Africa – Sly Stone – From 1970, seven minutes of percolating bass and a riff that goes on and aon and on as though it is an everlasting loop and there is a keyboard that seems to pinging you to a wall and it goes on and on – A-
Taking us from session musician work as a sixteen year old, through the Yardbirds to overnight success, literally three months between recording LZ1 and touring the States to sold out Arenas, the interview had the length but not the depth. .
Lionel Bart wound up broke, having sold the rights to “Oliver!” and lost a fortune, dogged by alcoholism and closeted in a world that would jail you for being gay, he never had another hit. Anywhere. Just kept on financing his own disastrous musicals till he died. Maybe he didn’t have some more, but what he had lives on.
Then he brings in the best selling first week of all times, NSYNC’s 2.4M from 1996, and closes it by sneering that selling 1M in a nation of 300N is nothing. Incidentally, Lefsetz’s beloved Spotify has only 3M subscribers in the US. And at least Taylor’s numbers are from sales.
It is at The Beluga Bar on 75 Murray Street. The place looks terrific, sleek and cool (and maybe expensive) and the music will go from High Society to less high society and should be a blast, ask for “The Old Grey Hat”.
Be My Baby – Bette Midler – The reason this over covered song is so fabulous in this version is because Midler, who does boisterous with the best of them, and pathos with the worst, balances them with a lovely, very touching take – A
Motion – Calvin Harris – The best EDM album since Bassnectar, is the best big star filled extravaganza since Avicii’s remix album. It is all pretty excellent, but the Haim, Gwen Stefani and house banger “Slow Acid” are simply magnificent – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A-
The trio play together very well, it is all Byrdsy zoom lens and undertow harmonies, tugging the glorious melodies deep into your consciousness. A fine album, maybe not your Daddy’s power pop but all the better for it
It is really sad that a song as great as “Been waiting” isn’t a radio hit in this day and age and can’t carry the heartfelt and smart, beautiful played, highly concentrated masterpiece like Penny Park into the mainstream.
Alveron – Wolf Gang – The album made not much of an impression at all but this is a piano plentiful coda to an album that didn’t reach these heights. Sounding more folk than indie, it is a fine track – B+
A Little God In My Hands – Swans – Swans go blue, Gyro like you haven’t heard him with a steady steady bass, Scott walker redux vocals and a blues weirdness and then all these horns blast their way through it – A
It doesn’t really matter to me, I own all her stuff any way and if I didn’t and I felt like doing so it would take me two seconds to find it all on some piracy download website, the same one I got the early 1989 release.
Behind the keyboards and trading vocals with Lianne La Havas before switching to guitars and effortlessly seguing into “Spectrumelectrum” and “Marz” before performing a blistering show stopping “Anotherlove” with howling Hendrix guitar and Prince tearing his voice into a searing falsetto
A week later, the Allman Brothers penultimate show doesn’t feel like the huge let down it did at the same: really, 180 minutes of music isn’t that terrible and really Gregg had all his powers brought back to him: but it wasn’t the three set extravaganza I’d have gotten if I’d made it to the last last last show.
Draw your eyes away from the top three songs for a second and take a peek at # 6, sure making good versions of “Wicked Games” is easy enough, but this is a really good version and Anna Naklab gives a haunting performance.
Taylor moved 90K units, impressive for the UK and her former (?) best buddy Ed Sheeran is right next to her as the album has spent the entire year in the top ten… plus Ed hasn’t even released “Even My Dad Sometimes”, a short shot in the UK though probably hanging till Xmas when it hopes to be the Christmas song.
Late Bloomer – Jenny Lewis – The verses are magnificent, as great s anything Jenny has written in years, and the bridge is lovely, but ugh that chorus sucks. what the hell, is that what it means to have Ryan Adams help out? – B
It is a really cool thing to hear Marshall so far away from what he does and yet so completely into it, he holds the melody, a pretty one as well, though a little ethereal, and strengthens it with a natural confidence that follows the melody line, one easy to lose track off, to the end.
They came together in 2008 and called themselves a psychedelic hip hop band, putting you in mind of that cali hip hop movement, but all the jagged beats and ragged rhythms, dark backing tracks and slowed down layers of sound are more like Tricky fronting FKA twigs
My buddy Mike Hudson is back with his early punk band the Pagans and his first album in 15 years and despite my pleas it looks like I am gonna have to pony up for it, which makes him the most anticipated album of the week. Though I can’t wait for more from the King Of Grime Wiley
The greatest sitcom teen goddess of them all was sweet and smart and then she married Eddie Van Halen and became sweet and smart and a metal Goddess as well. with Mackenzie Phillips a mess selling stories of incest on talk shows and Bonnie Franklin sadly gone, Valerie has a backstory which also includes a battle with cancer and pictures of herself going through chem
FKA Twigs is a great dancer so I think it is a fair bet that she will kill it on stage but even if she stands around like the Dum Dum girl, she still has the best (second best? definitely third) album of the year under her belt and the chance to see her perform em live, even at T5, Saturday night is not to be missed
Stephen – Pep -With the doo wop revival in full swing (hey Meghan Trainor), Karys Rhea is definitely in the right place at the right time, this song is off the bands addictive debut EP My Baby And Me. Catch em before something comes viral and they blast off – A
I got the name of the bass player wrong, KoL fans went crazy but my feeling was “it’s the fucking bass player, who cares?”, I didn’t, as long as I said what I wanted to say about the music as well as I could, getting the band member names wrong didn’t interest me. I didn’t care
back for another dip after the dastardly deep album New Year’s Eve gig at Barclay’s Center, the ease with which Joel performs to an audience of 20,000 people is a lesson artistic domination through repetition. He has simply done it so many damn times by now, he can do it, that’s all.
