One more day, one more day,just one more day and a whole lotta new albums with Miguel’s newbie actually already out. Can you feel the excitement in the air? I wasn’t crazy about his breakthrough album Kaleidoscope Dream, and was vaguely cool to his opening slot on last years Drake tour, but Wildheart is much better. Actually, it is really really good.
Bloodlines – Tyga – Hand it for Tyga’s flow here, and if that isn’t T-Pain between autotuned (it isn’ -it’s from Mark Z’s “Its Easy”) it sure is a smart little hook, and the lyric is stranger than strange -an ode to his family and friends – B
US: The Supreme Court ruled gay marriage was legal and the world rejoiced though Canada enacted the same law ten years ago in 2005. Even so the world became a rainbow and freedom rang as the world became gay for a day, during Gay Pride Week
Wow, talk about catching a band at the height of their heat! Following my viewing of Wolf Alice last week, they have killed it at Glastonbury and were only stopped from the top spot, on their debut album I might add, by another artist who killed it at Glastonbury, who I have also seen recently and also wasn’t crazy about live. PS: I took Taylor down a notch because, frankly, she is losing her sweetness.
Okay, with the estimable Jess Glynne handling the hook, this is the word to crack Tinie Tempeh Stateside. He has come close in the past , “Written In The Stars” reached #12 back in 2010, but it hasn’t happened big time as well as appearing on Swedish House Mafia’s “Miami To Ibiza” , so this one could finally do it. Meanwhile, Flo, Fet, the Felix remix -lotsa good stuff.
The MSG set was a goodie, maybe a little better than his Radio City Music Hall set from 2012. A solid B+, except Helen Bach just warned me I better give it an A-. I never said, I never her grade was completely unfounded…
The Tide Is High – Blondie – Is this an official gay anthem? Blondie’s famous cover of the Paragons masterpiece survives as their encore. It was the highlight of their set at Roseland, with a full brass section coming out to join her and the highlight of a whole day of music yesterday with Debbie literally wrapping herself in a rainbow flag – A
“I AM THE GREATEST LIVING ROCKSTAR ON THE PLANET!” Kanye West claimed at Glastonbury yesterday and if you disagree maybe you should move on to bro country… I can’t think of a planet where that probably isn’t true and if West is the divining line in modern pop music stick me on any side he is on.
Murder isn’t baseball, Denis Hamill claimed in the New York Daily News today, it isn’t a staticians game. Essentially telling us all to sit down and stop fretting. Perhaps, but homeless men with machetes attacking defenseless women in Bryant Park is rife with symbolism.And if murder was baseball, New York City has transitioned from the 2000 Yankees to the 2000 Mets, and that is far enough or we will be the 2014 Yankees before we know it.
Maxi Priest we expected to be great, on record he is pop and reggae and on stage he is a rock and reggae with a masterful lead guitarist. Sly and Robbie produced some of last years Easy To Love, but on stage this was not Lover’s Rock. he opened the set with the 1990 “A Little Bit Longer” but while the recorded version is bright eyed UB40ish reggae riddem soul pop, on stage it was a barnstormer
“The report further indicates that the number of full-time songwriters in Nashville is down 80% since 2000, while wages of recording session musicians in LA have shrunk as much as 70% over a similar period of time. It is widely known that record sales are heavily down as well, about 60% down since 1994, to be precise.”
The two songs are perfect examples of jangle, “This Soul Is Not For Sale” is a rethinking of the “The Bells Of Rhymney” with the folkness replaced by Beatley power pop. My Buddy Robert Ross will flip for it, I promise, and while I know it looks easy to wear your influences so on your sleeve, if it was easy, why doesn’t everybody do it. There is a magic to renewing something so great and making it your own.
