A Night With Janis” -Joplin that is, has moved to my favorite club the Gramercy and that means a place which is like a miniature Best Buy is out of commission for the immediate future. Bummer. I love janis as much as the next guy but who on earth needs it stealing one of our best night clubs on the planet? I can think of a dozen places it would be more at home. How about the Show World on 42nd Street for one? Why steal a good club?
Miss You In My Life – The Belle Brigade – This is too soft even for the soft sidey Souther Cali Laurel Canyon hand, the song is too ethereal, the melody doesn’t lock you in, and much like the album, it floats away – C+
May be there was a bit of Eddie Vedder in this, but when he took his harmonica on certain songs, it was once again a Springsteen-state-of-mind.
It’s 13 tracks, each by a different artist associated with the label. What drew me to it was the fact that Alex G, Ricky Eat Acid, and none other than Elvis Depressedly, were involved.
New York’s scene was tough to infiltrate. Loyalist and idiots ruled each street corner and each park bench. I should know, I was one. But Trenton was a bit more open, a bit more forgiving and the asshole to regular joe ratio was much smaller.
Over half of the, er, songs will be repeats from the 2005 concerts, and five will be off 2009 Radio-Activity album. Ergo, however much the 3D Kraftwerk might or might not be cutting edge, they are working from the same template as everybody
you can chose any movie here completely at random and thoroughly enjoy it. Like Hitchcock, but in many different milieu’s, Truffaut made going to the movies fun and he made it more than that. One of our greatest, like I said.
Broken Bells has found the most original/weird/out-of-this-world/nerdy/unexpected cause ever: the band will donate money to the B612 Foundation’s Sentinel mission
Christine, who left in 1998 because she hates to fly and therefore hates to tour has been gone for so long it was easy to believe she was never ever coming back , indeed Stevie had just said there was a better chance of an asteroid hitting the earth and now GUESS WHAT!!
“Heroin freed me up. I hate talking about this because of my daughter, my family. But, for me, it was incredibly creative. A combination of heroin and playing really simple, beautiful, repetitive shit in Africa changed me completely as a musician”
I know I trashed Hold Steady earlier this week but I said it might be a grower, I love the line “heartbreak hurts but you can dance it off.” And I know I said the new Belle was a bummer, but this is a good song. And I know I hate Avicii but the remix album is terrific.
Every song these guys play sound the same as the one before em because every song gives it up to lead singer Damian Abraham. For good reason, and this is a fine song though it sure ain’t as good as “The Recursive Girl”. Not close – B+
The Pretenders lost 50% of their band to drugs. That’s a heavy cut and while Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers attempted to carry on the dynamic was gone. Void of any sex appeal whatsoever it just didn’t have that thigh tremble anymore and the case was closed.
After the 3-song-allowed in the pit, I was once again condemned to back up on the side, but this time, for some obscure reasons, they let me climb on stage, and I stayed there with a bunch of people, just behind the band, totally overwhelmed by the formidable energy.
They’ve been really busy with their headlining tour, but it’s nice to see that they’re still keeping up the pace with their music video releases, and this one was by no means lacking any of the attention to detail the other videos have involved.
I would imagine Darin wrote it as a country ballad (it twangs on the last verse) and Ahmet rearranged it for the pop charts and it was a huge hit so the trick worked but the song itself was harmed. It is the melody and not the hook .
Bloody Burnett. I am so tired of this guy, there isn’t a thing he does I approve of any more. I blame the Coen Brothers, it all delves from the O Brother Where Art Thou, where he took Harry Smith’s work and put his name on it.
Day two at the Burger, and I was sort of rested from the day before and ready for another music marathon, starting with local band Hindu Pirates who were playing inside the Observatory
Now one of two things will happen. Either their clientele will get the message and stop buying music, or they won’t get the message and Spotify will beat ITunes. Either way, Apple is completely and totally fucked
We appear to be in a period of extended mediocrity within the upper reaches of the charts. The album charts are so volatile it has no middle ground any more. In 2011 albums were staying in the top ten for months on end, today the album charts reflect something at all. Meanwhile, the single charts are so conservative and static they seem set in stone. Nothing on this list is good enough. It is a dreadful disappointment
Six of these albums are new to this week and of the old ones it certainly hits me as though Ross and Pharell might not have much staying power. Meanwhile, Frozen -which sucks by the way, has taken the world by storm and I can’t let it go.
Unable to decide whether to go with the original or the Bootleg Volume One version, Lucius mash em up and then take the throttled back up band and play it as a series of unfinished licks. And it works – B+
There is a Burger Records revolution in Southern California, this small independent label has been organizing its Burgerama for three years now, taking over the Observatory in Orange County for the weekend, and it is expanding like a homegrown giant flower
If this sounds like an old man “get off of my lawn” piece, please note that I felt the same way about the fatuous pop metal of the 1980s, when I was a much younger man.
the band with vocalist Mike Vallely hit the road and actually make it all the way to the East Coast and better than that all the way to Western Connecticut where I intend to be there amongst the upstarts to see whats new from these geezers.
The Wine and Dine Cruise take you to the Caribbean with the band America. I cannot for the life of my understand what has triggered these music themed cruises other than captive audiences.
