Coolio Gangsta’s Paradise – One hit wonder and a type of harbinger of modern r&b meets pop music in the world of EDM with that crossover violin haunted sample and a superb bg time hook, plus a deadly serious storyline – B+
The band, four guitars including Miranda’s, were pretty good country-rockers, and Miranda in an “I Love NY” tee shirt looked the part, the 20 song set wasn’t entirely ungenerous though the 80 minute performance was awful skimpy for a major arena performance. She has more material, Miranda didn’t even pull out one of her best songs, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” -a hit that gave her a unique personality she managed to squander on stage.
If you have heard and loved Vulnicura as much as I do (I consider it her best album since Post), you must see this performance. It completes the journey to a bright future. It is magic realism, where through art one is made whole. A masterpiece of a performance.
I suddenly feel overwhelmed by the amount of bands I have to see in two days… I can’t see them all, that’s a given, there are 42 bands playing on Saturday, and 44 on Sunday, and this will keep me busy from 12pm to 12 am, with no time in sight to eat and pee…
Scroll around the page and you will find what you are looking for, from ‘baroque ensemble’, to ‘pop gaze’, from Arab folk’, to ‘French punk’ and ‘Ukrainian rock’, from ‘filter house’ to ‘new rave’, you name i
I am very good friends with True Groove Records owner Tomas Doncker, so when he asked me to write the Press Release for True Groove Records Fully Re-Covered, I was happy to comply. Particularly since I loved it so much. The alvbum will be released Tuesday and here is my PR!
The rule of thumb is, if you at a standing room only gig and you are near the stage shut up, if you’re in the back, well, ok, we can live with it. This is no longer the case. This is reaching epidemic proportions, silence please. A concert is not the time or place to discuss Daddy’s operation or Mary’s divorce so shut up and let me watch the show in peace.
The one time I saw alt j I thought the UK Radioheads brother in arms were the worst live band I’d ever seen BUT it was crowded, it was a festival, and their pretty good second album hadn’t seen the light of day yet. This is MSG and the new album, with great songs like “Every Other Freckle” waiting to be nailed on stage, well, maybe time for another look. PS: A Monday but at least it’s not T5.
This looks like an okay week but I don’t think it really is. I have heard songs off The Prodigy, Sufjan Stevens, and Death Cab For Cuties, and was not impressed with a single one. Ringo Starr hasn’t done much worth getting excited since the late 1970s, Godspeed! were pretty well hyped with their last album but it sucked anyway, and calling your new release The Album About Nothing is looking for trouble. Which leads me with Darius Rucker who is seldom great but always good for a “Comeback Song” here and there, as my most anticipated of the week.
Loud Places – Jamie xx and Rony – I prefer this to “All Under One Roof Raving” not because it is better but because I am old fashioned and it is a clearer delineated song… a soulful song as well, with a great vocal and a memorable melody, where “Rave” is a weird contraption that works despite itself – B+
Sure, it’s not really country, but there were obvious Tex-Mex flavors, rockabilly, swing, honky-tonk and Latino-Cuban tempos, bringing memories of Mexican fiesta, retro country romance, with the ghosts of Jerry Lee Lewis or Roy Orbison. Orbison? Yes! Malo’s tenor voice has effectively this kind of force and effectiveness, an operatic howl
There will be stores (where marijuana has become legal, states like Colorado or Washington) that will sell Willie’s weed. Furthermore, it’s not going be exclusively Nelson’s production, he obviously wants to grow his own, but there will be ‘opportunities for other growers, who meet quality standards’
Here is a story I wrote after watching Costello go on and on and on at a taping of his actually excellent when you see the finished product “Spectacle” talk show way back in 2009. Needless to add, Costello fans didn’t like it.
When it did become cooler to be a hard on, not everything is everybody’s business, some stuff is nobodies business at all. Some stuff doesn’t matter in the slightest and the making of petitions seems like puerile petty mindedness for one good reason: it is so.
So, I went to Barclay Center last night and saw Neil Diamond, got home late, minimal sleep, of to work where I performed my duties as an advertising honcho and
Van Halen are an immaculate conception: the bastard child of Jimmy Page and Groucho Marx. And they were immaculate on stage, they did no more and no less than every single thing they had to do.” They are back on tour this summer but I ain’t going Jone’s Beach on a Tuesday night so this great expectation at Jimmy Kimmel will have to do.
