A blip upwards this week at least because of Jason’s awesome ballad “Trumpets” and goes a long way to saving a short ripping, acrobat dancing, background taping loud mess at Jingle Ball! Looks like clear sailing for Lily’s song of Christmas
Runner – Laura Stevenson – Not only is her singing lovely, her lyrics are kinda great “Static transmit me to the other side of another room in pieces; like a steady beating, the summer hurts” but the guitars are all zoom lens Byrdsy excellence – A
Helen Bach has made the point to me that I love “Autobiography” because his cultural references are the same as mine and that is certainly true of Hawtrey, the member of the “Carry On” movie series
I thought I’d contact my friend Joe Steinhardt and ask him if he’d ask Laura, who records for Joe’s Don Giovanni Records, whether she’d ask Dan for us. And she did. We didn’t get it because, well, I guess because they were rehearsing but, to be brutally honest, I assume rock nyc simply isn’t big enough. But at least we have friends like Joseph, and good guys like Laura, to help us. More important than a 100 interviews.
Bobby Womack is one of the great soul men of the 20th century and after his cancer scare last year we are lucky he is still with us.In January of this year he announced he as Alzheimers disease so we are very very lucky that he will be playing three nights at City Winery and I am making my way down there on Friday
“Spoonful” is enormously difficult to play simply because it has been covered so much from every angle but this is a head rock and roll muscular version, the sexiness of “Shook Down” is shaken off through so much aggression, so much passion: it’s like you wanna say, Tomas, testify man, testify.
Give It 2 U – Robin Thicke – Emphasis is everything and at Jingle Ball, used silence to emphasis his “Angel” hook and the rest of the song followed, making a substandard Timberlake song become a major pop stroke – A-
EDM is so folded into popular music that it didn’t appear as a THING at all, so according to Z100, pop music 2013 is dance pop and that’s really it. Perhaps they are right, or perhaps it was just a bad year for Z100 talent promoters.
Bronson does self-conscious, a prodigiously gifted songwriter who has spent the past decade recording, arranging, writing and re-writing what is simultaneously his magnum opus and his first work
“Drunk In Love” is better than nearly anything on Jay Z’s album “I’ve been drink, I’ve been drinkin’…” , “Blow” a real good r&b ballad, “Mine” with Drake better than nearly anything on Drake’s and the Frank Ocean featuring “Superpowered” is as good as anything The Dream has given her (sorry, nearly).
So altogether, I wasn’t thrilled by the band but listening to Zep 1 – 4 plus Houses Of The Holy and the incredible Physical Graffiti, I must admit I think punk has something to answer for, while it is true that all six albums dropped pre punk still it was punk that made them obsolote with one amphetemine sneer from Johnny Rotten’s lips.
You can draw a straight line between Joe Strummer through to Billy Bragg, father and son, white riot to spy vs spy, but you can’t continue the line to Frank Turner and we shall not overcome
Farshtaist – Scott Severin And The Milton Burlesque – Always good though a little hidden four tracks into Birdhouse Obligato, there is an early version on youtube where his singing is just about perfect, maybe with less of a mix it just sounds better – A
Don’t judge a band by its chorus, the seven minute “I Just Want to Want To Sell Out My Funeral” has the band ascending to a huge tempo shift and descending again over and over while they contemplate the residue from the inside out
At the moment you can stream just about everything Pink Floyd have ever released though the Led Zep availability is still in its infancy, only the first four albums are up and, oddly enough, with “Immigrant Song”, “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, “Black Dog”, “Immigrant Song”, “Stairway To Heaven”, and “Misty Mountain Hop” missing.
Over the 17 tracks on CD One, it doesn’t deviate, it is a gorgeous, melodic, warm summer evening of an album, too hot to bother fussin’, Clapton lays back and plays the blues . The ten tracks that make up the original album are not better played than the additional 7, but they are better songs.
Not much of a week for new material, indeed nothing actually made it and that’s a first outside of a Christmas or New Year’s week. And what there is tends to be there because of a concert I’ve seen or am seeing, except for two hit singles!
