I must say that the Echo/Echoplex is probably my favorite place in LA for many reasons (beside the awesome shows they host), the managers are so cool with any crowd antics, they let people climb on the booth seats when they can’t see the stage, they let people stage diving and crowd surfing their heart out, and nobody felt restrained to do so on Saturday night.
Well ya know.. nothing worse than an aging goth. The pale pallor coupled with the jowls let alone the shaved off brows- its a recipe for ewww and Manson is smack dab in the middle of it.
Noise Vs Beauty – Bassnectar – The House album of the year lives up to its name as one of the best DJs Lorin Ashton, the Santa Cruz party album who added metal to a taste for bass. This is a step forward, a hard pressed masterpiece of beats and sound effects.
380 songs make up my best of 2014 so far, but if I hear a better song than “Leave Your Love” this year it wil be a miracle, a torchy swoony dream of adoration and disassembled love which makes much more sense when now Smith has come out as a homosexual.
Saturday – Norma Jean Wright – The call of the weekend has never been more enticing than on this Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers composed ode to the middle of the weekend, part of an album where the Chic stalwarts decided to use just one singer, to varying degrees of success, though this one is very good – B+
I’ve called em indie pop and I’ve called em emo and folk, but essentially they are just a rock band with a lead singer who taps into a sense of a dream which has become a part of American youth at least since the 1990s, maybe since the late 1960s, of a dream, both personally and politically diminished
He married Sam Cooke’s widow, who was 8 years his senior, just three months after Cooke was killed; the marriage broke up after Womack’s wife shot him after finding him in bed with her daughter. She winged him; the marriage was DOA. So Womack seemed indestructible. He was too tough, too talented, too damn crazy to do something as mundane as expire. But die he did.
Of all the ways to serve gay pride, this was a great one. Last year Summerstage did a similar thing for the 35th anniversary of the birth of hip hop -they just have the connects and the vision to put such wide and free ranging shows together. As the song goes, “I’m happy, I’m carefree and I’m gay”, and long may you be who you are.
Look none of us are getting any younger, I get it. And dudes that whole bladder control thing can be a slap in the pride but the fact of the matter is- when did it become ok to piss on the stage? Well GG Alin had no issue but Gene Simmons?
As everyone knows, the place is huge, with a petting zoo, an arcade, some amusement park rides, a Disneyland-like railroad train station, a large garden with a collection of children statues, and a mansion with a toy room and game stations set up all around the house….
eems the case with many- imagine if the band had gotten as big as One Direction, they’d be overdosed in an alley. You either have what it takes to survive in the racket or you don’t- apparently Way does not. The cool thing is he is totally OK with it
I had no idea thatIncubus guitarist Michael Einziger was really into science. He was a student at Harvard University in 2008-2011, has studied history and philosophy of physics and he has even contributed to an article on the topic of human evolution. But he has especially a profound interest in physical sciences
Has Ezra not broken Stateside yet? You would think “Budapest” would be huge (26M streams on Spotify), “Gecko” is the sort of straight up no chaser that doesn’t do well on the US chats. Example is Calvin Harris’s buddy.
No one shocked to see this list, though I wonder if Ed Sheeran can maintain. He is a huge star in the UK, and this is the best selling first week of the year so far, but there is only one “Thinking Out Loud Here”, and I wonder if it will be enough.
Dave doesn’t really get angry, he gets bemused. He has a perpetual quizzical expression that is perhaps the only response to racial politics and personal politics left. He was fine, but he wasn’t Richard Pryor on Sunset Strip.
That Pentecostal fervor informs his music – he can sing a straightforward ballad, but on the uptempo numbers, he howls and screams and bellows and throws his entire body into the music. He is a naturally unique and gifted performer.
