Then to end it all there is this rush of sets taking me from December 7th thru December 31st with a break in the middle for an 8 day trip to Scotland. And with this I plan to cut back to no more than two shows a week, maybe less! Here is a list of the musicians I am seeing, with an assumed grade and a one liner…
‘HBO has a history of pushing every boundary with class and authenticity. Some of my favorite shows are on HBO, so I am excited that my film will be part of its bold programming. This film was so personal to me, it had to have the right home.
I don’t suppose anyone ever thought hard rockers such as Led Zeppelin would be involved with this type of thing back when they were starting out.
Chris Owens I have dismissed live twice ina row with his band Girls, but at Le Poisson Rouge on November 14th, 2012, he performed his unreleased album from one end to another and made believers of everyone lucky enough to see him do it.
Know Till Now – Jim James – The last time I was duly impressed by Jim James was My Morning Jacket’s 2008 New Year’s Eve at MSG, but perhaps the difference is that James is at his best when he is working out his soul jones, even if he is making it above a psychedelic electronic dream track. Off next years Regions of Light and Sound of God – Grade: A-
He invented syncopation and Donald Fagen immortalized him with “I hear you’re mad about Brubeck. I like your eyes, I like him too. . He’s an artist, a pioneer, we’ve got to have some music on the new frontier”
Last time I saw Nick Cave was in 2008 and he emphatically blew me away and so I am emphatically up for his March 28th and 29th, 2013 ggs at Beacon Theater. To call this a must see is an understatement, he is really that great in person. And we have the presale code and it is yours for the reading… so read……
The audience is a vision of a shared esthetics shouting down its irrelevance, its loserness, in the shared moment. If everyone is a loser, no one is a loser. That’s the point. But Sunday night it is a point that Stickles seems not to be sharing.
He was talking about his family, his beautiful son, his age, his drug-free body and the importance of being open-minded, he even said ‘Don’t just listen to hardcore, I listened to about everything, from Coldplay, to Rihanna, Madonna’, oh really? But at the same time, we had to stay close to our roots?
Qello, the digital streaming service, along with Eagle Rock Entertainment are hosting a Facebook Digital Premiere of The Doors 1968 live concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
GSTV caught up with these rising stars of the NYC rock scene at this year’s CMJ Festival. Check out GSTV’s exclusive interview and live footage of one of the Big Apple’s most-buzzing-est bands
Rihanna wants to forgive him, not because it looks like the commonly regarded right thing to do but because it is the new commodity for her. She goes back to where she was, being half of the most successful couple of the moment.
A lot of these albums are very very good, and the best may have some lasting power, but it doesn’t seem to peak nearly high enough and that is not to put Spider Bags down or to pull Rihanna up, it is just to state the obvious.
Killer Mike is proof that a great concert will change the way you feel about recordings and Justin Townes Earle is proof that a poor concert won’t always ruin a great recording. This hasn’t been an album year, we have lived in one track after another till it accumulated to a pretty good year.
Only Wanna Dance With You – Ke$ha – This is the one where the Strokes join her and it is a killer track. Nothing much on its mind, but it bounces in perfect elctro pop vein and when julian joins her he doesn’t do much but add background candy but candy it is. Grade: A
On Sunday, the band highlighted two albums, Headquarter and the Head soundtrack. In 2011 we were watching a celebration and in 2012 we were watching a statement. Let me try that again: if 2011 was anthropology, 2012 was sociology.
If some hardcore bands deploy tons of physical energy to wake up the crowd, Bad Brains certainly don’t, their serenity and tranquil strength on stage heavily contrasted with their loud and furious music and the mayhem they had triggered in the crowd
What does this add up to? Some of the most ‘so last year’ performers on a show that didn’t have the courtesy to revise its title. ABC used to be THE place for New Years Eve but now? Well aside from Pitbull, yeah no I’m not in.
