South Georgia Sugar Babe – Justin Townes Earle – “My baby, she’s half as crazy as me, and like I said it’s been a long time…”. The genes coming through, the flex of the writing muscle, and the long instrumental bridge, all comes together on an early minor classic – A
Genius is evident, in that the vocals sound like the sleepily processed thoughts of one depressed in bed deciding whether or not to face the world, yet the other instruments embody total rhythmic tonal conviction, crushing any uncertainty
Summer is not totally over yet, and we still have one festival to go here in Los Angeles, the brand new version of Made in America which will take over downtown LA this weekend… but I am not going because the line up sucks… and I am not the only one!
I am not sure if he is singing, but if he is singing Mandy Patinkin is an absolute riot in full blown cabaret mode and must be seen at least once. Letterman has the New Pornographers, Fallon has Maroon 5, Anything else: oh yeah, the name of the column, people have been stopping me in the streets to inquire. James Wolcott had a Village Voice column called Media Cool, playing on the name of the 1960s fictional-documentary “Medium Cool” which I went back to here.
Don’t get too excited over the James Taylor album, it is not just a 2004 album, it is also just a covers album, and that leaves you with the Kooks on one hand and Jeezy on the other fighting it out for most anticipated album of the week but neither of em have particularly good singles spun off and Maroon 5 have two out of three (“Animals” is too generic), plus Adam Levine is the one pop star who can bring it live. So yup, Maroon 5 by a bottled blonde.
My love battery wants to charge you…I haven’t seen the Buzzcocks on stage in the better part of thirty years though I remember catching em at the Palladium on the Different Kind Of Tension tour, the Fall opened if memory serves… Man, they were great. Titus Andronicus are opening, I haven’t seen them in a couple of years after catching em around once a month at the turn of he decade. Saturday at Webster Hall
[They needed something to] ignite that tour. It’s called a ‘Jedi mind trick.’ The Jedi mind trick fools you a lot of the time. So things you see, sometimes, are …. All I know is: everyone is talking about it. Ticket sales went up, Solange’s album sales went up 200% …’
I’ve been consistently rough on Paisley. The first time I saw him, Brad’s first album had yet to be released and he was opening for Loretta Lynn at the Town Hall. I haunted Tower records waiting for that album to be released. This song puns prettily on the bank portion of the title – A-
This is Connecticut not New York, and this crowd hired babysitters. Lets hope the kids are at grandmas house cuz its a late night- the sad bit? X gets an hour- and nothing more with a 12:05 posted start time. And theyre running half an hour late to boot.
The singer stood by while two men discussed the sale of cocaine and examined 20 kilos of the narcotic. Two days later, Banton and two other men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocain
In 2012, and despite a lousy live show, I called Justin Townes Earle’s Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now the album of the year and though
Poor wee Calum (I haven’t seen the vid so I am assuming the wee portion of that statement) has learnt what children understand, and what all of us understand in this post-everything moment where the only privacy that remains lies somewhere in the wrinkles of you brain and are activated through thought
ITunes gave away $125,000 for no reason whatsoever. Publicity? I guess you can consider it a kind of advertising, right? I mean, all the people who bought it plus all the people who wrote about it and all the people who are writing about it? It can’t be to drum up interest,
Start the day with a picnic on the expansive lawn and a briefing from the estate manager to help you understand your work as a farmer-for-a-day: learn about the soil, the vines and trees, and techniques for harvesting. At the end of the day pickers will be invited to taste the estate’s wine – including a £12.50 Sangiovese-based red called Message in a Bottle.
I sat with Robert Plant for a talk and when I say sat with Robert Plant for a talk what I mean nu sat for a talk is cut and pasted an interview he conducted with Lane Brown of New York Magazine and tilled it for any interest, but no stabbing Page in the back, no chariots of the gods, not a sausage
I Can’t Pretend – The Drums – Quirky where the Drums used to swing, this is a strange soundscape version of one of my favorite bands and while it still has the voice, it lacks the surfness and sensibility – B
“Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You),” Dramarama. While there are plenty of songs about romantic infatuation, singer John Easdale conveys almost a life or death need for validation on “Anything, Anything.” Hormonal angst rock at its finest.