It’s just another example of a few bad apples ruining things for everyone else. I’ve never seen any forms of real dangerous violence at Warped Tour, and I have watched some of the heaviest band throughout the years that I’ve gone. Sure, anyone in the pit is gonna get a bit beat up, but that’s what they’re there for
Adams’ confident (and very male) vocals, at the sonic image of the iconic bands of this period. The only fragile, emotional and insecure part of Adams may only seen through the lyrics, ‘All my life been shaking wanting something/ Holding everything I had like it was broken /Gimme something good /Gimme something good /Gimme something’…
If youre a regular joe working class stiff the only thing good about this week is that its a 4 day run til you can get the hell out of your job and go drink or sleep. Americans will cook on a grill wave a flag and puke up Coors in the name of Freedom.
The network has been holding focus groups in the San Fernando valley to get a sense of whether or not the participants – comprising entirely African American women – are interested in a program that would follow the tribulations of Chris Brown’s post-jail life
Danny is a real American Black weirdo, the latest in a long line, and I think of all the names around here, he is the most purely commited and commitable rhymer. His flow isn’t better, phrasing not as good as Lamar and neither is his voice but his rhyming is impeccable and the two albums I’ve heard are both simply and undoubtedly fabulous albums
if you are going to see Mike Love’s version, don’t expect transcendence, expect old guys thinking young guys songs so old couples can singalong and maybe their kids can join. On July 4th, at Jones Beach, maybe that’s what we want, memories of when we could have fun all summer long instead of working every summer for the past 40 odd years
Mathematics – Mos Def – “You want to know how to rhyme you better learn how to add” Mos Def advises and he makes his point on this classic whose rhythmic hook has showed has shown up ever since, on the flip side of his biggest song – A
I was talking to Tomas Doncker yesterday and telling him how healthy Womack looked last December at City Winery. Then I reread my review of the best show of 2013 and realized he looked like hell. All I remembered was the good stuff and with Womack there was plenty. Here is my review
Full disclosure: in the mid-90s I did a tropical Latin music show on WPFW-FM so I wasn’t paying attention in those years to Anglo-American music, and in the late nineties I had a kid and was too exhausted to keep up, but in the mid-00s, I did go back to fill the gaping lacunae. I’m sure I missed some major tunes, so feel free to let me know what they are.
Van Halen erupted on the scene in ’78 with Eddie’s unmatched guitar pyrotechnics and David Lee Roth’s tongue-in-cheek (and elsewhere) macho posturing. Pretty much a coin flip on whether to select this one or “Dance the Night Away,” but the campy “I been to the edge” monologue makes the difference for me.
‘As someone who has worked very closely with Terry Richardson on many many many occasions since I was 17 years old I would like to say… from my OWN personal experience: I have never been forced or manipulated into anything. I made a music video with him and I have never felt uncomfortable with Terry …”
The odds of you seeing this film anywhere but Netflix in a few months is slim to none unless you have an art cinema in LA or something. Die hard fans will love it and the rest of us will go..’ wait remember Birthday Party….”
This year was the first year artists saw their names printed on the Coachella poster, obviously a big progress in the recognition process. There was a time when artists were barely paid, had to buy their water like any concertgoer and didn’t even had private toilet or shower
For a guy with a minimal musical career he sure is able to keep his name in the news. This time though its not for some dumbass reality show but rather for a do-gooder photo opp.
In a live setting strings and two turntables and a microphone plus guest singers should be entirely uniquely and different and I believe it should work, especially if they get Jess Gwynne to visit with them. She is a wonderful and soulful singer and she really helped the band sell this great pop landscape track.
A new Sia is always good news, a new Manic Street Preachers we’ve been waiting for all year, Clapton taking on the late JJ Cale, Tom Petty hopefully in Southern accents style, Van Dyke Parks (not on Spotify no doubt),. The second week in September is killer: Robert Plant, Loudon Wainwright III, Ryan Adams and Karen O.
Patrick was wrong. If you are the warming act, shut up and warm and if you did it well (Patrick did it very well: he was hysterical that night, telling the audience, on St. Patrick’s Day, at a Pogues, to drink sensibly) perhaps the band will say thank you. In 2014, if the headliner isn’t charging you, you are one step ahead of the crowd.