Sweet Home Chicago – Freddie King – This guitar sound is so heavy it sounds like a supple bass or a rhythm guitar turned to 11, and the notes bend around the melody in a sledgehammer precursor to metal – A
The crowning achievement of Morrissey’s career? Maybe not, but if anything puts you at the pinnacle of pop perfection that anything would be David Bowie covering your song and for Morrissey, called into the Imperial Studio for a listening party with Bowie, Morrissey had that moment
Blood Orange recently released the excellent, like top ten maybe of 2013, Cupid Deluxe and on a purely subjective basis, I am hoping the guy has improved on stage. Indeed, I am betting on it. A definite must see.
Here comes Christmas and the proof is Pentatonix viral hit version of “Little Drummer Boy”, a capella and none the worse for it with a pretty good human beatbox. Meanwhile, Britney has the lowest sales of her career. Miley is gone, Gaga is gone and Katy is next.
This makes it Rihanna’s 13th # 1m according to Billboard: ” Rihanna ties Michael Jackson for the third-most leaders in the Hot 100’s history… she passes Madonna and the Supremes, each with 12. Color me impressed.
God Rest You Metal Gentlemen – Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi – Not only is this a timely reminder that, yes, in fact, Dio was in a league all his own, but it is a crackerjack classic brought to a ridiculously mature and powerful testament to Christmas – B+
They are reserved and smart, they are like the great surgeon with lousy bedside manner. You need both, Vampire Weekend need to give more. I remember Liam Gallagher’s quote about Oasis on stage. “We’re standing there, we’re singing our songs. What do you want us to do?” Vampire Weekend should rent “Stop Making Sense”.
There is still no crime in giving people precisely what they bought and there is no crime in growing old and missing a step and Rod Stewart did exactly that in his “Live The Life” concert at Madison Square Garden, Monday: he gave the people what they wanted and he missed a step
At the heart of so many 2013 big albums, is the lack of song, from Prism to Artpop, from New to Hesitation marks, from …Like Clockwork to Britney Jean, the lack of songs kills the albums in their tracks. They don’t get heard often enough and when and if you do give them the time they need to hit your pleasure button they don’t.
ever before has the man in the middle of the madness written so well about being in the middle of the madness; Morrissey puts you front and center as wild hordes of American teens go insane, tearing off his shirt, and another shirt and another shirt and while anyone else would revel or despair in it, Morrissey feels slighted because they are ignoring this insanity in the UK
The death of the song is something to be dreaded, not for disco or funk, but for soul, rock and roll and pop music, this is a sorry state of affairs. And even with that, you can arrange a good song into a dance hit but you can’t arrange a dance hit into a good song.
Give Me Strength Sessions ’74-’75 – Eric Clapton – The sessions from one of the great albums of the 1970s, a height of spirituality and passion Clapton has never come close to before and since and anything that adds to the story including a 1974 concert, is more than welcome – A
All power to Ashton for scowling his ass off but he doesn’t manage to make Jobs change at all, he is the exact same man at the beginning as he is at the end, a stubborn dick -there are a lot of people like that and it doesn’t explain the man at all. A real waste of an opportunity.
An Upper Middle Class lawyer who used “terrorist” tactics to further his Anti-Apartheid cause, got nabbed, got jailed again when the racist couldn’t make it stick. Married three times. You know, a normal guy with a 27 year interruption for jail. On the plus side of the ledger, he saved South Africa from the disastrous fate of the countries surrounding him; whether that is enough to forgive him for being buddies with Bono is for others to decide.
