It appears to be a sort of political derring do self-help book and it is a pleasure to hear even if it sounds like, well, it sounds a lot like M.I.A. She wrote this when posting the song on Soundcloud: “DEMOCRACY CONVERSATIONS ! TAMILS ARE STILL WAITING! AND NO MY BEATS ARE NOT BETTER WITHOUT MY POLITICX”
I have seen both of them several times, they may represent the best underground music that Los Angeles has to offer, two bands playing with an extreme passion, two bands interesting in what they can bring into the game. I just wonder when Manhattan Murder Mystery will become famous…
“50 Shades Of Grey” isn’t much but it isn’t terrible. The opulence is opulent, the s&m scenes are sexy enough, neither of the actors are particularly good but they do the job and Jennifer Ehle is worth waiting for. Plus, nobody is taking it particularly seriously as a feminist scribe or a sexual manifesto so why should I?
‘Getting past that rhetoric, at the very least a big corporation like McDonald’s can at least pay their talent a little. Right?’ wrote Ex-Cops’ Brian Harding. They were told that ‘There isn’t a budget for an artist fee (unfortunately)’. ‘As of 2013, McDonalds is valued at 90.3 billion dollars.’ he continued.
It is not true Laura is overly melodramatic when it comes to being in love, she is overly dramatic whatever she sings and it is absolutely true, she can’t build a fence, she has to be an “electric fence”. This song sounds more like Once I Was An Eagle than the other three I’ve heard
For the week Of March 14th, 2015, Teenage Dreams will have spent 200 weeks amongst the top 200 albums and listening to it toay, it is still a blast, still huge amounts of fun (the concert was great as well).
Kinda lame, things have been on the quiet side sincea thrilling January. The Week of 3/2 was unbelievably quiet. Indeed, I only reviewed 10 albums. And Net week looks quieter. Undoubtedly, Rebel Heart is the story… but having said that my choice for most anticipated is Olly Murs, who is always up!! The two songs I’ve heard split the difference but the rest should be OK
It’s not every day I see a top top show, an “A+” show. Since rock nyc has been around, in 2009 there was Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” gig (the second one, at the Beacon), in 2012 Aretha Franklin at Radio City Music Hall, Bobby Womack at City Winery in 2013 and this January D’Angelo at the Apollo and that’s about it. So I don’t expect D’Angelo to best it at all, I don’t expect him to match it. I still expect him to be great..
This guy is the Noel Gallagher of redneckdom and this is a pretty good Southern rocker but it uses Johnny’s name for no good reason (“I walk the line because you love me” is Kid’s excuse) and so it seems like a rip off. The Noel name drop? It is highly derivative as well but where from? – B+
I am talking about a period way before the digital age, where information was not available as it is now,… I got the chance to see the Los Angeles premiere of ‘The Wrecking Crew’ at Sonos Studios last Wednesday night, and I got the revelation: Hundreds of hit records of the 60s were recorded using the same collective of Los Angeles musicians
They tested the music on 47 cats and made them hear ‘Cozmo’s Air” and ‘Rusty’s Ballad’ as well as two classical pieces, Gabriel Fauré’s “Elegie” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Air on a G String,’ and they found that cats ‘were significantly more likely to orient their heads toward it, walk toward it, and even rub up against the speaker’, showing a clear preference…
The non-profit City Parks Foundation’s famed SummerStage performing arts festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary season in 2015. To get fans pumped for the summer and to shake off a case of the late winter blues, SummerStage will leak the names of 30 artists performing at the citywide festival starting on March 9t
It is a heartbreaker breaker with Bobby and Whitney’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina a ridiculously young 21 years of age, clinging to life and passing fast and Brown praying for a miracle for his daughter,this was filmed a couple of weeks before Bobbi drowned and it just will be upsetting. Otherwise people’s tragedies, our entertainment. Queen Latifah should have killed it.
the Van-Womack duet is here now and it is wonderful, everything the terrible Michael Buble couldn’t begin to bring to “Real Real Gone”, Womack brings to “Peace Of Mind” -a punchy, upbeat r&b workout with Van and Bobby trading off on lines before bringing it home together.
Direct Current is always a little frail on hip hop, which is why it isn’t the only reference we use, but otherwise it does show a singular sensibility an a good peek at the Spring of our warmth an happiness. Pick of the litter? Best Coast. I loved their new single. Otherwise, Hot chip, Paul weller, Mumford And Sons, Metz II (a band I’ve wanted to see for awhile now), Beth Hart, The Wombats…
For better or worse and even if you are going there for the primary purpose of reviewing the show, you are hoping for a pleasant experience. And last month the weather made sure you didn’t get one, nothing felt worth the effort of going to a show.