Lock Dem Hubs – Bubba Sparxxx – Welcome to 1993; this is the way we used to do it back in the day, it is like Bubba woke up one day and suddenly Wu Tang never existed -bright and dim at the same time – B-
In the opening track of he album, which appeared in my mailbox this morning, you can certainly hear Radiohead’s influence – can he even escape the comparison? –but there is something else going on during ‘Coming Up For Air’.
The concept, founded by Bono, is just self-promotion, buy any (RED) product and a certain percentage goes to Bono’s Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, meaning that not a penny comes out of Bono’s pocket. And that’s his genius, he passes for a humanitarian without giving away his money
Morrissey fans love the man for his sheer ability to connect to people at the heart. For anyone to impersonate him is ridiculous. Moz is infamous for his dismissive nature, but not cruelty, especially to those fans whose spent cash pay his mortgage
“the couple sang the rousing “Young Forever” before turning their backs to the audience to sing at the screen, which showed images of family life centering on the newest addition, daughter “Blue Ivy,” who they serenaded with “Halo.”
Are ya kiddin me? Can it be that a crowd can harass an artist so well that the show wont go on? Seems that’s exactly what happened with Rick Ross- and its sorta pathetic.
How about can’t pick any one and why? Because they ALL SUCKED and I have zero reason to expect any better from Barbra (her album above was just a collection); certainly not after her bother terribly expensive and also just plain not good enough Barclay Center gigs a coupla years ago.
Betts is playing The Concert hall on West 63 street on Friday August 8 th and I for one have never seen him solo but I think he is better guitarist than anybody in his former band and kinda assume this is as close as you are gonna get to the essence of the greatest Southern boogie band of all time.
Good week for heavy instruments, Bassnectectar, Clean Bandit, Phish, Eno + Hyde and Mastodon all released very strong music. Particularly Eno + Hyde, whose “Lilac” is better than anything on the album and especially the two note strum through the last three minutes. The best three minutes of the week.
One of Costello’s lowest moments, was his destructive comments about the former Transvision Vamp’s lead singer. She asked him to write a song for her and instead, with his wife, he wrote an album. Wendy gave pretty steady readings of them. Elvis hated them and recorded them himself, not half as well. Here is the best of them, a class structured Lady Chatterley’s lover of a song – A-
It is a real achievement, performing solo and invitingly and interesting so the audience isn’t dozing, for 165 minutes. The penultimate song of the evening found him strapping on his electric song for the first time all night for the new and excellent “The Last Days Of My Youth”. Perhaps it is, or perhaps he will never grow old.
For a girl who has declared ‘What’s going to make this band different is our live show’ it was an odd choice, but she probably knew she would not have to conquer anyone there, she was working with the devoted die-hard crowd.
Very rarely is there such a genuinely kind and easy going person in an industry built on ego. Lets face it a kid with that sort of face could be an arrogant dick- but he is nothing of the sort
No one likes an idiot but if you cant control your drug intake or remember to drink water you simply are a jack ass and your great reward is making your parents cry. Then again they raised the idiot so I suppose what comes around goes around, dig?
So I go into the July 9 show at Madison Square Garden without that many caveats. I don’t particularly like Katie Perry’s music but I like her as a pop performer. She puts on a good show, she does the job. Don’t let all the C minuses bother you here, I expect big things
Morrissey-Solo picked up the story, which got the attention of Stereogum, which got picked up by Consequence Of Sound, and crossed the Atlantic where New Musical Express got it and Uncut used the same story. Contactmusic.com used it and WENNused Contacts story. Music Times threw in “Morrissey may be quite sick” which nobody said anywhere.
Except for the Legend song, this is a plenty good top ten. Both Iggy songs work for me and “Summer” is an excellent song of summer. Nothing else seriously annoys me and if this is what the top ten looks like in 2014, count me in.