There are many more financially successful musicians than Johnny Thunders but there aren’t many more important musicians than Johnny Thunder. To die broke and to leave his sons to a life as career criminals, that’s some price for immortality
Talk about timing being everything, the Nelson Mandela movie, “Long Walk To Freedom” was having its premiere the night Nelson died and U2, who I would love to claim opportunism but can’t because, well, I don’t believe it was, have their stinky “Ordinary Love” saved from the fag ends of the pop bonfire
Oh, she’s nine years old, that why Rod Stewart upped her to nineteen, though it does beg the question why did Berry make her a child instead of a teenager. The answer would probably be target demo but that makes no sense either! Maybe it is more like a significant portion of the audience but we don’t remember it that way – A+
Not much going on here so if it boils down to R. Kelly versus Childish Gambino, there is no real choice though I might say that if Kelly ever had the opportunity to be more than an r&b bangerz machine, to be a Stevie Wonder like melody machine, that train left when he wouldn’t get out of the closet 10 years ago.
Olly Murs isn’t the only album that thrills me here, the Rebecca Ferguson sophomore effort will please you. She isn’t Emeli Sande but her song selection is very very strong and her voice splendid
Where are the Christmas songs? Only Lily Allen constitutes one and none of the others has hit the top ten yet, where is Susan Boyle, Lucy Spraggan, the Fishwives Choirs (no really) and, er, AC/DC. Cowell is pushing SIX X factor songs, none of which are her.
This is what David Fricke wrote about this terrible song in Rolling Stone: “”It’s about the seeds of dreams, and U2 play it perfectly: down-to-earth, while looking up.’. The truth is, the lyric, apparently taken from Nelson Mandela’s love letters to one of his wives, is asinine and the track is a Church organ in search of a song and not finding it
After winning the coveted best concert of 2011 award right here at rock nyc back, I’ll go going back tomorrow for another look at the great somewhat aging man and in anticipation, took a look at his set list for a TD Bank gig back on December 3rd
Who Should Win: Taylor Swift deserves it and how, certainly if this is the competition. Maybe, if not Taylor, give it to Daft Punk. I’m not crazy about the competition, but if not Swift at least Daft Punk moved the story forward.
This is a bad, disappointing, movie. Add to it the audacity of quoting from Robert Altman’s masterpiece “The Long Goodbye” and it is worse, but it is also telling. The Coen’s are a coupla dicks who mistake bad manners for art
Vampire Weekend’s performance on PBS concert and interview “Live From The Artist Den” performance on Tuesday, in one of the best acoustic room in the city, should be absolutely great and that’s a relief. Because Vampire Weekend, who can be inconsistent on stage, weren’t all the good at Barclay Center earlier this year
The two thirds of Sleater Kinney super riot grrls band broke up earlier this week. Drummer Janet Weiss said “It was great but I think it just kinda ran its course…It’s hard to have a band when you live five hours apart by plane.”
Farewell – Bob Dylan – From the “Witmark” demos, the Coen’s get most things wrong in “Inside Llewyn Davis” but using this as a goodbye to the folk era? They get that right – A+
Not that anybody asked me, and not that I am in major major contradiction, but Rolling Stone spend another year being relentless average, whiich is better I guess than being relentlessly average and avant garde a la Pitchfork.
I far prefer the Extra Songs to the Next Day ones -especially this Bruce rip, and I made that for the third Crenshaw EP, it is the first time it is the covers I am loving more than the new song. The Bobby Fuller track is blowing my mind. But the week belongs to Conor Oberst and Maria Taylor’s perfect holiday album, dating from 2002.
Explosions – Chanel West Coast – Probably the best song off her mix tape, the beats are awesome, little explosions in the middle of the song, a systematic banging and her tone is agressive enoough for chick hop – B+
This isn’t Carrie’s fault, NBC gave her the role, what was she supposed to do? But she is neither the singer nor the actress for the role and she weighs it down so much it is painful to watch.
why would Morrissey choose not to discus his sex life in any detail in an autobiography? I mean, if Moz was in a serious homosexual relation for years on end, what songs did he write about it? Why reveal if only to conceal, if you don’t want to write about yourself, for fucks sake don’t write about yourself, but what price prudish concealment?
Every year the BBC present the world with their picks of 2014’s breakthrough stars and every year they get one right and a couple rightish. And every year I read through em and have heard a couple of em before and never hear of most of em again. I know Chance The Rapper and Ella Eyre, and am glad to meet Chloe Howl and George Ezra.
