Numbskull maybe be tired but it doesn’t sound tired, what ever might bother him doesn’t effect his music, or maybe it just make him use his arrangement gifts to change your ear levels, to make you hear what he wants you to hear. Wolfe won’t wrap it up in a pretty bow but he doesn’t have to. It stands as a rarity: ten perfectly crafted progressive pop songs.
Last week a couple of dozen huge and fully grown men graduated from college to the NFL, where they will make millions for a couple of years and let’s hope they save up for a rainy day. If they don’t they will always have the NFL Draft where Mr. Johnny Football got drafted 22nd and Jadeveon Clowney got drafter first and Ha Ha Clinton Dix 21st , thereby giving Jimmy Fallon jokes for years to come.
If ever a place thrived on mediocrity it is Las Vegas, the last thing they want is anything to actually challenge em.
Next vacation I take I think I’ll go to Vegas just to see Britney and the Beatles “Love” thingy. I bet they both suck.
So here comes news that Lisa Marie (46 years old -gasp!) is in negotiations to give the rights to some of Elvis songs which treat hi with respect. Stories about his faith in God -that sort of stuff. It sounds kind of scary right. I read there are like three movies in the works at the moment.
Sleep With A Stranger – Nikki Lane – She is no Lydia Loveless though she comes from a similar world, her twang signifies a middlebrow intelligence rather then a high brow indie wiseassness. Dan Auerbach doesn’t help but doesn’t harm – B
I’m not trying to start a war or anything, but if Austria thinks I’ve forgotten how they rolled over and played dead when the Germans started to huff and puff they are greatly mistaken. And the latest member of the Von Trapp family, Conchita Wurst just adds insult to injury.
Can one star make that much difference in a musical theater production? It can when that one person is the sheer brilliance that is Jessie Mueller as Carole King, she sure can. A bravado vocal and acting tour de force that changed a mediocre jukebox musical story into what they were aiming for: the story of “Tapestry”. A great, star making performance
Anastacia has been out of the pure dance pop business for nearly six years battling breast cancer and now she is back and she still irritates the hell out of me, it’s the voice… well, the voice and the songs .
A slow week at the top, right? Usually there are a couple I have to research but this have been around since last week My main complaint is “Summer” isn’t at # 1… Cmon guys, really!!
Real Thing – Tune-Yards – I certainly don’t dislike Merrill Garbus enough to question why you love her, it is just that her songs, like this slice of funky weirdness meets doo wop, don’t stick to me at all – B
Solange mentioned both she and M.I.A., with her mind on Sunday no doubt, are both mothers now. Not in a stodgy way, but there was no dramatics this night, no kicking photographs , no attitude. The entire evening was spot on the money, in a terrific place to see a show, with a good looking audience and a sweet temperamental and endless intelligence.
On July 8th, Doncker will be releasing Moanin’ At Midnight, a full tribute album to the great Howling Wolf, and, after write ups in most of the world press, including the Huffington Post, and interviews on CNN, now Guitar World are getting into the mix
Remember how cool Harry Connick Jr used to be? So fresh faced and croonie? Now he looks as if he’s made of modeling clay and what color is he? Soy sauce colored flesh
I can’t predict Tuesday’s concert, the only one I have seen on this tour was the Itunes film and it was terrible, but maybe this will come theretofore, maybe this will work. I definitely plan to find out Tuesday. I’ve seen her three times, freat once, lousy once, okay once… let’s see what we get at Madison Square Garden.
Did you read the Rolling Stone Black Keys review? “In every other way, that turmoil is a giant step into the best, most consistently gripping album the Keys have ever made.” I’ve heard one song and it stank so please excuse me while I sneer up my sleeves. I am gonna go with either Blondie -though it includes that EP from last year with Gossip which I liked I didn’t love. As for Dolly Parton, her last albu was killer so maybe it’s more a toss up.