When Bruce wrote Outlaw Pete he didn’t just write a great song, he created a great character. The first time I heard the song this book played out in my head. Like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Dorothy Gale and, for me, even Popeye, Outlaw Pete cuts deep into the folklore of our country and weaves its way into the fabric of great American literary characters.”
I am not a big fan of EDM music – this is the least I can say – and although Grimes is easy on the eyes, this boring rhythms and mellow pseudo-R&B melody, which could have easily been sung by any sexy hot number of the moment, do not excite me at all
I won’t go to a music festival without a VIP pass and I am not the slightest bit elitist I promise you, I just can’t see any percentage in checking out a band from a million miles away. It is all downside and if you won’t or can’t pay the freight, you won’t or can’t get close, well, what you are getting is what you paid.
I’m getting together with Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast and we’re going to write a song. You never know where these songs are going to end up but it could be on the next Weezer record.’
You know why time flies when you run a music website? Because you are always planning three months in advance and so, already, it is time to thank about CMJ’s
The difference between Johnny and his former band The Drums (I mean the Drums of the first two albums) is swing, which Aries doesn’t do enough on this the title track of his new album. But the mood? The mood is very similar – B+
Nothing is gonna get you too close to Bowie because Bowie has never wanted you to get too close to him. Perhaps his greatest gift was to be so much to so many people while maintaining a mystery, a mystery “Is” doesn’t come close to mastering.
She co-wrote the song with Grammy Award-nominated songwriter Kevin Kadish, but unfortunately for the two, there is now a big controversy: she and Kadish may have simply stolen the tune from K-pop band Koyote, who, as many people have pointed out, carries a wild similarity with another tune by the popular band Ph
I don’t believe the Kinks without Dave is the Kinks, it is something else. Ray might as well get an orchestra again: “Yes, it would. I think it’s all down to the music. If somebody can’t or won’t play, there are other players out there. Mick and I want to do it.”
Now is your chance to vote but don’t bother with a Taylor Swift or something (though Tay doing a Diana Ross would be a blast) because then you’d never get in. I would actually love True Groove Records to get their own day. Anyway vote as you choose: here is the info.
She had a glass of beer in one hand (of course) her iPhone in the other one, and I wonder where she was during the whole show, loudly chatting on her phone? Good thing she was not around. Why was she even showing up, that’s my question. Next time, check the number on your ticket, and don’t annoy people who want to listen.
beyond lame and that is if you accept that I underestimated Wiz a little. Though how much can you underestimate a man who spends his life writing love letters to marijuana leafs? And doesn’t even have a sense of humor about it.
Nearly 600K units moved in the first week, tops in streaming without any streaming services having it, and the fourth most popular first week if akk time AND Taylor already owns another one of them (“Never Ever, etc…”) and, her 60th (yes you read that right, right. It looks like a typo!) Top 100 song. Man, our girl can bring it.
Ancient Ways – Interpol – A nice stirring of the pot roiling and reeling sound by a band I have never liked in the slightest but have pulled off a pretty good little ambient rocker – B
To quote the great man to the great man, I’d see him in anything, I’d stand in line. But even by those standards, four nights at the Beacon Theater? Wow!! Friday November 28th, Saturday, November 29th, Monday, December 1st and Tuesday December 2nd, 2014.
His music is nice and laid back but I still don’t get the overwhelming love for this Canadian who seems to have been born on some lazy island. I had to run away from my spot where I was starting to feel packed like a sardine, smelling a bit too much weed that people were smoking… that’s beach music, it’s almost Hawaiian pop
This was a man who had found his place in the pop world and knew how to perform it. Playing Vegas was not playing Haight Ashbury and although Presley was only 35 years old, he was not embraced the way it should’ve been by the the generation he spawned.
