[Note: This is the first in a series of articles that constitute Village Voice Media's year-end music package. The others - pop, indie-rock, dance mixes, Latin, country, alt-country/Americana, metal, rap/hip-hop and special graphics breaking down the year in charts and 2008's worst lyrics - will be posted on Rocks Off throughout the rest of the holiday season.]
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco e
Asha Bhosle
Precious Platinum
asha-bhosle.tripod.com
One basic characteristic of Bollywood films is the fact that actors generally do not use their own singing voices during the musical numbers - that task goes to playback singers like Asha Bhosle, who over the span of six decades has participated in almost 1,000 such flicks. In the meantime, she has also kept busy doing non-film songs - including a Grammy-nominated CD with the Kronos Quartet, 2005's You've Stolen My Hear
The Clancy Brothers
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in Person at Carnegie Hall: The Complete 1963 Concert
www.legacyrecordings.com
During the early '60s folk boom, no one did more to expose audiences to traditional Irish music than this singin' and playin' quartet of brothers Liam, Paddy and Tom Clancy and cohort Tommy Makem. Just in time for this year's annual unfurling o' the green comes this reissued, greatly expanded record of their legendary 1963 St. Patrick's Day show at the fab
Wonder what the Pogues show Thursday is going to look like? Here's our guess...
"I had the good fortune to meet Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers once and while talking with him over a cup of tea I mentioned my affection for the Pogues to which he replied, 'The Pogues are a cross between the Clancy Brothers and the Sex Pistols...with five teeth between them.'" - customer review of the Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God on Amazon.com
The Clancy Brothers - Paddy, Bob, Liam, and Tom - a