Rain Or Shine – Young fathers – Scotland’s finest sing an ode to absence set in place by an insistent organ and with the three leaders sounding both distracted and cool. The rap isn’t great but everything else sure is – A-
‘I cancelled this show after meeting with representatives from the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) who expressed the desire to see this [show] cancelled,’ explained gig promoter Ivan Krasnov in a reply on the social networking site. He deeply apologized ‘to anyone hurt or made uncomfortable by the name and its connotations’
It is such an intriguing mystery, but at the end does it matter if it was a pilot error or not? I think it does, imagine if the gun had really been used in flight, imagine if there had been foul play. However I wonder what kind of investigation can be made so long after the accident and when all witnesses have died.
let me make it simpler. Buy all the UK official releases up to “Let It Be” except for “Magical Mystery Tour”where you need the US version, “Live At the BBC” “Anthology 2” and “Past Masters” I and II and you can pass on the rest
I hope you are getting well paid for your soundtrack to “the new Noah Baumbach film While We’re Young, which stars Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Driver, and Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock”, because, well I only heard the sample “Only the Stars Above Welcome Me Home” and then only once because it stopped working
I am as completely unbiased when it comes to music as I can be,, and if you want proof here is my review of Madonna at Yankee Stadium. But there is doubting her pop music genius and while Lady Gaga may one day find herself in the same league, it sure hasn’t happened yet.
Santana and Sha Na Na sure got shafted, and CSNY made as much as Arlo??? I’m guessing some managers got canned (heat) when these umbers leaked. Joe Cocker left a superstar, right? Was Sly really the only back act???
Not a great week for albums or singles, though Flo and Carly released songs that may well still be around three months from now. “All Day” feels like a big time album track, like “Wolves” and not like “Fourfiveseconds”. “Febreze”? “Yeah, I’m the shit, I should have Febreze on me”!
“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.” That’s what I wrote about the tour this song is culled from, nearly exactly three years ago – A
Kat has the instincts of a major pop star but the limitations of a minor pop player, she is good enough to always applaud, and her move has been steadily forward since 2002, but her songwriting isn’t all the way there, her singing is immaculate but her voice is an acquired taste. On stage she is smart and fun but rambling
Mr. Crenshaw is a music connoisseur with a taste for jazz and oldies, so he picked an early album of Sun Ra, as well as a 50’s album of the gospel soul band the Staple Singers, the new album by jazz guitarist Nels Cline, some Indian Style heavy funk, ‘SitarBeat’ and the best of Buddy Collette,… but also Mitch Ryder’s autobiography, ‘Devil and Blue Dresses’, since the Detroit-native musician feels connected to the musical legacy of the city
They have emailed us their new single ‘Everything Changes’, the title track of their upcoming full-length, which starts like a Beatles song, but as soon as strings and keyboards wake up the tune literally jumps and bounces of joy. It grows fuller and fuller with energy and urgency as many instruments jump in the mix
My problem is: Friday is a great day anyway, we don’t need to make it a better day but Tuesdays suck, it is the heart of the matter, the weekend is miles away and all that surrounds Tuesday is barren, lifeless and blankness. Most people die on Tuesday because, like Beckett, they go on, they can’t go on.
I Really Like You – Carly Rae Jepsen – So this is the FOLLOW UP follow up to “Call me, maybe” and I will be surprised if it isn’t a hit but I’ll be shocked if it I a huge hit… Sure catchy songs should have an irritatant factor, but not the first time you hear em – B
Crazy about the new Pitbull. No, not at all, but it is a long long time since “Hotel Room Service’ and at the very least the thrill of Pitbull has gone… though, a fried of a friend is Pitbull’s manager and he swears the guy is the sweetest guy in the biz…
Ugh, if the year was based solely o the charts so far so iffy. The top three are all lousy, all of the albums are C or lower and except for Drake nothing from 2015 is all that thrilling at all. Big Sean was a real dig and Tyga ruins Brown’s best dance moves (Tyga? Cmon, guy). A real snooze of a list.