So, Helen Bach, our editor cum PR maven, sent me a link from Warner Brothers announcing the release of two new albums. I thought about writing about it, but it hardly seemed worth interrupting the days flow to rush it out. I mean, so what? Nothing personal but it is hardly the most exciting story I’ve ever heard
The major labels steal lesser luminaries material as a rule of thumb. The artists don’t pay em, don’t give em props, the labels screw em over, and they never break through and never get credit for their music. It has always been a rough business but right now it is rougher than rough. Man it is a deadly business.
‘When I was a kid I saw a light/Floating high above the trees one night’, and yeah, it was Built to Spill opening their set on the Lawn stage with their song ‘Goin’ Against you Mind’… and every time I see Built to Spill, I see the light,
I hope that song at the top grows off me because the last thing I wanna be doing for the next month is typing out. Meanwhile, everything here is quite good and the Black Keys is a little better than quite good. An ordinary week but not without its pleasures.
Guts Over Fear – Eminem And Sia – Sia was born to sing the hook on hip hop songs, she drags royal over her own stuff, “Chandelier” eas a true bore, but her voice adds gravity, here she has more power then Rihanna ever does, to rap songs – B+
They missed it by this much when indie rock hit it big at the turn of the decade, but they are really pretty smart and pretty sound indie rockers who like, actually, rock hard enough. Early on “XR” sounds like Dropkick Murphys, impressive at any time, more so when you realize how deadly earnest John D’Agostino’s story songs are – ALBUM OF THE WEEK- – B+
wW here at rock nyc know the 1970s were the greatest decade in rock and roll history topped by punk and disco at the end but if you don’t believe us check out Steve Crawford’s 997 best songs of the decade. Though we will pass on “The Cover Of The Rolling Stone”,
I continue to go to music festivals despite my hate and love relationship with them, it’s probably the worst place to see a band, as it’s gonna be hot and very crowded, and you are gonna be tired and thirsty… My first day at the FYF fest this year was a perfect example of all this, I struggled the whole day and it was (almost) no fun
In “September Grass”, Taylor is lying in the grass with a woman, and he feels secure and so small, so far away, like tiny, he compares him and his girl to ants on a leaf of grass and the huge world is surrounding them but they are ignoring it. Their smallness and their togetherness protecting them from the world, their insignificance is their freedom and that is exactly how I felt
For all the daring do of switching the young Smith with the 26 years older Capaldi, the problem isn’t age, the problem is charm offensive and weirdness -when you don’t like the Doctor or his companion, maybe it is time to take a break from the series? Next week is a Daleks story, so the week after that should tell the story.
I stayed at the main stage to see Future Islands, with its very theatrical frontman Samuel T. Herring doing grand gestures and definitively using his deep cavernous voice, going into
I’ve held off writing too much about Robin Williams suicide because there isn’t that much to add except, look it was his life, his kids are grown up, he left them money, he had problems, he was a manic depressive and if he wanted to kill himself, what business is it of the vastly overrated Henry Rollins. who got it wrong. Again.
Carolina – Kimbra – A kitchen sink approach to indie pop with sounds layered upon sounds, a funky back beat, shimmering stuff shimmering and is that birds chirping at the end? A fun ride but not her best song – B-
Was it fun? A little too strenuous to be fun and Katy Perry getting best Best Video music division was enough for me to go back to “The Godfather Part II” even though this is the business I chose. So i went on to MTV.com and got everything a day later.
To cut to the chase, The Bottle Rockets in 2014 are as superb as they’ve ever been. Perhaps they are even better now than they were in the ‘90s, they are more disciplined and have four members that really understand how to play as a unit.
One fist pumping diner at a center stage however was so moved by the rendition Dancing with Tears in My Eyes to yell “Fuck Yes” directly at Exene who stood a merely dozen or so feet away and elicit her sarcastic response “Thank You Mr. Anarchy personified”. A good time had by all!