Easy Rider – Action Bronson – Drug pushing, pushing Keri Hilson lookalikes in the Hilton, riding easy on Harleys and riding into the sunset or the apocalypse or both , this terrific ending to a pretty good sophomore album justifies a lot of the hype surrounding this guy – A-
What Diamond is is a songwriter who through a fluke of timing and chops and chance became a master singer-songwriter, but there is a laziness to a craft that has managed to sell over 125 million songs worldwide in 50 years. For every well crafted, “I am I cried, I am said I” there is a million “Pour me a drink, and I’ll tell you some lies”.
Based in Los Angeles, the event production Do LaB has for unique mission to create unique art installations/stages and curate cutting-edge acts at big music festivals such as Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle, or events taking place in far away countries such as the 2012 Winter Solstice event, The Great Convergence, at the pyramids of Giza in Egypt.
My problem with the Who in 2015 (well, 2013) is they are too bombastic, I love the psychedelic pop group Who vastly more than the heavy duty hard rock band. Much better “I’m A Boy” than “Behind Blue Eyes”. Still, this is a great setlist, it is a careerist setlist. I can’t wait to see em at Barclay Center. “I Can See For Miles” was the fourth song I ever learnt to play…
I read an article about a 100 year old man explaining how the world looks in extreme old age, how you forget how love feels, how love felt, how life in youth was, except in dreams, and I would if except in music and movies where the extremeness of returning precisely to the past might not trigger something in you.
That Beatles song? I went back to the anthology album and while it is good, the Weeklings really made it their own. Once you get past that, everything here is good. This is as strong a list of songs as you will get this year. Ps I was thisclose to including the Bala Billy Joel cover… I mean thiclose
Ain’t Nothing You Can Do – Bobby “Blue” Bland – I am so used to the Van Morrison cover, I was caught on just how close Van stayed to the original. Bland sounds great here, he wails himself out on the chorus plus it has the simplicity of a received truth – A+
This residency has been winding its way every Thursday since the beginning of the year, and who knows when it ends, so this is an absolute must see. It will give the duo the time and space they need to expand songs that will live and breath through expansion and improvisation
Mini Mansion is a side project of Queens of the Stone Age’s bassist Michael Shuman, but I should not call them a side project, it seems so reductive, and? Oh I could go on and on with them! Keyboardist Tyler Parkford releases music under his solo moniker Mister Goodnite, and Zach Dawes has played bass on the recent all-star Dylan collection ‘Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes
There is a lonely Bobby in the back of the limo. A Vegas Bobby on the hood of the car, leaving Pink’s with his booty in hand, and a funereal dressed Bobby dancing on the roof of the limo/hearse as if to say “Look out ol’ Bobby is back or I’ll be around forever folks, so enjoy your hot dogs.”
Can we really go from Barack Obama’s wide ranging taste in popular music to Ted Cruz’s proto-extremist country music views. I mean, I love country music as well but not because of 9-11 -that is asinine. There were only two real musical responses to 9-11, one was Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising
This ain’t like any other award because it ain’t an award. This is just recordings to be preserved for all time, the recorded sounds that together might make up an aural history of the world, or, at least, as governed here, the Western World. Or at the very least “Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.”
Being so sensitive for no reason, and how pretentious of you! Why do you presume that these people have ‘one job’, one unique job devoted to know your damn lyrics? I seriously doubt this is their only job
Congrats abound: Mark and Bruno? 12th week at the top of the charts. Flo Rida? Back in the charts for the first time in two years and is it me or doesn’t this sound a lot like Lil Jon? Not that I have any complaints, the song works perfectly well for me.
Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs Wooly Bully – The classic garage rocker everybody started their career with a flipped out Mexican holy surf guitar… just about immortal by now, that lick can ride anywhere – A
Soko is also an actress and this could explain a lot,… either she has studied Pink’s mannerism for hours (they are in fact buddies) or she is quite talented at picking someone’s attitude, or both! For a little while I thought I was watching the famous underground singer.
Where would the Beatles be without Brian Epstein? The Stones without Andrew Loog Oldham, or Elvis Presley without the Colonel? Artists need managers, and there have been some as big as the stars themselves… for better, Malcolm Mclaren, or for worse, Allen Klein, they are all the fifth Beatle.
Well it is, in fact a hoax: ” T-shirts were never actually on sale, and were actually part of a joke on H&M by, among others, Moonsorrow/Finntroll’s Henri Sorvali.
