rock nyc

rock nyc

Rolling Stones Top 50 Albums Of 2012, Bruce On Top Of Ocean

Yeah, Wrecking Ball album of the year? That’s the ticket. Will the last rock critic to leave Rolling Stone please turn off the light. Oh, and Frank Ocean at # 2-was a no brainer. really, I mean really. We may not be able to agree upon anything but we can agre that a young, gay, black r&b guy that nobody except me had heard of two years ago is now the most highly over-rated musician on the planet.

rock nyc

Listen Up: 12-20-12

Gospel – Robbie Williams – Big time pop songs and about reuniting with the love of your life years after she dismissed you, indeed never had you, or an extended metaphor about artists and audience and either way, a kiss off that sounds like a history lesson – Grade: A

rock nyc

"The Hobbit", Reviewed

For me, these movies are the cinematic version the old Classics Illustrated comic books. Before I eventually read the Dickens text of “A Tale of Two Cities” in high school, I’d already read the comic book. Ditto “Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman” and a bunch of others.

rock nyc

My Best Shows Of 2012

This is this time of the year when we have to decide about the best songs, albums, concerts and make our 2012 best-of list. I haven’t been to as many concerts as the previous years, blame it on my ever-more-demanding job and a bad schedule that forced me to wake up at dawn, but I saw some good ones nevertheless

rock nyc

Three Albums Live: Yes On Tour

This whole ‘play an album’ concept is one of the most lazy ass things I have ever heard. The trend is mounting too. Rather than throw down a nice hodge podge for your work just put the bitch on auto piliot and sail through.

rock nyc

Beatles Album Fails At Auction

The gold press of 1963’s “Please Please Me” was estimated at about 18,000 euro but it missed its mark and was pulled from auction at 12,000 (appx $18,000). The records owner Chris Collins calls the disc a ‘burden’ that has been in his sock drawer.

rock nyc

No Pazz And Jop Poll For The Voice In 2013?

As a special favor to out faithful reader (you know who you are, don’t be coy), here is the top five Pazz And Jop albums for 2012. No, don’t thank me: 1- Frank Ocean, 2 – Bob dylan, 3 – Lemarr Kendrick, 4 – Leonard Cohen, 5 – Fiona Apple -No, dont thank me

rock nyc

Must See: Fleetwood Mac At MSG, April 2013

Here’s a question: “You Make Loving Fun” or “Second Hand News”. Not that easy, right? Peersonally, I’d go with the former. And I would take either over just about anything Nicks has ever done except MAYBE “Landslide”. Cerainly I don’t go to FM psyched to see Stevie.

rock nyc

Listen Up: 12-19-12

Eternal Father, Strong To Save – Choir Of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church – Having spent years at English Boarding Schools when just a wee tot, English Hymns play like nostalgia trigger for me. Something compounded by being in the UK right this minute (but not as I write). I always thought it was me who could only ever remember “For those in peril on the sea”, but listening to it here, that’s still all I can remember becausethe words are muffled – Grade: A

rock nyc

Frank Ocean: How To Make Friends And Influence Rock Writers

I will take James Brown on The One and no melody or I will take Smokey Robinson and melody to die for, but I don’t get either with Frank Ocean (or the Weeknd or Miguel…). Instead I get an excellent falsetto and a good vocal range and an atmospheric mood music so constantly downcast it is like pall upon the songs

rock nyc

Dead Rabbitts "Edge of Reality" Video Review

It is rare and wonderful when a singer has proper clean vocals in a hardcore band. Often the pitch is just too high bordering on the same tone you get when you kick a guy in the nads. Not the case with Mabbit who actually has a beautiful singing voice

rock nyc

"The One: The Life And Music Of James Brown" By RJ Smith Reviewed

From the 50s to the 90s he drove a power funk rhythm right through Jim Crow to Black Power and out the end and released some of the greatest dance music of all time. “Please Please Please”, “Sex Machine”, “Cold Sweat”, he ran roughshod over some of the greatest musicians of all time, and planted himself at the center of American pop to this day. Hip Hop owes Brown everything.

rock nyc

More On Jack White And the Artificial

Art is fake. Rock is fake, the truest artist in the world is outrageously unreal, has nothing whatsoever to do with their own life. Life is too messy, too lonely, too inevitable: if you stare right into life it is so black you would suffer from nyctolopea, you would go blind.

rock nyc

Listen Up: 12-18-12

Are We All We Are – Pink – It sounds like she’s saying olly olly oxen free and I guess that kids game is at the heart of the way Pink deals with love and life. There is something insolent and aggressive but fun loving and bouncy – Grade: A

rock nyc

Too Many Musicians Are Still Pro-Guns, What Do They Have To Say Now?

