If Saturday was all about leaving early, Sunday is all about arriving late/. The show doesn’t start proper till Sturgill Simpson at 3pm, and, if you wanna be difficult, skip him and arrive really late for A-TRAK, but once you reach there is a whole lotta tough choices. War On Drugs or weird Al? Noel Gallagher is a gimme, but Hot Chip or Flying Lotus or Lana Del Rey or the Black Keys?
It reminds me the days I was watching music videos on TV, really, this seems such a long time ago! Whether you like or not these disco balls, these people without a head tripping into glam, it’s true that it fits much more the psychedelic ambiance of the music than with the lyrics,
‘YES, BUT THERE WAS ONE REASON FOR THIS THAT I CAN’T TALK ABOUT. I AM VERY PISSED BY THIS, SINCE HE ADAPTED MY WORK ONLY UNDER ONE CONDITION: THAT HE WOULD HELP MY INSTITUTE. WHICH HE DIDN’T.
Moonlight Mile” is the one that has caught my eye,”Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”? The sequence of song is different from the album, probably because they wanted to hold on to “Brown Sugar” till late. Plus BB King and Otis Redding for the encore.
“Music writing isn’t sports writing, you don’t need to report on the ramifications of a manager being dropped or speculate on the next album. You can’t critique art that hasn’t happened.”
This is an odd day, Saturday starts off awesome, Kate Tempest, the English rapper, Clean Bandit, who I’ve been trying to see for a year now, J Roddy is always a blast, Marina, Sharon, Bjork and Conor at the same time (sorry Conor, I want more Bjork) and then… Ryan Adams headlining? Against Deadmau5? –fuck that shit, I’m going home.
The Kids Are Alright – The Who – There is a plaintiveness about this song, maybe more so now than 50 years ago, but the word kid reverberates and the sense of a scene in movement is also partly a scene closing down forever. “I don’t mind…” is suh a loaded line – A+
The tiresome theory in this piece is that, blaming Courtney Love for the death of Kurt Cobain and Jennifer Chiba for the death of Elliott Smith is pure misogyny. I know his language,… people who express their skepticism are just ‘murder conspiracy theorists’ or ‘murder monomaniacs’ and he goes on and on, throwing in the text a few references to Greek mythology to make it sound more intellectual
this doesn’t hit me like the chart of summer yet, OMI and Jess Glynne haven’t hit (they have both been # 1’s in the UK) and I think once they do, the two will battle it out… and I have a feeling OMI might win.
Which leads me to Christgau the rock critic, who once wrote of Costello “all wordplay as swordplay” –a phrase I still use. As is this one, which only I own since he said it in reference to a pan of Visage (more or less –I think I was a little ambivalent) I’d written for the Voice: “They aren’t invading Poland”…. A phrase I’ve used ever since whenever somebody is over reacting. And… MICK JAGGER SHOULD WRAP UP HIS PENIS AND GO HOME.
Three albums in the top five are soundtracks and I bet more to come as the days roll by: ever since “Twilight” realized it could connect with the youngsters via indie bands, mainstream poppers have been circling the soundtrack compilation and now the eagle has landed. The result? While you might enjoy EDM pop moves on a single, or on a dance floor, one after another for 40 minutes? Not so much. Incubus? I’m a pass.
So here we go, sixteen days and the nyc festival of the year hits and I will take a closer look at each day. It sure seems to me, the big draw closers on Friday should be a repeat of Skrillex versus Jack White last year, Drake is going to have 75% of the attendants. Me? I haven’t seen MMJ since New Year’s Eve 2008 and I saw Drake twice last year…
I can’t hide that these songs could have afford a bit more enthusiasm, should I say that a lot of people were enjoying the beats and the mellow ambiance, even dancing between the CDs rows? The last song, ‘Real Life’ off their 2012 album ‘Mixed Emotion’ had more Brazilian, or at least exotic, beats and brought more fun, although it reminded me about something Moby could have done may be?
His portrait is based in blue streaks and I gave Joe the spiritual fire that seems to be a constant aspect in a lot of my stuff. I reckon it signifies soul and life and a certain forever, eternal, greatness. I also picked the Kansas City era Joe because I like to think of him singing without a microphone coming out from behind the bar
Born In The USA – Bruce Springsteen – This is off his new August 5th, 1985, romp in the swamps of a Jersey Arena. You can hear his ambivalence here, the way you couldn’t there – A
But more exciting still there is a new album and it includes Bobby Womack’s last vocal performance. This is off Gigwise: “Rudimental have revealed details of their second album entitled We The Generation due to be released on 18 September.
