379 to 50: #4 “Game Of Pricks” by Guided By Voices

There’s a ridiculously deep pool to choose from, but “Game Of Pricks” is my favourite song selection to represent Guided By Voices, as my 379 to 50 countdown nears the end…

379 to 50: #7 “Gold Soundz” by Pavement

Some more “Gold Soundz” in my 379 to 50 top songs countdown now, courtesy of Pavement from 1994 second album “Crooked Rain Crooked Rain”.

397 to 50: #23 “Teen Age Riot” by Sonic Youth

Back to New York again for the third time in the 20s of my top 50 songs countdown, with 1988’s “Teen Age Riot” from noisily melodic art rockers Sonic Youth.

USA 2011 Chapter 7 – Miami: quite a sound machine

As originally posted on my Tumblr site while travelling around the USA in 2011…

Final road trip and the car safely returned, it was time to see what Miami had to offer. I stayed in South Beach in Miami, which is its main holiday destination but is frequented by locals too so not a “tourist ghetto”. It’s also where the Art Deco district is and I stayed in a great Art Deco hotel there: really well preserved, fantastic pool, private beach behind and the hotel interiors made you feel like you could be in an episode of “Mad Men”, especially the impressive lobby and martini bar.

I did get out and explore other parts of Miami though, including a boat trip around Biscayne Bay that was pretty good and very funny. About half of it seemed to consist of going round this exclusive island where many stars live or have lived. Our guide would point these out and then a blast of music would play out: for example “here is Ricky Martin’s house, he likes living La Vida Loca” (cue music). This was very funny every single time it happened. We also saw Gloria Estefan’s house, someone I had totally forgotten about but it would appear that Miami Sound Machine are to Miami as The Beatles are to Liverpool. The piece de resistance though was seeing Tony Montana’s house from Scarface, accompanied by “say hello to my leetle fren” and sounds of machine gun fire. Obligatory photo of the house shown below.

Say hello to my leetle fren. Yes, it’s the “Scarface house”