side" from the Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack and if you haven't seen that movie go now, find it, it's awesome!



Okay, college bands and musicians.  Let's start with Brown University.  Film composers who have graduated from Brown include

Wendy Carlos -- A Clockwork Orange and Tron, below



and Marco Beltrami -- Academy Award nominated for the scores of 3:10 to Yuma and The Hurt Locker, below



Then there's Lisa Loeb, who graduated from Brown in 1990.  "Stay (I Missed You)" was a MONSTER hit from the Reality Bites soundtrack in 1994.



The Rhode Island School of Design shares campus facillities and resources with Brown but isn't actually part of it.  The Artistics formed at RISDI in the early 70s.  Never heard of them?  That's because they eventually became Talking Heads and moved to NYC. 



Talking Heads is probably as good a bridge to NYC as we're going to get and that's where we're stopping next so be prepared.   See you tomorrow!

6 comments:

  1. Lisa Loeb -- that was a breakup song for me. Still get teary when I hear it.

    Great survey.

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  2. Thanks, Kurbiss! I heard a DJ refer to "Stay" as a lost classic the other day and I wondered exactly what he was listening to when every radio station but the country ones were playing it ever hour on the hour.

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  3. Whoa, major classic songs and soundtracks with ties to tiny RI, cool!

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