Iman Lababedi

Founding Editor of Rock NYC. Iman Lababedi was a freelance rock critic in the 1980s, took a break of 20 years, and has been writing and editing the music blog rocknyc.live since 2009. He considers this to be in many ways a golden age for pop music and hopes you are enjoying it too.

Slideshow

BBC's Long List Of Upcoming Musicians for 2015

This is BBC’s list of bands they predict big things for in 2015, and they’ve been known to get it right.. BBC asked 140 influential music industry experts, DJs, critics, broadcasters and bloggers and, shock, only found one Stateside artist out of the 15 being touted.

Slideshow, Track Review

Best Songs Through November 30th, 2014

Sure “Blank Space” is the best song of this year, last year and probably next year but lets take a second to namecheck Pittsburgh’s finest the Gotobeds, whose “New York’s Alright (If You Like Sex And Phones)” is as good as its name, hell it’s as good as its first line.

Slideshow, UK Top 10 Singles

UK Top 10 Singles 12-6-14

Labrinth is a Simon Cowell find, and the soulful guy? You can hear the ching ching going though this is his breakthrough in the UK. A good soul ballad, a little later than planned. But Take That with a typical dance pop track win the top spot… their 12th since 2008.

Slideshow, UK Top 10 Albums

UK Top 10 Albums 12-6-14

Olly sounds a little more ordinary, a little too plastic pop on his new album, but I’ll be listening more once its released Stateside. But the real question is, despite its record breaking first week, how does One Direction finds itself looking up at Ed Sheeran who has been on the charts since JUNE???

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10 Songs: Monday, December 1st, 2014

Pray To Jesus – Brandy Clark – Lovely country track with a vicious and sad (and maybe a tad obvious) vision of white lower middle class America, equating faith with luck. Not inaccurate just a little self-evident – A-

Slideshow

Billy Bragg: A Year In The Life

Billy travelled through the American midwest with fellow singer-songwriter Joe Purdy, tracing the legendary Rock Island Line railroad for it’s starting point in Illinois to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where the song of that name was first collected from inmates at the Cummins Prison Farm by John Lomax and Lead Belly in 1934. On the way, Billy and Joe found time to play a pop-up benefit for the people of Ferguson.

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Let's Active: rock nyc Concert Picks Week Of December 1st, 2014

I saw Cat Stevens/Yusef at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction earlier this year. He only played three song and they were all great and at the time I was furious the E Street Band received over an hour and Stevens just 20 minutes. Well, it will take a trip to Philadelphia’s Tower on Thursday but we will get to see a full Stevens gig for the first time in decades.

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10 Songs: Sunday, November 30th, 2014

On a big album, this is a huge glorious melodic ruckus and it is so big that it changed Cursive’s life and made them stars, it is like chamber music in the middle of the Battle Of Britain and at ten minutes I wish it was longer – A

Album Reviews, Slideshow

Susan Said's "Big Life" Reviewed

Susan has taken the rock and roll idiom and created a world without doors, without escape, often without hope, except for one door, one possibility, her searing voice and an electric guitars, hard hit drums and anchor bass, she offers the escape route.

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Frank Ocean's New Song "Memrise" Reviewed (Stream Here)

We’ve heard that Frank has been stymied by ongoing homophobia that has caused the hip hop community not to use one of the great sound guys in modern pop, and after claiming he was gonna quit the biz, Ocean changed his mind and offered up this new piece of music, a somewhat awesome piece of wobbly bass stuff along with a spoken word piece

Slideshow

The A+ List: 11-29-14

Wolf isn’t howling, he sounds like the whistle on a train. The beat is a monotonic wheels on rails going on and on and on, it doesn’t move forward, it moves in place and Wolf is like he is observing, part of the trip, for a moment, part of the larger world surrounding the train.

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10 Songs: Saturday, November 29th, 2014

A child beater and a Nazi collaborator and they are still ten times better than most of our rock stars! Of course, the second half of that isn’t really true and maybe the first half will be revealed to be inaccurate soon. The thing is, just putting the voices to the side, folks don’t have this much star power any more – B+

Movies

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1" Reviewed

I don’t expect a sci fi dystopia to have much reality as such, but I do expect it to have an internal reality and this has none, hell “The Giver” was better. No dialogue, no action, no beauty, so surprises (except in the enormous, plot driven mistakes being made), Vivian Leigh is doing cartwheels.

Slideshow

Hear, My Friends: JJ McCabe's Five Songs

You may remember my friend JJ McCabe from last year’s JJ McCabe And Fallen Angel power pop masterstroke Presenting. Surely the best of the genre (just give another listen to the horns on “Gimme More” and the guitar on “Uuu”) in 2013 and well worth checking out, so I guess the two Beatles tracks aren’t a shocker at all on the . Ice JJ Fish on the other hand…

Business, Slideshow

Bridgetown Records Fall Releases 2014

For seven years Kevin has managed to keep Bridgetown Records running, quite an achievement in itself, time to support the guy with your hard earned bread. Or you can just stream it on his website here. So now instead of whining, now it’s your turn here to support the arts.

