rock nyc

rock nyc

Watch This Estonian Band Winny Puhh's Video At Your Own Risk!

It’s such an old and tacky institution, nobody I know is ever paying attention to it, but apparently it’s still going on after all these years, and this weirdo Estonian band is in competition this year. It would be really cool if Winny Puhh – that’s their name – would win, but you have to watch the video below to realize what these guys are up to,…

rock nyc

The Elton John Biopic: Heaven Help The Rocketman

The film is being written but Lee Hall who wrote the wonderful Billy Elliot.. see how this is all fitting together now? I see a Broadway rendition of this in our future.. yuck. Oh and if anyone knows any little boys- they’re having a bit of trouble casting 5 year old Elton.. heaven help us.

rock nyc

Paul Simon's Next Release Will Be An EP?

It’s quite unusual for him, he has consistently be releasing albums with 9-10 tracks for more than 45 years, but an EP? This is a first! May be he is following the music business new trend, albums are dead, people buy/stream single songs, so it’s not worth it to release full albums anymore?

rock nyc

rock nyc Top 10 Songs Week Of March 25th, 2013

2013 is turning into a disappointing year. Alan Jackson and the Strokes both released new albums but you wouldn’t know it from this list. Shelton is a surprise and Pep is a new find, but everybody from Vampire Weekend to Justin Timberlake are not coming up with the goods and Lil Wayne needs to get off the Nyquil.

rock nyc

Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 3-30-13

40% of this, including # 1, which Ed Sheeran covered, is the residual effect of Taylor swift’s Wednesday concert. 30% of this list reflects upcoming concerts. 10% was mentioned in the David Geffen American Masters PBS documentary. And I need no excuse for listening to the Blasters.

rock nyc

Taylor Swift At Prudential Center, Wednesday, March 27th, 2013, Reviewed

Taylor gave her fans a superbly crafted set. A just about perfect two hours of pop rock with a good band and a minimum of acoustic hi-jinx. She treated her young fans with all the love and respect while, impossible to overstate this, streamlining the Speak Now aesthetics to a fine point, a study in simple design well executed and the least indulgent, most creative arena rock show anywhere

rock nyc

The Milk Carton Kids At Amoeba, Tuesday March 26th 2013

The finger picking was getting more intricate on some songs, going from mellow parts to more country or bluegrass ones, and they were joking about the fact that people thought they were from the mid west because of the type of music they were playing. ‘We are from LA’, they said, ‘But we went to Michigan once and wrote this song about getting out of there!’… ‘Is there someone from Michigan?’

rock nyc

The Infinite Regression Of Rock Stars

This is a form of infinite regression and an aphorism, people lose their faculties as they decay and degrade on the way to death. We are all the same. We are all turning and turning and getting worse and getting worse

rock nyc

Golden Slumbers: A Round Up Of Recent Deaths In The Music Community

Fran Warren auditioned to sing for the Duke ellington Band when she was just sixteen years on. She didn’t get the gig but she spent the next decades singing for some of the biggest swing bands in the country. And nailing down a handful of hits singles, including her signature tune “A Sunday Kind Of Love”. She died recently at the age of 87

rock nyc

US Top 10 Singles, April 6th, 2013

We know we will never have to learn how to spell Baauer’s name again but Macklemore? Unfortunately, I don’t see how they can follow up this fluke but hopefully they can use it to stretch themselves into a long and lustrous career rapping it along with whatever else they’ve released recently. Back at # 1 in case you missed the obvious.

rock nyc

Hear ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 3-29-13

The second tier releases from Tuesday and this is pretty dreadfuls tuff. M83? I lost intereste after they sucked live but even by those standards this is terrible. American Idol? wasn’t he selling tickets to the Book Of Mormon or something. Even Fred Hammond is off his game and Jim Carey? If it’s a joke I don’t get it and if it is staright, there’s got to be better cowboy songs out there. Man, this is shaping into a pretty drastic year.

rock nyc

KISS Kids Comics Coming This Autumn

Yeah. I don’t suppose that there will be any action for kids on this but I can say that their fathers (and maybe even grandfathers) may really enjoy this sense of nostalgia. Gene Simmons has made no secret of his desire to make money at all effort but this I cant see too much profitability,

rock nyc

Anything Left To Say About The 1960s?

The Sixties was such a powerful decade that it overwhelms modern times. I mean, we don’t even know what to call 2000 – 2009. The naughts? What sort of a name is that? And really, what we we have to show for it? File sharing and long lines at airports. Maybe women and gays became mainstream, the PC took over, and rap, pop and dance formed an unholy alliance. Rock and roll continued on a respirator

rock nyc

Hey, Maybe Weezy Really Does Hate NYC

Lil Wayne put together a huge tour and yet again ignored the media center of the Universe. What’s that about? Incidentally, the rule of thumb is you announce five borough dates late because people hold out for them. But there aren’t enough off dates, he is giving us the miss

rock nyc

Lou Reed Cancels Coachella And A Few Other Shows

Does he suddenly feel too old? Sick? Probably not. The website just says ‘This show has been cancelled due to unavoidable complications’ and this is quite mysterious to me. If he was sick, they wouldn’t say this! May be he didn’t take the expression ‘Oldchella’ too well

rock nyc

US Top 10 Albums, April 6th, 2013

I know, you thought just because Timberlake had moved nearly a million units he would be the picture up front. but no, I am going with Kacey Musgraves because I said so. Not to make light of Timberlake’s achievement, hell he worked hard enough for it, didn’t he?