I had the chance to see Kim Shattuck not too long ago, during her short episode with the Pixies, and she was back with her own thing, the Muffs, playing inside the Observatory.
But in the end, it really is a consistently pretty good album. It doesn’t sound like there has ever been a time when it would be a huge hit but it also isn’t a drunken mess, it is a real thing.
So if you are in the market for four takes on “Candle In The Wind” and, astoundingly enough, four versions of “Grey Seal” on and on and only the non-LP B Sides worth your while and not many of them , this is the album for you. A stupendous horrendous bore
Berlin, featuring the stunning Terri Nunn, are going back on the road decades after “Take My Breath Away” lead New Wave mainstream and opened the floodgates. Hot on the heels of last year’s Animal, which is nothing if not rowdy dance crank stuff.
An elderly gentleman (Stellan Skarsgård as Seligman) finds a woman (Joe, Charlotte Gainsbourg) badly beaten in an alleyway. Joe refuses to go to the hospital because “she deserves” it and instead goes to his home where she lies in bed and tells the story of her nymphomania in flashbacks.
Baby Ride Easy – Johnny And Jane Carter Cash – So now we know where Dave Edmunds and Carlene Carter heard it, Johnny and June covering the song for one Billy Sherrill back in the 80s. Not bad, and the fiddle break is more than that, but Dave and Carlene jumped for joy all the way through their version – B+
A later generations Sly Stone releases a full set from circa Brown Sugar, twenty years after its expiration date and it is still better than just about anything else you might consider funk. There is no way to overstate the case for this album and if we are never getting another album and if he can’t release the Radio City Music Hall gig from 2000, this will do very nicely. ALBUM OF THE WEEK – A
I never really noticed or appreciated his voice until I saw this live video; the man has some serious talent and by the fourth or fifth time I watched it, it really hit me, how much the band has really grown up.
Word has it now that he is back to the drawing board writing new music for dun dun dun.. New Madness! Now my hopes arent that high, I worry that they cant maintain that youthful sound but I can hope, and that’s exactly what I will do.
Less of the ol’ personal jesus stuff and more thrills and chills and starring Ricky Gervais as the Muppet World Tour manager Dominic Badguy (“It means guy who is good”) and a most wanted frog in the world Constantin as the Kermit doppelganger
Really? This piece of bland out keyboard blues “Fever”? You are joking on me right. What do you think Peggy Lee makes of it? She must be laughing hysterically at this. Why didn’t the call it something else? How about head cold?
Easy to miss, because maybe Perrett was missing it himself (though on a song not on this album he would note “drugs are one thing we have in common”) , love drugs and death make a triumvirate and Peter moves from one to the other .
Does anybody in rock and roll have a better voice for a greater length of time than Chrissie Hynde? On her latest song, off the June 9 Stockholm, “Dark Sunglasses” even a drum machine can’t harm her.
I’ve Seen It All – Bjork – Off her Lar Von Trier movie, this is a spectacular nursery rhyme set to the chugachug of a train with smart aphorisms like “All walls are great if the roof doesn’t fall” while enhancing the strange sad “pennies from heaven” storyline – A
That means it will be a complete bitch to get one if you don’t have one and I don’t have one because I already saw the band without Gregg. And while I absolutely don’t regret having seen em now I’m obsessing about seeing the band with Gregg for the last last last stand!!
Cash in fast, your days are numbered. If you expect kids to spend $104. to see Anthony Green and Circa Survive…you’re out of your mind.
I’ve never really given these guys the time of day but there’s an immense amount of hype surrounding them so I figured I’d dive a little deeper.
In one rehearsal hall babies were playing, in another hall three kids were playing keyboards and in yet another a makeshift rock band, the lead singer couldn’t have been 12 years old, would rehearsing Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band”.
I am excited for the new Hold Steady and always to hear from Barry Manilow. From what I’ve heard of Shakira I can’t claim to be thrilled at the concept of her newbie but I could be wrong. Yokyo Police Club? Sure, let’s rock. And to top it off Grieves all important sophomore effort and a great lost Johnny Cash album.
Sleeper Agent released the sleeper album of the year, a fine sophomore effort overflowing with hooks, melodies and potential hits. Followed by a surfeit of albums which can only sustain it with a song or two
This is pretty damn lame, second lame chart from the UK, the singles was better though very EDM heavy, meanwhile the albums chart is moldy MOR headed by the Westlife guy Kian Egan.
In other news, I bet Larry Blackmon is a happy man, not only is there a cover of his biggest hit working its way up the charts, it is the sort of cover which can only make him look good!
Fire Away – Skrillex – Very laid back for dance, rather than fire away it moves around a skittish drum pattern into waves of moogie distraughtness and straight up notes on a piano. We had a word for this when I was growing up, dubstep – C+
Seth doesn’t play off Fred at all well, and Seth uses the fifth man, the audience, very very poorly. During a frankly bizarre “Celebrity Spelling Bee”, whose main joke, they give two audience members difficult celebrity names and the third easy names, doesn’t remotely work, he fails to connect with a single one of the three.
