Old music print ads brought back to life

I'm not sure exactly who to credit but someone with a deep understanding of music is republishing old Billboard magazine advertisements in a Tumblr blog called Billboarding Party. And it's a blast.

What I like about Billboarding Party is it's like an old FM station: no format, you'll never know what's around the corner. One post might be for a rock artist, followed by a country act, then an R&B performer and a lounge singer. It's eclectic in a good way.

I singled out just three ads here:

• A simple Percy Sledge spot from 1966 that features a nice cutout image of the singer and touting "another million seller" in "Warm and Tender Love."
• A text-heavy 1975 Atco ad explaining the controversy behind Roxy Music's controversial "Country Life" cover, which was banned in some countries because it featured two women in various states of undress. Atco, tongue in cheek in this ad, explains why it was selling two versions of the album cover in the States: One with the women completely removed and one with the original sleeve wrapped in green shrinkwrap. By the time I discovered Roxy a few years later, the green shrinkwrap was long gone, and I was left with the choice of only the censored cover. Being both a purist and prurient, I remember shelling out extra to buy the import version of the record, with its "classic" sleeve. I still have it.
• A simple 1978 note of condolence from Columbia Records to mark the passing of Chicago guitarist Terry Kath. Kath was an unbelievable guitarist -- tell me the solo on the album version of "25 or 6 to 4" isn't among the greatest ever -- but his wild side proved to be too much and he accidentally shot himself. This ad is simple, and uses "white space" to great effect.

Billboarding Party features many more. Check out the Tom Jones ad for "She's a Lady," Rick Springfield, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, BeeGees and many more.

First new Cars song in 24 years

The Cars have released "Blue Tip," its first new song in 24 years. The video is entertaining but I was hoping for something a bit more evolved songwise after a quarter century. But can't say I'm surprised. The band never really evolved after album No. 3, and unfortunately released its best song, "Just What I Needed," right out of the gate.

A new album is scheduled for release May 10. Let's hope the songs get better.

I'll close with this excellent Live Aid performance of "Just What I Needed," featuring engaging lead vocals from the late Benjamin Orr.

A visual way to (re)discover music

I've been consumed with a new iPad app called Discovr (yep, the typo is intentional) that allows a person to visually connect musicians or bands they like with related artists they may not be aware of. Discovr also culls archives to bring to your attention videos or articles of artists you didn't know existed.

The search results page for "Bram Tchaikovsky." The tiny images at the bottom are for artists you have loaded onto your iPadThe video above touches on the basics, but I've attached a few specific examples from my own discoveries. I could pull from dozens of examples that have sucked me into a time machine but will focus on one: Bram Tchaikovsky, a pup-rock favorite of mine who had some solo success from 1979-1981.

A simple search for Bram Tchaikovsky turned up the visual to the right, with Bram surrounded by related bans like Graham Parker and The Rumour, The Jags and Dwight Twilley Band. A doubleclick on the Bram Tchaikovsky circle takes you to a details page with short bio, videos, links and reviews. A single click on any of the surrounding artists creates a completely different grouping around that particular choice.

So, in the example to the right, a click on Dwight Twilley Band and Graham Parker and the Rumor brings up their own artist ecosystems.

Clicking on related artists brings up new strings of music ecosystemsI found that in the punk, pup rock and power pop genres, the suggested connections were pretty good. But On other occasions, I was puzzled by the lack of seemingly obvious relations. For example, Rainbow is not directly connected to Deep Purple, even though both bands shared high-profile common members.

The Discovr algorithms pull from EchoNest data to visualize the musical connections and pull in band info. Discovr supplements that by pulling related video from places like YouTube and related links. blog posts and reviews. The videos play within the app, which is great, but the search results are sometimes spotty in pulling in unrelated but similarly named songs or artists.

But even amid that chaff, I've discovered more than a few single gems. The Bram Tchaikovsky performance of "Strange Man, Changed Man" on "Don Kirshner's I've discovered more than a few videos I never knew existedRock Concert" was new to me, and a great pleasure. I didn't even mind that the search results pulled in a video of a pedestrian bar band performing Bram's "Sarah Smiles." The song is so good even a subpar performance by unknowns made me smile.

Discovr costs $2.99 but is worth every penny. But be forewarned: Discovr will swallow time you didn't know you had.