According to a few posts on Facebook and Twitter, they played new songs, ‘which were generally described as fun, dance-y and groovy’, but so far no photo and no recording have surfaced as a strict no-phone-no-camera policy was reinforced at the entrance. Hey, according to someone ‘there was even a guy who had his phone thrown on the wall for trying to take a picture!!!’
I found these figures rather surprisingly low. The order of value even more confusing Who would ever imagine that selling headphones for $110 million bucks. All he had to do was swing a pen around for that wad. Poor Adele.
As pretenders come and go one thing remains constant: nobody comes close to MJ. From pop starlet to teen idol to rock star to pariah to early death, there is no trajectory close to it. And as every year another class of pretenders attempt to scale these heights and fail, currently an Usher (who failed himself) protégée, is just mere shadow of the King Of Pop. As the biggest musicians in the world, men and women, from Lady Gaga to Will I Am circle round and round MJ’s career, none can touch him.
“I love God… But at the same time, I love going to strip clubs. Sometimes I smoke marijuana. And I still love drinking alcohol and chilling. I don’t want to be judged for that…”
No I wasn’t all that thrilled over Ke$ha either, didn’t think much of “Die Young” the first single, but then I streamed in on ITunes and I must tell you that for sure: the Doctor Is In. This is a terrific mix of electro pop and rock and roll and should be a wildfire hit.
You Just May Be The One – The Monkees – If nothing else. the reunion concert on Saturdy reinforced what a terrific songwriter Nesmith is and this, off the “we played all our own instruments and wrote all our own songs” Headquarters, received an enormous outpouring affection and the reson is simple: t isn’t just a love song but a cll to Universal love and need – Grade: A
Sixteen is the one with the calendars, the candles, the fake autographs, and back in class again. Sixteen is a girls golden age and raptured over by rock and rollers since time memorial and so as rock nyc contributer Mary Magpie hits the big one six, let’s drag her away from her Bright Eyes calendars and 1D fetishisms and hail our great writer on her milestone birthday
In a society that gives people awards for waking up it’s a sad thing that the nomination announcement warrants an hour of your life- let alone with your ears being assaulted by Maroon 5.
Metallica’s Lars Ulrich said in a statement: ‘It’s always been about control for us as a band. Forming Blackened Recordings is the ultimate in independence, giving us 100% control and putting us in the driver’s seat of our own creative destiny.’
It’s a bombastic and aggressive charge on your eardrums with an infectious rhythm and some visceral tunneling screaming, that certainly reminds the best of Nirvana, empowered by a paranoiac high G-force and some astringent guitar-drums combination
It’s as if the television Gods have glanced down at the huddled masses and offered them a week of pleasure for the hard time served. Its a wonderful thing. Yes of course, there is crap Reba and Richie Sambora seem to be hitting it with a vengeance but there is also Big Boi and holy hell is that Led Zep on Monday?
I will not go out of this world like a loser. When u finally get the chance to see me, u will hear that my voice is enormous and I never sing out of tune and there is no one, no one who can match me today.It is a fact.
I can’t tell if K-Pop is ever gonna blow up Stateside, but Juniel will be a treat for teen girls if it does. As for Kendrick, perhaps since I’ve grown to, well, admire this track, perhaps the floodgates are open!
How bad are Girls Aloud? Listen to their cover of Chrissie’s “I’ll Stand By You”. Go on, I dare you. I loathed The War Of The Worlds prog rock atrocity in 1978 and assume the Next Generation is just as bad.
2013 will be the year Olly breaks Stateside, new album will drop in April and if he manages it right, it should break him. But I thought that in 2011 and I was wrong then. Igh, that Alicia Keys song. Ugh. Ugh , Ugh.