‘Yeah, it’s legal in the United States. It’s part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police…if somebody wants to kill people well you know they don’t need a gun to do it…United States is based on guns.’

rock nyc

Heavy and Light Tour 2012

Anyone who knows depression and the aftermath of such knows that any ounce of assistance means hope. To be acknowledged that you’re ‘not alone’ can often mean the difference of not giving up.

rock nyc

UK Top 10 Singles December 22, 2012

As I searched out the photo for this weeks chart I was disappointed to see Gabrielle Aplin dolled up like a mini Del Rey. I suppose this little songstress who just recently burst on the scene will be allowed her own look. Shes adorable and has a heck of a set of pipes.

rock nyc

UK Top 10 Albums December 22nd, 2012

Ollie Murs is hanging tight to that top spot and Andre Rieu is holding up the rear. Inbetween we have the same old stuff and plenty of it. I do love that Neil Diamond is hanging out here and looky there’s Rod Stewart as well. The potential end of the world has no place here- the UK

rock nyc

Listen Up: 12-17-12

88 – Digsy – A study in being 17 years old and looking back on a hip hop world you were never a part of. This is first rate piece of teen-hop with a dream of a future, or a past not unlike the Reverand’s himself – Grade: A

rock nyc

Magpie and Hel Do SNL : Paul McCartney

McCartney is a legend. Hes a well oiled well maintained classic car that still blows away the whippersnappers. The problem here is he is squished on to Saturday Night Lives stage of horror. Yet, like a Christmas miracle puts forth a beautiful rendition of one of his new songs.

rock nyc

Singles Going Steady: New Album Reviews Week Of 12-10-12

Jesus Piece – Game – This is Game’s second killer album in a row and with the entire rap world here to join him, there was every chance his born again move was gonna be a major disaster. But goddamit if it doesn’t pay off on song after song, from game changer title track (in which he name checks Coltrane for obvious reasons) to “Celebration” with its advise we’ve heard before (“get high”), this seems to find Jesus in its sinfulness – Grade: A

rock nyc

Listen Up: 12-16-12

All I’ve Got To Do – The Beatles – Easily the most mature song on their second albu. Lennon, of cause, who speeds yp at the break as if, as Tim Reilly once noted, as though the entire claim of love and responsibility is real. Which it might not be with a vocal so fragle it seems bound to crack – Grade: A+

rock nyc

Johnny Cash "The Posthumous Tapes"

Imagine that you could record one more record with Johnny’s later period weathered vocals with Rick Rubin, taking a break from imagining what chicken fried steak tastes like, twiddling the knobs. Here are the tunes that Rock NYC would break out for the occasion.

rock nyc

Watch Cat Power Traumatizing Kindergarten Kids

Then she starts ranting about cow stomachs, wanders into emotional detours, and loses the notion of time as she usually does! She even asks her young public to turn around,… ‘This lady makes me sad’, says a little girl before seeing Chan literally having one of her infamous melt downs at the end of her almost inexistent performance.

rock nyc

Driver Friendly, “X-Mas In Texas” Reviewed

Driver Friendly just cheapened themselves so much that there is no turning back unless someone scrubs my brain with bleach and I forget I ever heard it. The worse part is how great it could have been if it weren’t written in the back of a Prius on the way to the studio (or basement)

rock nyc

Carrie Underwood For Sound Of Music, And I Can't Wait

Underwood will be 30 years old by the time filming starts. She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee??? Underwood???? At it’s not just age, I once saw her OPEN for Keith Urban and she changed costumes six times in half an hour. She is a mega-rock star egomaniac without an ounce of innocence left in her.

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