I am gonna miss this because 1) I’m broke, 2) it is at Jones Beach and I don’t have a car on 3) a weekday, 4) The Big Huerta and little Stevie Crawford have already written terrific reviews of the concert in LA and Dallas, 5) plus Alyson reviewed the tribute gig months ago and 6) did I mention I’m broke? However, if you have a car and are not broke, get to Jones Beach on Tuesday and check out Brian Wilson.
Bilal might be a biggie true, 2013’s A Love Surreal was terrific and the one time I saw him live he was very good. The current single with Big K.R.I.T. is a goodie. Bassnectar released one of the best albums of 2014, but he was a bore on stage and it is a little soon for an new album, also the EP sampler was a disappointment. I’m going with Vince Staples.I’ve got a feeling about his first solo album, the Odd Future collaborator has been waiting years for his turn and the three songs I’ve already heard off Summertime ’06 have been excellent.
I belong to a secret group on Facebook, invite only, called “For The Love Of Music” and all we do is share songs off YouTube, it shouldn’t be this much fun but it is. Run by Beiruti musician Peter Abela and with the great Salim Haddad and regulars like Tala Barrage and Zeina Misu, they lose me when they go prog rock but are excellent with European pop and Salim posted this terrific track, which is neither, yesterday. One of the great blues tracks I’ve never heard the original of – A+
Patrick Ewing left the Knicks in 2000 and these guys are still rebuilding. After their worst season, how about a win now strategy? The Knicks aren’t rebuilding, they are a bad organization who can turn any one into losers with a toxic culture. Fourth round pick, Latvian 19-year-old, 7-foot-1 project, center forward
Common is the Al Sharpton of rap, he never met a cause he couldn’t turn into a photo op or a coupla bucks. Selma Schelma, Common hangs his flags anywhere some black actual, you know, heroes, like Nelson Mandela show up, and then convinces that art is action AS SUCH. As though singing about Selma is the same as marching there all those years ago.
I Think It’s Going To Rain Today – Randy Newman – He sounded like Mel Torme with a cold and the piano playing was so quiet and the downbeat of the down beat so down beat, it was hard to tell when he was joking and when he had stopped. On this song as well, where the emotions are written so large and small at the same time, it is hard not to take Randy seriously, I always took it as a break up song, other people claim homelessness – A
We have to start taking National holidays off here at -stories are so damn few and far between. Everybody has ta taken the week of for Independence, which is fine for the boys: Jimmy, Jimmy, James and Seth and the girls Wendy, Meredith, Ellen, Queen Latifah. Yup, apparently their Union mandates it: we get a day (actually, we work through it), they get a week. So let’s celebrate all the Talk Show Host because where would be without them? Well, more or less exactly where we are now.
Not only did I not get a press pass to the Farmsborough Country Music Festival this weekend on Randall’s Island, I didn’t get a courtesy “sorry, none left”. business as usual here at rock nyc. So to make up, here is my review of two of the three headliners some six years ago!
The Supreme Court upheld the right to gay marriage in the US. Certainly, during Gay Pride week, I don’t know who would disagree that this is a great thing that should have never been an issue. Congratulations (or maybe I mean sympathy) to all homosexuals now legally ale to do what they did anyway. On a personal level, what I liked most about homosexuality was the indiscriminate sex men had before AIDS destroyed the fun. Just the entire constant seeing all over the places with tens, dozens of partners. Of course, it wasn’t marriage that killed it, but I am sure marriage will be the straw that leaves those days of glorious promiscuity to just a distant memory
Yeah, I know, she’s a national treasure, she is funny and fun, saucy and self-deprecating, she has a great reputation as simply a good one and has been married to the same guy since 1984,, and at 69 years old, unlike Delores DeLago, she is still going fine. But man, can she suck a song dry.
No, of course Kacey is not a cowgirl but it is still the best song on the album, as for Marshall, man can this man write a bridge, Foals best song followed by Algiers followed by Bully’s first song and at # 8 the saddest song of the week. The best is very very good.