Kat Edmonson is a little too unique as a vocalist and can grate given enough time but on this song she seems to be flying in the face of everything, include her own voice and jazz inclinations to make a Biblical point thrugh a pop song.
Sure, that was in the far past but it was real problems, and he had real problems, between jail and paparazzi, and pussies, no not that kind, the world accumulated on him and the problems mounted… 99 of them.
It Is What It Is – Blood Orange – I saw him perform this on Jimmy Kimmel with Samatha Urbani, his Friend girlfriend, and they kicked it hard but it is a terrific fuzz sound wall of soul – B+
You compromise, you throw yourself at your work, your home, your friends, you shake it up and you shake it off, and you even compromise with the guy and become buddies with benefits and then in the end, the pain isn’t gone, it is just dulled
Big Apple Blues – Tomas Docker Band – Yusef Komunyakaa and Tomas Doncker concern themselves with what people do and don’t do for each other, with a sidetrip to Alabama and a layover in Fun City.
Just what the world needs right now: a born again religious fanatic singing the blues. And singing it if no not badly, with a song here and a song there even better than that, not very well either
Stay Awhile – She & Him – The thing about tackling Dusty springfield with a 20 piece orchestra behind you is if he isn’t terrible then it must be good because this enormously tedious duo are honor bound to screw it up, but this is an effective version – B
CCM makes God into the ultimate agent for the NSA, the US Church seems to be in the market to anthropomorphize the mystical and mythical: how awful. But weight it as you may, it doesn’t outweigh this song of obedience and adoration- C+
Still, for a three day show, from June 26th to June 28th, the $225 General Admission and $599 for VIP three day passes sound reasonable to me. The way to go is VIP if you can swing it, it is really a blast to swagger up to the lip of the stage.
Spanking as in brand spanking new, Spanking Charlene’s new single “Sugar Love” is with us and it is a goodie, if it doesn’t have the mainstream manipulations of Eric Amble or the garage rock pressure points of Little Stevie, what Charlene McPherson is a fresh live take on her latest release
The question, the opinion, the axiom Bronson has found is superb “outside I hear a songbird and I think she has it right, she is just singing, she is not asking why”. There is a deep and simple truth here and a song to back it up
“With its eighth week atop the Hot 100, “Bass” breaks the mark for the longest-leading No. 1 single in Epic Records history. How does she earn the honor? By passing the King of Pop”
I was somewhat surprised at the top two, though on the other hand the numbers are not all that startling. None of them are. If, next week, Taylor Swift sells as money copies as this entire top ten list times THREE, it will be considered a borderline failure.
Outrageously brilliant piece of tongue in cheek celebrity kiss off by the tally Ho member, an excellent faux-opera gallop with strings and children’s choir telling the epic story of the defeat of cannibal Shia, who had the good humor to appear in the video – A
the guys came forward and took a bow, then Gregg talked about the beginningstThen announced they were going to end it with the first song they ever played And Trouble No More became the first, and the last, song played by the Allman Brothers Band
While Gregg and Warren shared the lead on “Blind Willie McTell”, and Warren was spectacular on “Dreams” . Oteil was a signal post on a band with three drummers and if Derek has had better nights, whenever the two guitarists went after it it was lights out. But it was really Greg’s night
When the band turns up the volume, they shake and when they lower the volume the volume they shudder. The prettiness and intensity of Tommy’s voice makes up with Johnny’s look of aggrieved hostility and moodiness on stage and second guitarist Matt Mason who sings back up so well you think he could front the band
I still contend that ITunes will not be killed by streaming it will be killed by price. What Lefsetz skips out on is that people who are not music fans will not shell out ten bucks a month. If a CD cost as much as a Mocha Grande, sales would return and fast.
around the 14th band I’ve seen in a four day period and the third guitar rock band starring 20 something boys in three hours, it is beginning to all sound the same. If you add to that the less then brilliant acoustics at Pianos and your ears turn to jelly. On record the songs signify, at Pianos they seem to lack distinction.
Number One – Mystery Skull – Brandy sounds fine and Niles Rodgers doesn’t over do the funk riffs, so that means the song’s success must belong to the estimable Mystery Skull, a man who seems to breath disco beats in his sleep – A
The avant garde, disco, experimental composer who died young from AIDs has inspired the best Red + Hot I’ve ever heard from the funky Hot Chip, the arty Richard Reed Perry the moving Scissor Sister, the soundtracky Blood Orange and the poppy disco Robyn…. And everything else ALBUM OF THE WEEK. – A
The sound is dreamy but sturdy, real songs which sometimes dive into jams with the piano leading. It is glorious without being enervating, and though Peter showed more energy dancing around before the show, it is the mood and the music that is taking you elsewhere
CMJ Music Marathon week in New York, so I saw 14 shows and oddly enough nearly all of them were pretty good, it really was a blast and next year I think I’ll take the five days off work. Till then, Public Access TV are the next in line for the Strokes (or do I mean the Virgins) crown
The Don Giovanni band’s new album is a huge breakthrough for them and this,the last of 18 songs,sounds like a country waltz without the country, it modulates strongly off the album an hour after it started with no lack of power – A-
All Due Respect (feat Travis Baker) – Run The Jewels – Their best song to date and not because of the drumming but because of the harp that opens the track and leads you through one of the great original backing tracks… and the drumming – A-