Movies, Slideshow

Rye Coalition's Hard Luck Story Comes To DVD

Maybe ten years ago, I had a good friend (can’t remember her name) who was dating one of the members of Rye Coalition and invited me to have lunch with him and we sat around for a coupla hours where he old me he story of this quasi Led Zep metal punk bands rise and fall.

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10 Songs: Friday, November 28th, 2014

Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars – An amazing simulation of soul and funk and James Brown, unyielding replication of what it means to have funkadelia in your soul but so what if it isn’t the real thing, it still sounds good – B+

Slideshow, US Top 10 Albums

US Top 10 Albums 12-6-14

Four is the fourth # 1 by 1D and the last by the old system where Billboard only used sales (Alyson Camus wrote about it here) and it could be worse: sold nearly 400K and a good album. Every 16500 streams equals one album as far as Billboard goes and you can do the math but it comes to $0.015 per stream, Spotify pays $0.06

Slideshow, US Top 10 Singles

US Top 10 Singles 12-6-14

Let’s be clear, “Blank Space” has made a superstar even bigger, simply the greatest pop star around today: it crosses over every boundary, it is the epitome of a master pop song. It isn’t a question of if you don’t like it to each there own, it is a matter of if you don’t like it you have something missing in your pop genes and hereby banned from commenting on modern music.

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10 Songs: Thursday, November 27th, 2014

7/11 – Beyonce -Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast wrote “Beyoncé just made her very own “Hokey Pokey.” Resistance is futile.” what a great line… This is a fabulous dance wildly track, as good as anything except “XO” and a must for the office party! – A

Lists, Slideshow

Protest Songs For Ferguson

It got me thinking of protest songs for the people of Ferguson. I have somewhat liberal friends who agree with the verdict but I don’t. In the end of the Police Force is 98% white and the population of Ferguson is 98% black, this is, to put it simply, apartheid

Business, Slideshow

Back To A Multi-Format Music System

With streaming services, you can play your mp3s on the streaming service but only at the place where you’ve downloaded, you can’t take it with you. You can take it with you on Itunes, you can save your record collection on Itunes, but you can’t play your streaming files

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10 Songs: Wednesday, November 26th, 2014

All these twee folkies are the UK equivalent of Jack Johnson, maybe a little more serious and a little better, but equally irritating. I am seriously dreading Vance Joy opening for Swift and this guy is just about as good though this song buiklds up nicely – B

Slideshow

Marshall Crenshaw's "Move Now" EP Reviewed

“Move Now” is the 5th of 6, and not a teaser for an album. Actually, the EPs ARE the album: once the 6th one has run it’s course there’ll be an album containing the best stuff from the EP series, possibly a new song, definitely a couple remixes, etc. That’s the actual plan right now.”

Album Reviews, Slideshow

Gene Clark's "Two Side To Every Story" Deluxe Double Album Reviewed

The rockers on the ten track album, the fiddly dee “Home Run King” were little gems, no less than the gorgeous steel guitar on “Lonely Saturday”. It sounds like Gene is channeling Jim Reeves. The album is an aching beautiful and sad thing. The live album sounds a helluva lot like the Hot Burritos brother, and it has a country soulfulness and swing the Eagles never came close to

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10 Songs: Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Inspired use of Rare Earth’s “I Just Want To Celebrate” anchors this terrific horns aplenty party track off the soundtrack to the latest Madagascar movie. The sight of 100s of penguins tap dancing to this track will leave you… well, it will probably leave you queasy but the track is still a goodie – B+

Slideshow, That Was The Week That Was

That Was The Week That Was: November 17th, 2014

We lost the great director Mike Nichols, the man behind “The Graduate”, “Carnal Knowledge” and “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf” at the movies and just two I really loved from Broadway “The Play That I wrote” and “Spamalot”. David Ruffin, the temptations lead singer’s kid brother and Motown singer who had a smash with “What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted” also died . On a personal level, rock nyc’s Edward Huerta wife Misty died at the age of forty

Slideshow, UK Top 10 Albums

UK Top 10 Albums: 11-30-14

I have no problem with 1D selling a mindboggling 142K units, I have a problem with the UK’s penchant for lousy faux-opera like this abysmal album in at # 10. what they like about it, I can’t tell you. I blame BBC 4. Don’t let the eyelashes fool ya, Jenkins is the spawn of Satan

Slideshow, UK Top 10 Singles

UK Top 10 Singles: 11-30-14

I have two songs this year I’d include in the “A++ List” -one is “Blank Space”. But at the top? This insanely lousy song should be taken out and shot and dawn. Turn it off and listen to Chipmunk contemporary Wretch 32, the excellent rapper from the London projects.

Slideshow

10 Songs: Monday, November 24th, 2014

Closest Thing To You I’m Gonna Find – Butch Walker – Walker’s best song was also the best song by anyone Saturday night, a lost love song wrapped in the glow of geography with a killer guitar break and a very smart lyric – A

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