Jaime Joshi

Jaime was about six-years-old when she realized that songs could be stories (Lyin' Eyes by The Eagles blew her mind) and she's never been quite the same ever since. She once got into a shouting match over Prince's Superbowl performance, she firmly believes that the secret to life can be found between the bars of a Springsteen song and that the right Reverend Al Green probably gives the best hugs ever. She lives in South Florida where she spends her time overusing the word 'dude' and drinking good gin. Her biggest wish to sing karaoke with Rob Sheffield. You can follow her on Twitter, Instagram or her blog.

They Say It’s Your Birthday: Bruce Springsteen

 Posted by at 3:30 pm  1 Response »
Sep 232014
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

When it comes to religion and spirituality, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. The paint-by-numbers elements of most religious rituals leave me cold. I am not moved by scripture, nor am I frightened by hellfire and brimstone preachers – all fury, self-righteousness, and condemnation, their empty words matched by their outstretched empty palms.

In my darker and much more cynical moments, I wrestle with the notion of a human soul. Does a soul really exist, or is it something that we conjured up to serve as a salve?

And then I remember Bruce Springsteen.
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They Say It’s Your Birthday: Madonna

 Posted by at 8:00 am  6 Responses »
Aug 162014
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Forgive me, Father for I have sinned.

It has been….a really long time since my last confession. My sins are multitudinous (lust, blasphemy, coveting my neighbor’s ass… but in my defense, it’s a really nice ass), but the most egregious of all is idolatry.

See, ever since I could sway to music, Madonna has been my idol. The long-established Queen of my Universe and a musician I just can’t quit despite her numerous attempts to break my heart (that horrible faux English accent, sleeping with Vanilla Ice, sleeping with Vanilla Ice and then documenting it in her Sex book…).

I didn’t grow up Catholic, so I couldn’t seek solace in the open arms of Holy Mother Church. Instead, I sought solace from a leonine-eyed beauty who often incited the ire of the Catholic Church.

Madonna taught me lessons that have carried me through adolescence and well into adulthood.
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In Memoriam: Amy Winehouse

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  1 Response »
Jul 232014
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

The 27 Club is one of the most enduring legends of rock and roll apocrypha, and although the member list is distinguished, no one’s really clawing to get in. It refers to the peculiarly high number of prominent musicians who died at the age of 27 – blues legend Robert Johnson, Jim Morrison, Big Star’s Chris Bell, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones founding member Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain, amongst (too) many others.

In 2011, the club expanded its membership yet again with blue-eyed soul ingénue, Amy Winehouse.
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They Say It’s Your Birthday: Prince

 Posted by at 8:00 am  3 Responses »
Jun 072014
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called life.

Electric word, life. It means a mighty long time but in this case, we’re talking about 56 years and one man – Prince Rogers Nelson. You probably know him as Prince, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, an unpronounceable symbol, The Purple One, Joey Coco or (in certain circles) That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice.
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In Memoriam: The Notorious B.I.G.

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  6 Responses »
May 212014
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. – Walt Whitman

Today’s In Memoriam is brought to you by the letter B:

B is for Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and blunts.
B is for beats and braggadocio.
B is for Big Poppa, Biggie Smalls, or maybe you know him as The Notorious B.I.G..

Guru may have been the architect, RZA is the scientist, but P-O-P-P-A? He’s the king, and Biggie begat a generation of hip hop artists who are still following the path he blazed. No small feat for a chubby drug dealer who released only one album in his lifetime.
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Good, Better, Best: Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones)

 Posted by at 5:00 pm  12 Responses »
Feb 212014
 

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Over 40 years after its initial release, the Rolling Stones song “Wild Horses” still thunders across the forefront of popular culture. Its appeal lies as much in its lyrical ambiguity as in the music itself. Is it about Keith’s contrition for leaving his newborn son at home for yet another tour? Is it about Marianne Faithfull? Maybe it’s about some other graceless lady, a nameless muse immortalized between the bars of Mick Taylor’s Nashville-tuned guitars. Whatever the case, “Wild Horses” endures – not just for its beauty, but because it enables listeners to imbue it with their own experiences, however bitter or sweet. It’ll go on living long after we die, and nothing could drag it away.
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