Typical Girls – The Slits – M.I.A. mentioned the late great Ari Upp at yesterdays Webster Hall gig, and listening to this great song from back when the fractured rhythms sound so much like an ancestor of M.I.A. and in a way the entire modern House scene it is worrying, it makes you think we didn’t give the Slits their due – A
This isn’t great art and only occasionally is it great pop but it is great something else: it is a great hope for all our futures, a true meeting plays for gays and straights, young and old, Cherokee and Anglo Saxon, to join in a world where, much more than Lady Gaga for whom there is always an undercurrent of persecuted minorities, we are one nation under an Arena
Jessie has a better voice than King, and she performs these songs, underperforms, underplays her hand, to perfection. Her “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” in the first act is tentative and strained and “It’s Too Late” in the second act, the blossoming of a great singer
We live in the world of the sequel, everything sequels something else and it goes round and round and round and ends up nauseous and with a headache. Is it too soon to say I fucking hate Cowell’s first musical? Oh, I don’t think so.
She is fourteen and she has just landed a gig at BBC TV’s “Entertainment” program ion the children’s BBC Network. And I guess her childhood, which would have included her dad’s divorce from her Mom and her Uncle, wasn’t exactly all that. Very insecure stuff. And then appearing on a TV show? Not certain I’d enjoy that…
Fancy – Iggy Azalea – Addictive edm rap mash up with a strong rap and the always charming Charli XCX, when you’re hot your hot – A-
I might not always much care for mainstream pop hits but on the other hand, I might. I am certainly not
surprised by them. But I am surprised by how these terrible songs can have entered the consciousness
of pre-teen America
I haven’t seen Iggy on stage but I have seen Ariane and she was the pits. It’s the Lana Del Rey syndrome, a production creation that can not translate on to stage. But so what? Don’t see her live. Both “Problem” and “Fancy are great songs. That’s all.
I can’t take more than ten minutes combined of the album but I don’t like her at all, if I was a fan I’d be quite pleased and even as a person who has done his entire life but poke fun at her… it is the best I could’ve hoped for.
I haven’t seen Iggy on stage but I have seen Ariane and she was the pits. It’s the Lana Del
Rey syndrome, a production creation that can not translate on to stage. But so what?
the dfifference between this album and Bottle cap albums like 2004’s The Jig Is Up, is not the banjos as such but that this is even wollier, coolier, friskier and friendlier. It is the strangest of albums, a series of jams in various keys which adds itself to a vision of a world that doesn’t exist now
Why wouldn’t I. Rough Trade is a tiny club and Tune-Yards is pretty good live, and I haven’t seen her in a couple of years, and, as an added plus, Dirty Projector’s Olga Bell was opening. I had a ticket, I go to a lot of shows and so really why not?
Marvel came first and then DC, but also Archie, Harvey, Mad Magazine and from their I graduated to an appetite for all things sci fi. So to connect the two was obvious though I have been beaten to it as the drawing illustrating this story attests in no uncertain terms.
While simply because of his work at last years “Sinatra In The Park”, Legend has a lot of brownie points in my world, as a songwriter he puts me to sleep. But here, he has a 0.09% beat on Pharrell. I don’t seem I am exaggerating when I call John’s Love In The Future rancid.
“Only five albums have racked exactly 13 weeks at No. 1. In addition to “Frozen,” they are: the original Broadway cast recording of “Hair” (in 1969), the Monkees’ self-titled debut (1966), Judy Garland’s “Judy at Carnegie Hall” (1961) and Enoch Light/Terry Snyder and the All-Stars’ “Persuasive Percussion” (1960).”
La La La – Naughty Boy, Sam Smith – Two of the biggest names in UK neo-Northern Soul meets electro get together to define the sound that has owned the UK charts since Emile ruled the charts two years ago. The song is only ok, but Smith’s vocals are superb – A-
That’s what Mark E. Smith was getting at in “Psykick Dancehall” –that the voices are like ghosts from the past calling to us, but also, psychically like the chains of time on sound we respond through yours, eras lifetimes, where time and style can’t step on sound. Where nothing matters but the song
The Replacements placed themselves as edgy post punks who could write a melody. And that’s fine except then what? Paul and the boys got caught on the then whats and now, on the same Festival Circuit Outkasts are using they still are caught on the then whats.