Irony. Utility. Pretext – Algiers – Silence is the new loud, and Algiers uses it as well as anybody this side of Kanye, especially on this grunge relation Gospel track of immense power, it is somewhere between testifying and lying – A-
If “Summer Of ’42” happened in the “Summer Of ’15”, the war widow would be in jail right now because Oscy and Benjie (“I’m a dangerous man, I truly am” ) secretly filmed her and Hermie and posted it online and somebody (everybody) snitched to the cops -who took a break from frisking black male teenagers for loitering in their backyard, to bust her. We live in a sharp elbowed, intrusive, ill mannered, nosey, aggressive, and pointedly ignorant of human nature, age.
Heading into July, and Wiz has been at # 1 for ten weeks straight and there has only been three songs at # 1 all year… for the first time since 1996. All three songs have been nothing great, the Taylor “Bad Blood” was her weakest on 1989 and Bruno and mark have written a pastiche of funk. Wi is terrible but Charlie has a great voice. But the extreme conservatism of the charts is borderline babrbaric. PS not a single new song entered the charts this week.
Rock criticism in 2015 is in the crosshairs of forces beyond its control: of editorial dictates and the power of mass condemnation,of a type of music -EDM, that lends itself to technical jargon, and of an underpaid and undernourished set of writers that falls back fast on 21st century chitter chatter, of a social media filled world happy to attack at the slightest provocation, and an overwhelming humorless 2015 air of defeated populism
James Taylor’s first number one album ever. How wonderful for him and sure, 96,000 copies sold isn’t exactly the smash Sweet Baby James was 45 years ago, still you play with the hand you’re dealt and this hand finds a terrific album at the top of the charts!
If Radiohead are the Oxford upstarts who went hi-tech and Elbow the university boys most likely to stand a round at their local, Foals are the kid brothers who take themselves way too seriously… with predictable results. But any band with lines like “I fell for a girl with a port-wine stain, I knew her initials but never her name” are alright in my book and this blistering rocker is as good as Elbow at their best. A shocker – A-
The prices are high for everything except dollar pizza, even Subway quietly bounced their prices by 20% and from your cable bill to your groceries honesty means getting away with as much as you possibly can. Which is the reason for this, of 120 grocery stores in the city, 70% put the wrong weight on food purchases thereby overcharging you. Wholefood -the most expensive is the most egregious and are about to get fined.
Cash Money’s LA connection is a typical bragard on this from his new album, surprise release yesterday. but this is one long hook with as many amusing repeats of the title as you can live with and might I add, a pretty good voice as he advises you to take him literally – B
What do I think? I think this is well past the pale but, much like Morrissey and Taylor swift, it has nothing to do with me.
There is a sense of today about the setlist, it is so deeply buried in the present and personally if I had my choice only two of these songs would be on the setlist and that is why, if nothing else at all, Mo goes his own way and does his own thing. Morrissey Is None Of My Business…
Taylor hardly needs me to warn her that just because YOU CAN do something does not mean YOU SHOULD do something. Between Taylor and Apple, who cares anymore? It is just big corporations battling each other and nothing to do with me.
What’s Up – 4 Non Blondes – remember when there were something like 3,000 bands with a similar name? This is the 1993 one hit wonders who sound like Edie Brickell fronting 10,000 Maniacs and paid it off nicely on this big but only smash. Gaga just performed it during Linda Perry’s induction into the Songwriters hall of fame – A
The Truth EP – Mike Posner – This terrific EP is the singer songwriter as self-flagellating superstar, from a never quite was but might be with these downbeat tuneful songs. Over an album it might be too much, but over an EP it is flawless – EP OF THE WEEK – A
I’m Dying Of Thirst – Robert Glasper – a requiem for black people who died because of the color of their skin, named by children, behind a quiet piano, based on the Kendrick track off his debit album . Sounds OK but it doesn’t work at all, maybe you need to do a little more than that it 2015 – C
Live: I woke up today to 100s of reads of Edward Huerta’s admittedly excellent, Brian Wilson at the Greek review from Sunday. A pleasant surprise but how did that happen, right? How about this: Brian Wilson posted it on his Facebook wall. Considering all the negative being thrown our way it was a pleasant change of pace. Congrats to Edward and I hope we passed the audition!