Fishtails – Indigo Girls – For their thirtieth anniversary, the Indigo Girls have managed to improve not an iota as they manage to make lesbianism as boring as lukewarm tapioca, even if their work for LGBT rights has been stellar and important. This is a bad song even if no worse than all the rest – D+
All the models figured on the blog look like French bulldogs or Chihuahuas but they sure make the same vests and tees for larger dogs. However, I click on one of their items in the store, the not-so-cheap 60 bucks heavy metal dog vest, and wow, it’s already sold out! How didn’t I think about it?
Trucks just keeps on firing; and at Summerstage, in what amounts to mostly a business as usual gig, his explosive playing whether quiet vibey or loud guns afire, was what we were there for. Trucks, with his long goatee and skinny studied intensity is more like one of the more minor Old Testament Prophets then a rock star, looked to have just joined the big leagues of guitar heroes last night
Blurryface – Twenty One Pilots – Fueled By Ramen pop band rap and sing their way through an album with a shifting center of gravity. It is hugely ambitious, it feels like an old fashioned big album, and if an album with songs as strong as “Ride” and “Going Local” can be considered a failure, it fails. But it fails only on its own ambitious terms – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
“Cleaning Windows,” Van Morrison. “Cleaning Windows” is a utopian vision of a perfectly fulfilled life, where the pursuit of money is less important than the physical and soul nourishing activities such as reading Kerouac, listening to Muddy Waters, and eating Paris buns. Van was a working man in his prime when he developed this beautiful vision.
Julian Casablancas + The Voidz have released a 38 second-clip of their upcoming video for ‘Human Sadness’ (off their last year’s album ‘Tyranny’) and they will be screening the 11-minute long video in a series of theaters across the US. There are also screenings in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Denver, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Nashville, Montreal, from Wednesday 20th to Tuesday 26th, and may be not all of them are sold-out?
Sugaree Live – The Grateful Dead – Off Garcia from 1972, and written by one Robert Hunter, by 1977 it was all over the Grateful Deads live show, a mid tempo country waltz with plenty of room for vamping – A
At the birth of rock nyc Helen Bach, Mike Nessing, and I did a lotta hi-jinx we don’t do now. Sometimes we would do 30 posts in a day. For awhile we wrote reviews of imaginary concerts. Here is a Lennon one from 2009, because everytime I put my finger on Walls And Bridges, it slips away
There is currently a rumor, the Rolling Stones may be playing a surprise and intimate show on Wednesday in Los Angeles… What? After all, they did it before, a few years ago they announced a surprise show at the Echoplex, I got on line very early in the day, but never got a ticket because it was a stupid lottery! However, the other day, I met someone who was lucky enough to get in, ‘I could have resold my ticket for thousands of dollars’ she told me… yeah, but she didn’t!
‘If Kurt were still alive, he would be so over Courtney’, she says at one point. There has been a lot of speculation about an eventual divorce, and Alice says she doesn’t know exactly but ‘they had broken up, sort of, he was angry at her, at the way she was behaving’.
In a world of diminished expectations, Miller’s skill at saturated violence and the color scheming old bike chic and skull and daggers proto-Keith Richards scallywag power pop of pasty soldiers, and crunched up power balling transportations, is pop culture at its best.
Two Lamar verses is something but a cast of thousands is something else for a song that is a hit at Katy Perry. Backstabbing all about eve featuring Selena Gomez, Jessica Alba, Lena Dunham, Ellie Goulding, Hayley Williams,and more, that was the fream. What I got was a Superheroe takedown as Bionic Taylor goes for revenge. No inside baseball here.
What Billboard have that other people don’t is the numbers to back up their awards, so the multi-platinum 1989 is a no brainer winner for this years awards. Billboard is all about the charts and as all about the charts go, it is where it is at. Which means the only award they didn’t hand to Taylor was Top New Artist (they gave it to Sam Smith instead).
Muse has established a sound and a look, dark and damn serious, with retro-sci-fi-looking outfits, they performed as if they were doing a Shakespearian play with battles directed by David Lynch and scored by Ennio Morricone,… well they used ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ at one point.
Azealia Banks didn’t just win the Twitter wars, she won the rap wars, both at the same epochal gig last Monday at Irving Plaza. A steaming hot, insanely crowded, perfect evening of hip hop. If there was ever any doubt, forget it folks. Azealia rules. Meanwhile, Shelby Lynne thought I was rude because of my mostly positive review of her gig at the Concert Hall.
Always In My Head – Coldplay – When they write the book on great divorce albums, Coldplay won’t be in the top three, behind Dylan and Gaye, but that doesn’t make this understated song, a poorly articulated but haunting track, might get a footnote – B+
They kept the momentum always, straight forward, and swinging and hitting. It seems like a decision was made to rearrange the sound so it was more of a rock and roll fervor than a blues jazz discipline.The price we paid for some gorgeous workouts was a loss of nuance.