rock nyc

Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 3-28-13

The first five of these songs are the lasting effects of Jon Pennington’s “Most Influential Singles” series. # 1 and # 3 is King Crimson plus Crimson cover, #5 and # 2 are blues variants and #4 is Americana. The two Modern Hut songs await release and Sigur Ros I went to see yesterday.

rock nyc

Marla Mase On Tour Of Europe

Every time we check in on True Groove Record Label they are doing something else, whether is is Doncker opening for Ethiopian pop stars or trips to China or Mase’s extended version of her album Speak or anthem single “Piece Of Peace”, they are relentless in their pursuit of musical excellence.

rock nyc

Download Junip's New Song 'Your Life, Your Call'

‘It felt like trying on new clothes when we first listened to it – it took a while to get comfortable with it, but now I like it a lot’ says José González’s to describe the song, and I feel quite the same way after my third listening. But don’t get fooled by the lightness of the melody

rock nyc

David Geffen: American, Sure, Master….?

As the Yippies and Black Power were kicking out the jams, Geffen championed soft rock. Punk rock completely blew past him and while kudos for signing GNR, nobody thinks Geffen had a damn thing to do with Nirvana’s success because, well, because he didn’t. He never sullied his hands with rap at all and he wouldn’t know art if it bit him in the ass. The guy sued Neil Young for fucks sake.

rock nyc

Rolling Stone Magazine And Kurt Cobain

Jann Wenner and his henchmen don’t give a damn, they are like the folks who sell flowers at graveyards. Nevermind breaking pop was no surprise, the buzz on the album was pretty deafening at the time. Only an insulated bunch of know it alls who fire any one who disagrees with them could get it wrong.

rock nyc

Auction Time! Sgt Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band

As I have mentioned here before there have been some insane auctions! Remember John Lennons TOOTH? Allot of rockers opt to auction for charity and I ‘get’ that. Its nice to use celebrity for a reason but to think 6 figures for an album that’s inked is amazing

rock nyc

Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 3-27-13

2013 is becoming the year of the follow up to a bad album with a worse one: Lil Wayne and The Strokes are the two culprits here. Alan Jackson? George Jones has nothing to worry about when it comes to spirituals. Dido and Bugg are the surprises here, pretty good songs out of a fairly bland lot.

rock nyc

Academy of Country Music Awards To Honor Dick Clark

They called him the perpetual teenager and I, for one, can totally relate. After strokes and age he became a shell of his former self and for some reason America allowed him to be propped up like a taxidermy moose next to Ryan Seacrest each New Years Eve so he could slobber out some indecipherable nonsense

rock nyc

Not With The Band: What Is Stage Presence?

Stage presence is not always about how energetically the person moves on stage, in any case, it should be spontaneous, unpredictable, personal, mysterious and why not, weird, bizarre, disturbing. That’s why I would never consider these rehearsed-to-death stereotyped choreographies as good indicators of stage presence

rock nyc

Nickelodeon Kids Awards Winners 2013

Over here at rock nyc HQ we are always fighting and shouting and worrying about the same thing: “what do the kids want, what do the kids want?” and once we’ve convinced Steve Crawford the kids don’t want all wrestling all the time and Mary Magpie no, we are not going to turn into an all theater blog, we are left with the same question: what do the kids want?

rock nyc

The Eagles Are Back- Get Your Wallet

I have seen The Eagles live ( I assure you it was under duress ) and I have seen Don Henley way too up close and personal and I will say even in the glorious 80s– it was a horror. Lets add thirty years to it and its sure to be a backing tape atrocity.

rock nyc

Four Years Of April!

It’s nearing the witching hour and a topless girl wearing a horses head, tights, men’s underwear and sneakers and drenched with beer is frugging near the stage to Shit Horse, while Odessa Records owner Paul Finn dances with wild abandon and Shit Horses’s lead singer Danny Mason is twirling center stage before settling back into a semi-improvissed rant about love and death “Twelve Horses”

rock nyc

FIDLAR: Vampire Weekend Were Just Total Dicks To Us

We were DJing in one room and they were DJing in another room and they were just playing the worst music ever, and everyone was in our room just jamming out… And they had this totally dead room where they were just playing electronic music and kept giving us the stink-eye

rock nyc

Sneak Peaks: New Album Releases Week Of March 25th, 2013

Wavves is the keeper of this lot not least because the Strokes sounds like a major disaster on first listen and Depeche Mode sound like, well, Depeche Mode sound like Depeche Mode and I am simply not a fan at all/ The other album that might be better than you think is Harper Simon’s. Alyson sent me a couple of sonds off the Harper and I was impressed with his more sinewy approach.

rock nyc

Hear Ye: What rock nyc Is Listening To 3-26-13

The Kathleen song is a sad face piano based loser, so I listened to “Sidecar” to cheer me up. I wonder if Iver is over. # 7 and # 8 are the best two songs of the year, in that order. The Modern Hut song is one of the smartest pieces of metaphysics you will ever hear if they ever get around to releasing it.

rock nyc

Chris Owens At The Ebell Theater, Friday March 22nd 2013

On Friday night, Chris Owens had settled down for this 60s-inspired pretty and delicate music, embellished with ethereal flute, Toots-Thielemans-style harmonica and vibrant sax, and he didn’t even hesitate to cover big classics from Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel, Donovan and Bob Dylan, going with the period.

rock nyc

Pep: More Songs About Beaches And Boys

The EP isn’t gonna be released till June 1st but all four songs are just wonderful. It is kinda hard to pick a fave. It is all handclaps and back up harmonies and sweet melodies and a retro vibe so completely retro it is wild. It is like those 1950s diners. It is like songs on the American Graffiti double album soundtrack

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