But Morrissey how you glowed. With witty antidotes and smart remarks of Historical Boston ( with the worlds smallest ‘suspension bridge’–which slurred terribly) and naming off all the famous people who played the Opera house (he named all of the Golden Girls… ) but he really had a sense of calm and easy for an “Evening with Morrissey
St. Jude – Florence + The Machine – Ever since seeing a lousy set at Radio City, Florence Welch sure felt like a lost cause but this full bloodied ballad feels like a return to form; a gorgeous, powerful song that should make its way up the charts with ease – A
Brand New Car – Action Bronson – Somebody is ivesting serious bucks on this guy. Warners in the rest of the world, Atlantic in the US and the result is a pricey Billy Joel sample… luckily, Bronson makes excellent use of it, rapping right through the hook. Mark Ronson produced – B+
I missed this 82 year old Gospel blues man from (where else) Mississippi debut album last year but this more secular take on the blues is ridiculous. Full throttle, hardcore with tons of guitar, all filthy dirty, and a man who sounds his age and that is perfect for the blues. Listen to Welch yelp on “I Don’t Know Her Name” and stand back in awe. from the Delta to your house, this is a great set and a must hear – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
That musical diversity has not declined after all… remember about these articles pretending that music has become more homogenized? They were apparently wrong as there is no decline in diversity of music according to this new study. Even better, diversity declined to a minimum around 1984 but increased again to a maximum in the early 2000’s.
“Crawford, you are a first rate goldbricker. When will you start earning your keep, you lousy bum?” “Um…hello…is this my mom?” “Funny. Do you know what it means to be a contributing writer to Rock NYC?” “Limited street cred with aging punk rock strippers?” “It means you actually write for us. Alyson Camus sends in more articles in a week than you do in six months.”
In 2009, Time nominated me for one of the most influential people of the 21st century or something and I met Oprah at that party. And I was like, ‘Hey, people are gonna fucking die in my country. Like, please pay attention.’ And she was like, ‘You’re shit because you were rude to Lady Gaga and I’m not talking to you
“Go Out” a goodie with a very catchy chorus and a singalong attitude even if it doesn’t entirely lend itself and “There Are Too Many Of Us”a dreary somewhere in the middle of it all slog through overpopulation and now here is # 3, which exists somewhere in the middle.
I have gone back to Pimp-Butterfly over and over again and I am stuck respecting it more in theory than enjoying it in practise. I really don’t like feeling OBLIGED to like something that is leaving me more bemused than amused.
The bottom of the barrel was Monday evening. No “L” train to Brooklyn, a good 90 minute trip to the club, the doors are at 8pm, opening act, figure it is over 11p to 1130p and then what? If I get home by one it will be a miracle ad then not just work but work and the new releases tomorrow.
“Look Away” Chicago – Wow, this is terrible. You know how time improves a song, makes you feel like a nostalgia or maybe just a smile of pleasure for times gone by. This overblown horrorshow rock and soul ballad does nothing of the sort. It is worse than you remember – C-
With a handful of early releases, here is some before the early review reviews, two are retreads three are new reviews, all are pretty good without changing the world.
Morrison sounds great as he sings everything from Irish lullabies to the purest of blues, with soul, pop and everything else there as well; no longer young, he never really sounded all that young any way and now he sounds timeless. Morrison recently decried the state of rhythm and blues (no rhythm, no blues was his assessment) and here you hear wh
This setlist might have problems selling Arenas in the US (forget stadiums). Where is “Madness” for one obvious question? And while there best live moment is here “Stockholm Syndrome”, it assumes too much on the audience. What is “Agitated” doing here?
: I’ve listened to the new Kendrick a lot and I am getting a handle on it but it reminds me of the recent D’Angelo album… shouldn’t this stuff not feel like homework? Like hard work? Like a slog, waiting for the songs to reveal themselves. And I guess they do slowly, “Wesley’s Theory”, “i” and “u”, the undeniable “The Blacker The Berry” but again, would I have spent this much time wthout the hype? Well, yes for “The Blacker The Berry”…
St. John’s first trip to the dance since 2011 and they are one and done. Beaten senseless by the 8th seed San Diego State on the NCAA tournament and why? Because the only big guy they had Chris Obekpa was suspended for marijuana. That was a terribly depressing game, these kids were good players were they wer getting out rebounded, they didn’t have a chance.