‘And we pay a fortune in tax. Just so people know, we pay a fortune in tax; and we’re happy to pay a fortune in tax, people should. But that doesn’t mean, because you’re good at philanthropy and because I’m an activist, people think you should be stupid in business and I don’t run with that.’
I know what you’re thinking: where the hell are Blur? I mean, after a month of non stop blather, w’appen? Don’t fret so, they are at # 11 BUT, just to get that in perspective, Taylor is into her 26th week, and Sheeran his 50th week, meanwhile, this damn band who we’ve had shoved down our throat non stop can’t stay in the top ten two weeks?
If I was a betting man, I’d go with Jess Glynne for song of the summer, but it ain’t over till Lunchmoney Lewis, who you probably remember from The Pinkprint, says it is. His dad is Ian Lewis, of reggae band Inner Circle, but “Nills”, a contender for song of the summer, is a bouncy and joy piano romp that should do him well here as well.
The song is a retro wild ride with lots surf guitars, long instrumental parts and dreamy girls harmonies, and it sounds like coming from another time zone, it’s sweet and not too fuzzy though, feeling like a punk band in slow-motion.
I wrote this Elvis Costello overview back in 1982 for a Creem “New Wave” special. Kinda funnily, I claimed I’d always put Get Happy!! in the center of his career. Which, considering this was some six years into a career still going nearly 40 years later, has proven inaccurate. Though it is still my finest EC moment
Dark Bird Is Home – The Tallest Man On Earth – This guy is as interesting as his name but this song is a lovely folk track with a wonderful trill on the verse. A surprisingly fetching conclusion, God I hope I don’t have to reasses him – A-
Good Enough – Bonnie Raitt – From 1975, you know how some folks just don’t do it for you? O’ve never much liked Bonnie Raitt… no real reason, I quite get why other people do. Including Robert Christgau and Carola Dibble who consider this their song according to his memoir…. which I am reaching the end of – B+
If you are a fan, you have realized that it is actually an adaptation of his music video ’Bound 2’, into a kids’ book, and you can see the whole story here. Tebbal will be soon graduating from New York’s famed School of Visual Arts, so he is a little chicken too, with, apparently, a lot of talent and humor.
The setlist hits me as better despite a surfeit from the current one. Both “Mysterious Ways” and “Better Than The Real Thing” remain, plus they finally roll out “One” (if missing one night since 2010 can be defined as finally).
But what can you do with a album with songs as good as “Awaken”, a swirling whirl of surreptitious desire on a beautiful album which takes patience and love to be heard in a world with very little of either? You give it the time it needs, after all Halle Barry is the most successful of all the X Men actors.
It is City Park Foundation’s 30th anniversary of Summerstage, the arts but mostly musical citywide free concert spectacular. They are kicking things with this early opening concert at Summerstage in Central Park on Monday, featuring one of the biggest jam bands around, the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Expect a lotta BB Kings covers… and for free.
The Milk Carton Kids newbie is a drag as far as this philistine can tell, twenty one pilots is good not great, same goes for Joanna Gruesome’s big time sophomore effort. Ceremony? I’m a non believer. Jamie Foxx always sucks. Tanlines, Hot Chip, Total Babes -they could all go either way. That leaves it between the excellent Jim O’Rourke and the bad ass Thee Oh Sees. I’m going with Thee Oh Sees, in difference to my buddy Mike Long’s opinion
RADD, the entertainment industry’s voice for road safety (formally known as Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes Against Drunk Driving), is partnering with KROQ Weenie Roast to launch ‘Make A Plan’ campaign, encouraging designated drivers via a special RADD-branded pick-up and drop off area
Nothing is the same. In a world of ‘been there done that’ rehashed tripe its astounding to think we really haven’t ‘heard it all’
Will history remember David Letterman? Well, does history remember Johnny Carson, and he was much bigger? Put it this way, working late night television is like being a telivison columnist. Murray Kempton was one of New York’s best and when was the last time you heard his name? Letterman was great and then he wasn’t great and within a coupla years it will be all the two Jimmys and when they retire no one will remember them, indeed, they will remember them even less.
Made Up Mind – Tedeshi Trucks band – I’ve never been covinced when it comes to this band, but when I saw Susan with the Allman’s last year (rememebr: Greg was out sick), they were better than the penultimate gig I caught. But this? Still not convinced – C+
So we are getting many talented Australians lately. Fraser is indeed from Australia, just like his label mate Courtney Barnett, and this explains her cameo in the clip. Apparently, folk-country is well alive in Aussie country, and I can’t wait to sing along this chorus again.