Scream & Shout – Will I AM, Britney Spears – Return to form for the BEP leader after years in the wilderness, and always a pleasure to hear from Brit, except that if you wanna pout your hand in the flame you’ll get burnt and Britney will be seen as the savior of this song. Because she is – Grade: B+
artists write songs lacking meaning simply because they’ll bring greater success. Although the song is based on a serious subject matter, this does not take away from the fact that this is a great song to move around to. The blend of instruments are immaculate and as the song comes to an end, it still goes out with a bang!
Of all the tortured-punk-teen bands to have lost their original edgy sound, I’m glad a band as great as My Chemical Romance has started to find their way back.Number One was released on October 30th of 2012 but here are the digital release dates for the rest of MCR’s Conventional Weapons.
The next day “Page Six” had a blurb about Max George being caught making out with Lindsay Lohan at a club. The Wanted get Lindsay Lohan. One Direction? Taylor Swift. Next.
The Kraft Group just happened to own the property where the drinking took place. They did not supply it, nor is it a ‘over 21’ parking lot. Their only liability here is not catching it in the act and with the expanse of this venue there is no surprise in that.
Musicians, if you want to stand out and invite an original guest on stage, please pick somebody else than Johnny Depp! Gee Whiz, if I had just counted the number of times I have read ‘joined on stage by Johnny Depp!….
The fashion line is actually ‘based on a book of hand-drawn illustrations that Yoko Ono presented to John Lennon on the occasion of their wedding’,… So because she drew a bunch of doodles of nipples, buts, and crotches in the 70s, she think she can come up with a clothing line?
One of the toughest rock albums of the year and next thing you know, the perennial bridesmaids of punk rock wake up to find themselves… THE MAIDS OF HONOR!!! Tuesday at Webster Hall is the Canadian rock band Japandroids’ coming out party and in a week that finds both the Who and the Stones playing around time, it’s a blast to remind the archivists among us that rock and roll is alive and well in 2012.
Despite snorting ants, eating bats and being the prince of darkness, he’s just a regular guy. His band Black Sabbath has been around for what seems like forever and is in the studio now with their eye on April for release
I couldn’t dislike Alicia more, she is a stubbornly, arrogantly boring woman and whenever she heads for her piano I head for the nearest exit. Also, 95% of her songs are really awful and while “Empire State Of Mind” wasn’t much, she managed to make it worse. This is the same dreary AOR for people who should know better but a little more. “Tears Always Win” and the Maxwell duet are both OK. Yes, I said it, I admit it – Grade: C+
Girlfriend – Ty Segall – Garage rock with the the most minimalist piano break bang in the middle and a deep in the world of indie sense from the heart of Cali by a man who won’t stop recording – Grade: B+
There’s an exhaustive quality about performing each piece with such tremor shaking force. It’s like being hit by serial tidal waves with no time to recuperate. On a number like Joe Simon’s “Your Time to Cry,” it feels like the material is being sledge hammered.
Over and beyond CRJ’s first post THE SONG album the terrible Kiss, not really deserving of too much consideration , she isn’t much of a performer. With a rock backing band, she is is engaging but bland, pretty but vacant. In other words, she is the Phillip Phillips of Canada
The talented woman posted an update on the Screaming Females Blogspot this week, and rather than writing a blurb, she used a comic strip to explain what she went through during this past month: a muscular chronic pain in her arms, chest and neck that wasn’t going away,
When you’re dropping $80.00 for a zipped hoodie you can’t help but wonder where the DIY of rock and roll has gone. They call this ‘lifestyle’. I call it cash in on the kids while their parents are still paying
The auto-tuned Maroon 5’s song is greatly forgettable as everything they do and the Carly Rae Jepsen’s tube of the year is as annoying as the number of times she repeats ‘call me may be’… and so we are left with number 8, M83’s ‘Midnight City’, which may be the most interesting one on the list by far
Recent release of old concert footage sold out theaters and cause as much buzz as an actual tour(sorta). They’re blowing up the charts as well. Their new live album, Celebration Day, from the 2007 02 London reunion, sold a projected 98,000