Beiber is one of the boys for sure but only while surrounded by bodyguards. The last time I saw him, at MSG, he was pulling muscle from the shell, and claiming he was the strongest guy on the stage. His band seemed to be agreeing between gritted teeth though at least in one sense Bieber was right: the man who signs the check is always the strongest guy on stage. So I guess that’s what Beiber was doing with the champ.
The Christian Randall Wallace (he also made Secretariat) makes a case for a world of goodness and hope and I will buy in as far as I can. It isn’t my life, and it isn’t a life I would particularly want, but it has the charm of a daydream of life and life everlasting.
Good Kisser – Usher – excellent beat heavy, rhythm unsteady, major league return by Usher with a huge dancefloor appeal. It should be big – A
Lily has put herself up in battle with her peers and while that may well be a little silly, if you take it at face value it is a fight she has absolute won. Sheezus is a damn good album whatever Lily might think to the contrary.
“The media will beg for free tickets to your show just so they can write about how much they hate it. I wish you could all see it. The whole things actually pretty funny.” Er, free tickets? Wow, that’s a little harsh? Writers are professionals, they go to shows to review them, it isn’t entertainment. Tickets are the tools of their trade.
What they fail completely to capture is the subtext of Spidey: it’s the story of teenage solipsism. Nothing has ever really caught that though Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire came a lot closer than Marc Webb has done on his two attempts. Webb is a 20 something phenom (“500 Days Of Summer” anyone) he gets first job out of college not High School ennui.
Sneaky Freak – Imelda May – No nonsense rockabilly via Ireland and it makes you wonder why the UK are, and always have been, bigger rockabilly sneak freaks than the US. This is no nonsense stuff – B+
At 88 years of age, the great seven string guitar wiz Bucky Pizzarelli and three guitar slingers came to the Cutting Room, dubbed themselves the Fab Four and then proved it with 70 minutes of finger picked, strummed and otherwise bedeviled swing for the ages.
Nice little chart they’ve got going for em here. Take out Legend and there isn’t a dog in the lot and Calvin Harris newbie might well be a summer hit this year. Fabulous House triumph on every level and an all round great song.
Embrace, a post Britpop band in the 1990s, may be better than I think but the blurb calling em out as a latter day Oasis is very silly, now a latter day Travis maybe. And wait, quick head count, seven of these acts could be, nominally at least , be called rock and roll. Those English are crazy.
Forget – Ben Watt – Another strong ballad off Ben’s new album, the Joe’s Pub gig is the same day as Mr. and Mrs. Carter and I am seriously considering passing on Jigga for him – A-
Vinny held down the beat on his rhythm guitar, Ed complemented Bucky and Bucky and Frank traded finger picked licks that swung from the rafters. Bucky has lost nothing, he is all tactile swiftness and deep smiles with Frank keeping an eye on him, waiting for a nod from the master to take over.
Jackson could certainly suck, any time he mentioned children your skin began to crawl, but This Is It and Michael are not on the same planet as Invincible. The truth is the post-mortem MJ has sucked from beginning to end “Love Never Felt So Good” doesn’t help in the slightest.
Consider Ellie Goulding among those who won’t touch animal by product or product at allaccording to contactmusic.com: “I went vegan a few months ago. I feel leaner and healthier, but I miss cheese. A cheese plate with fruit is my weakness!”
I am really excited about all this though specifically, I enjoyed the first Eno Hyde song “Daddy’s Car” and the second release “The Satellite” almost as much. Plus, it isn’t Eno’s fault everybody wants him to produce them. He’s not like T. Bone begging for the business.
And now here she comes again, the woman, the legend, from Sonny and to disco diva, to half native American hippie queen who let the Stones sleep on her floor in 1964 through TV diva, divorcee, Mrs. Greg Allman, Studio 54 denizen of the demimonde, gay icon, Chastity’s Mom, and all round believer in life after love, at the Barclay on Friday. The one and only Cher.
Rhode Island Is Famous For You – Buddy Clark – They don’t make em like Clark any more, he died too young, just 37 in a plane crash, but this is the version of “Rhode Island” you want if you’re looking for one – A
