BEEHIVE CANDY

Background: As a teenager, Lauren Edman was too shy to practice her singing exercises at home, but she grew up to be a woman with the moxie to perform on Apollo Amateur Night where contestants are routinely booed offstage. Lauren’s seductively spare solo debut It’s Always the Quiet One is a prismatic and intimate self-portrait. It’s a starkly vulnerable album that peeks under the veneer of shyness and examines the inner struggles of someone courageously and coyly grappling with the societal and personal manifestations of being soft-spoken. Lauren is best known for her singing and songwriting on the track “Afterthoughts” from Sleepthief’s 2006 electronic album The Dawnseeker. At the time, she was a relatively unknown talent with a passion for trip-hop featuring ethereal but strong female vocalists. The Connecticut native moved to New York City around that time with the plan of making an album of her own music, but in the years that followed she struggled to find a balance between ...

PLEASE - IF YOU CAN SPARE US A MINUTE OR TWO - GO TO THE TAB ABOVE - 'MARCH 2012 PLEASE READ'. *** UPDATED - 14TH MARCH 2012 *** Project Stealth - For All True Music Lovers and All Of Our Friends! Friends of Beehive Candy hopefully will read this and understand why we have taken this pretty sudden change of direction. Beehive Candy knows where it's roots are. We have grown in terms of interest and regular visits thanks to you our friends. Our focus on new music and emerging bands or artists will remain. As regards the older rarities we have featured in the recent times and the past, well we need to consider how these can be shared without upsetting those we have genuinely sought to support by cutting out the money grabbing bootleggers. Please accept that currently we cannot re-upload deleted or missing files. As Scarlett said in "Gone With The Wind" .............. (what? you don't remember, well OK then just watch this old space).

SXSW comes around again and Austin, Texas is well and truly on the musical map for a few days. Along with many others our inbox has been filled with a good many messages for numerous artists heading that way, this is our little selection, we could not fit everyone in, so randomly chosen from our favorites list are the following acts... Background: El Paso quintet The D.A.'s debut album You Kids!, recorded by Justin Leeah (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Conor Oberst and the Mystic River Valley Band, Girl In A Coma), is 10 tracks of pure bliss – impeccably produced pop set apart by its merging of electronic sounds, soaring trumpet and bare bones rock instruments. Each lovingly-crafted track transcends the synth-pop formula, laden with personality by odd flashes of weirdness – whether it be secretly recorded barroom banter or glitchy chirps at the end of “Big Woman." You Kids! has impressively bottled The D.A.’s live sound. Frontman Tyler Dudley has been known to hang from rafters, bar...

BACKGROUND: The Los Angeles synth pop duo Tic Tic Boom! is giving away the first single "For Feeling" from their upcoming EP Before the Sun Rises. The release, to be available in April, promises to be stronger, dreamier, darker, and a major evolution of their sound from their previous recordings. Before the Sun Rises, the band's third EP, follows on the success of their 2011 release  Reasons and Rhymes. Drawing inspiration from new wave, punk, and indie rock, their second EP received a wealth of praise and recognition from publications like Buzzbands LA, The Owl Mag, and CMJ, the last of which described their music as “hook-laced synthpop that casts live drums and guitars as conspicuously as it does sugary vocals and catchy synth loops.” It also earned the band the opportunity to do an official remix of one of the most popular songs of 2011, Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” and an invitation to showcase at CMJ Music Marathon in New York. After a year of tirel...

This is Adam Ant live at the intimate and wonderful venue Mr Kyps, Poole, Dorset, England recorded last year on the 20th June 2011. Mr Kyps is a popular venue for tribute bands, however there have been a good number of bands and artists who have 'cut their teeth' at venues like this and gone on to greater glories, and acts such as Adam Ant who enjoy the interaction with a close up audience. Since 2010, Adam Ant has undertaken a major reactivation of his musical career, performing live regularly in his hometown London and beyond, recording a new album and with two full-length UK national tours now completed. Wikipedia tells us regarding the small tour that includes this concert - Similar acclaim was given to the five date Seaside Tour of coastal resorts in the south of England which Ant undertook on 17–22 June 2011. Local Cornish radio station The Source FM cheered the 18 June 2011 Falmouth concert on its website: "The audience goes wild. Adam stalks the stage, in cont...

This is a superb 'pro-audience' recording of Throwing Muses performing at The Middle East (downstairs) Cambridge, MA, USA, on March 14th, 2009. From Kristin Hersh's website the good news for Throwing Muses lovers is (and we quote) "Throwing Muses is in the process of mixing their new record, which, for now at least is coming in at 38 songs(!) This one is entirely listener-funded thanks to Kristin’s subscribers (Strange Angels) and other generous contributors via CASH Music". From Wikipedia regarding the latter history of the band - In 1995, the new lineup released University, recorded in New Orleans; the album included "Bright Yellow Gun," a single garnering airplay on commercial radio stations. The album's radio exposure led to long feature articles in Rolling Stone and other major music magazines. Following the 1996 album Limbo, the band announced it was going on indefinite hiatus due to the high financial overhead of being a full-time recor...

This is JJ Cale performing at the High Sierra Music Festival, Leland Meadows, CA, USA, back on the 3rd July 1993. JJ Cale remains a favourite artist of Beehive Candy and therefore it was wonderful to see him nominated for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (NaSHOF) , in 2011. Quoting from JJ Cale's website "NaSHOF recognises songwriters who have positively impacted and been closely associated with the Nashville Music Community and are deemed outstanding and significant. A native of Oklahoma, JJ Cale moved to Nashville early in his career where he was hired by the Grand Ole Opry's touring company. Following relocation's including to California and back to Oklahoma, he later returned to Nashville to record his early solo albums" . As mentioned before on Beehive Candy JJ Cale was born on December 5th, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mind you in Rock come Americana terms that is no age at all these days. Source: Soundboard.   Sound Quality: Very g...