Still Feeling Blue – Gram Parsons – There are two artists I will get on a jag for no apparent reason -this guy is one, and this first song off his first solo album is one, it resonates with a swing but a swing all about missing the swing. So overblown and true, just the sound of her name makes him want to die – A
Place Jungle alongside Rudimental with less electronic mayhem but better beats. Josh Lloyd-Watson is as close to focal point as they have, and he takes well to the position, but this is a collective buzz and the next album should tell the story. Meanwhile, great to see them and free of charge.
A 21 year old white supremacist Dylann Roof entered “the historically black Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on Wednesday night, attending a prayer meeting for an hour and then murdering nine parishioners.” Jon Stewart couldn’t find anything funny to say about it, but apparently he hadn’t studied the guys haircut long enough. Personally, I think that’s enough of a reason to install the death penalty.
Fleetwood Mac just closed the Isle Of Wight Festival, which explains what this is doing here, and Simon played with Sting in London a coupla weeks ago. I guess something happened in the UK to bring the estimable Mr.Miller back on the charts. Before his life was tragically cut short on a plane ride to entertain the troops during WWII back in 1944. Pardon me boys if you know this, but Miller got his distinctive sound by moving a saxophonist move to clarinter and playing the saxophones part.
Yeah, nothing to see here but even so LA DJ Deorro nails it dead to rights with “Five More Hours” -a nearly perfect dance pop confection. I’ll take it over just about everything and it may be too late but I can see it contending for summer song of the 2015.
Ruby My Dear – Roy Hargrove – The best thing I’ve seen on stage in the past week was Roy performing with Ibeyi, the hard bop trumpeter is older and the sound is mellow without being dreary, especially on this Thelonious Monk ballad which dates from… the earliest moments of his career – A
People might have the opinion that all you have to do is be indie for me to love you but the truth is, I don’t review smaller labels if I don’t like their music so it only seems like that. However, so far I haven’t heard anything I don’t love on World Wide Vibe, and if the volatile Miss Husick wants to storm off stage any time soon I’d be happy to be there to see it.
Yesterday was a drizzly write off and today looks worse but that didn’t stop 1000s of would be merpeople from going off to Coney Island Island for the 33rd annual Mermaid Parade. New York, where every day is an excuse for a party!
Round are way, all hell has broken out after the world at large decided I was wrong to claim David Fricke was a company stooge. Of course, that wasn’t the first time I claimed Fricke was in Wenner’s pocket… this is the first time I claimed Fricke was a company stooge… in April 2011… I think it stands up nicely
Year Of The Hare – Fucked Up – The Who of hardcore are still at it and this is a great song fucked up by an interminable intro and much too much jamming. Still, it is their song I guess and this is to hardcore what “Baba O’Reily” is to hard rock, only less so – A-
despite a somewhat minor live show earlier this week at LPR, I will be surprised if there is a better album that WOlf Alice’s My Love Is Cool. But I’ve heard it plenty so for anticipated nah. Richard Thompson, maybe, not sure, Desaparecidos? The single was pretty good. Kacey Musgraves, yeah yeah, gravy and biscuits, got it. I am going with young indie poppers signed to Sony, Bully, whose all three songs off their debut album Feels Like are great, especially “Too Tough”.
Welcome back Morrissey. After claiming his opening act had given him the flu and then saying he had cancer, he cancelled his American tour, advised his record company they had no contract with him thereby causing them to pull all digital copies, getting married to a man, and calling omnivores the equivalent of child molesters, missing Morrissey on Saturday at Madison Square Garden is not an option. Morrissey not showing? That’s a possibility.
