Best Of MetaFilter

"a newly remastered version of my original post from 2011": kirkaracha's super juicy post on the newly remastered Stop Making Sense, 2023 now in our beautiful house.

"Fred Neil really did go searching for the dolphins in the sea": Don't miss vverse23's Searching for the dolphins in the sea, a lovely tribute to mysterious folk singer-songwriter Neil, his mission, his haunting, soulful song, and the artists who covered it.

"it's something like an O Henry story, where the revelation in the last line makes you totally reconsider everything that happened in the story - every relationship, and everything you thought you knew on first reading, you have to put in a new light now ..." flug gives an amazing, detailed answer to cubeb's question, "How did Bach make this one jazzy chord fit into a Baroque chord progression?"

Iconic photo of Gordon by famed jazz photographer Herman Leonard

Dexter Gordon was born 100 years ago today: oulipian posts in appreciation of the 6′6″ jazz saxophonist, band leader, and Academy Award winner popularly known as "Long Tall Dexter" and the "Sophisticated Giant".

Fire dancing by Scrap Pile (cc by)

In Ask Metafilter: "It's one or three or ten centuries ago. Somebody's ancestors gather around a fire and pretty soon, spontaneous music breaks out, a few people start dancing, everybody winds up happy and breathless. But what I need to know is, if the songs aren't from the US, Canada, the UK or Ireland, or from Western Europe, what does the music sound like? I'm making a YouTube Music playlist to write a fun cozy fantasy novel to and I need help finding instrumental music from different traditions."

Wintersweet asks about antique party tunes outside the Anglosphere / Western Europe.

gingerbeer points out Richard Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Music" in this week's free thread. "Playboy asked a select group of musicians to choose their ten favorite songs of the past millennium. Richard Thompson, believing what Playboy REALLY wanted were only songs from the last 20 years, took them literally. He gave Playboy EXACTLY what they asked for. He chose the best songs of the last 1000 years. Thompson never heard from them again."

Will Wilde video screen cap

A truly astonishing Free Bird harmonica solo, plus interesting insight and context from msbrauer.

By Wednesday - https://wednesdayband.bandcamp.com/album/i-was-trying-to-describe-you-to-someone-2

The New Wave Of American Shoegaze - "While there're so many revelatory new sounds coming out of Philly, the reason we're on the crest of a New Wave of American Shoegaze, not just one city's worth of cool shit, is that there are several other distinct styles coming to fruition in tandem. One of them is country-gaze ..."

Radio on. by Howdy, I'm HMK (cc by)

carrienation posted Bent by Nature, a podcast from LA's KCRW about the legendary DJ Deirdre O'Donoghue and her influential radio show SNAP, with available live music archives from the show (1982-1991). As eschatfische notes in the comments, "not only are the Bent by Nature archives great, they're also a labor of love of Metafilter's own mykescipark."

photo via loc.gov

adamsc links to a super secret stash of cunningly hidden Library of Congress cultural treasure in the Lizzo LOC thread

The Songsmiths Quartet

Great detective work to chase down a vintage musical mystery in Ask Metafilter!

Chiac guide to eating an Acadian lobster from the site petitpetitgamin.com

Shepherd with a fabuleux sélection of divers flavors of Chiac tunes.

spoonful of diamonds...... by Rolf Dietrich Brecher (cc by)

In Ask Metafilter, jeszac is looking for your favorite not-widely-known versions of songs that are themselves widely known? Great answers here.

Country Girl 13 by martinwcox (cc by)

"What's it like to be a girl in a band?" Box posts about the women who built grunge.

Histories by Aldaron (cc by)

In Ask Metafilter, ordinary_magnet says, "I'm looking for popular songs that relate events or profile people from history in a straightforward, informative way. Can you help me add to this weird playlist?"