All Day – Kanye West – Here we go, better than “Wolves” and “Only One”, this is a piece of ego inflation but it is more than that, as his Brit Awards performance proved, it was also a call to arms for disencfranchised and ignore, plus that sample sounded like it was busting a guy and the whistling at the end? Paul McCartney – A
They are a grand ensemble, playing music with a lush and ample orchestration, using a lot of instruments, saxophone, small trumpet, keyboard and flute beside the usual guitar-drums-bass classic rock combination, and they could be one of the most diverse rock bands I have ever seen, on the human as well as on the sonic levels
The painting is just a whirligig of pop art style. I did this one in oil and in black and white but made his lips and eyes in full Technicolor. These are his most striking features. When he sang, he always blinked his eyes for a bit too long and you always wondered if he was ever going to open them again.
Five years after “Hot Tub Time Machine” took us back to the 1980s a lot has happened: Mostly, three The Hangover movies, where the big concept, a missing day, morphs into a missing ten years, as Nick and buddy Lou (long with Lou’s long suffering son go back to the future to stop Lou’s murder
The rap band has decided to defy the idea as the album is housed ‘in a custom-made nickel-and-silver box in a Moroccan vault’, and last year they said they wanted to take the single edition on tour, charging people to hear it on headphones with heavy security around… again crazy idea!
The band we loved to hate till we saw em live (twice!) and changed our minds are back again with a new album, the poetically named Wilder Mind and a tour, lotsa festivals it says here, Gentlemen Of The Road. When will this be happening? May 4, apparently. And apparently they are putting down their banjos for an electric sound.
Maroon 5 are performing a skimpy though career spanning 17 song set. Three out of the four songs from V (their latest) are already hits, though the five songs from Overexposed feels like overkill and surely Songs About Jane is over represented
Country singer songwriter dabbles in rock and roll and comes out the better for it even if not always, “The Eye” is such a great song it makes the riff of “The ainstream Kid” soound pedestrian. At its best it is as good as this ten year veteran can get, at its worse it is pretty good – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
Smoke Season’s sound is a bit mysterious and hard to exactly pinpoint as it brings to mind a blend of psychedelic electronic pop haunted by an Americana flavor,… but they simply define their music as ‘dustbowl soul’ on their Facebook page. Whatever you call it, the band has a formidable energy on stage
A really awesome, hard rocking classicist heads down piece of ultra catchy rock and rock glammy rocking whomp, and a benefit for a rock nyc friend and good guy, and the Pagans only do it for two and a half minutes?
joke about Kanye West all the time, but he must be the most divisive musician ever, people either love him or hate him, he sure polarizes people, however I just don’t get the coverage that this guy can receive. He comes up with the most trite title and everyone is talking about i, when it is just a name
My problem with The Big Picture is my problem with Kat: her voice is so damn distinctive even when she is covering blues, country, rock, it all sounds like Kat. Good over a coupla of songs but a little too much over an hour. But I may be wrong and this is a great setlist.
The band we loved to hate till we saw em live (twice!) and changed our minds are back again with a new album, the poetically named Wilder Mind and a tour, lotsa festivals it says here, Gentlemen Of The Road. When will this be happening? May 4, apparently. And apparently they are putting down their banjos for an electric sound.
So Close – Keath Mead – Check out the way he spells his first name and make a decision: is he too precious or too young? My guy is the latter because he can sure write a song, this is a beauty, power folk filtered through a folkie singer songwriterly aesthetic – B+
Sunday afternoon I was still considering going to see JH3 when it dawned on me, she kinda sucks.This Is another annoying sing songery piece of meh, why do I try so hard? She doesn’t like me… still if it had been a Saturday evening… – C
I am looking longingly at that September 16th, 2015 at Madison Square Garden. A Wednesday. I know it is probably gonna be an expensive piece of crap, with her waddling on stage at 11pm, and doing one lousy set piece after another before re-arranging “Like A Virgin” so it sounds like a dirge.
Christgau bludgeons the reader with endless dives into various intellectual rabbit holes (his “theory of pop,” Dostoyevsky, Theodore Drieser, etc.) and recalls then discredits every slight he has ever received. If you are purchasing this book for his writing on music, forget it.
The outpouring of sorrow over the death of Leonard Nimoy is not, and I think I can claim this with absolute certainty, nothing whatsoever to do with his singing, no not even “If I Was A Carpenter” or, god knows, “Highly Illogical”. Even so, Spock is an instrument of rock and roll culture and his cultural significance, his Pan-Universal Humanism, will hopefully hopefully, live long and prosper.
