Opinion

So “Violet”, which was once a tangled story of revenge becomes a fairy tale for girls about overcoming the pressure of life and emerging the hero of your own story. About making yourself powerful.

Winner – Elvis Costello – I’m gonna call him the Magus from now on. On Thursday of last week, Elvis Costello performed a 45 minute concert at the Theater at Madison Square Garden that magically rolled back time to the late 1970s (without the bile) and unleashed a dynamite set ranging through his first two albums as well a s couple from Get Happy! and Armed Forces. Anybody who was lucky enough to be there won’t forget it soon.

I’ve worked every summer since 1979 so for me a sunny never ending summer is a dream, it doesn’t happen any more. But like the Drifters I still have some sand in my shoe and like Paisley I never missed the moments as they happened.

Soo… is it that? The vanity of comparison? I can see that as a possibility. Comparing a the two is simply unfair. Bowie is fragile and pale Morrissey still holding court quite well. I think, that this is the true issue. Why else? Lovers quarrel?

What makes People, Hell And Angels so remarkable is that arrives so late. No, it doesn’t feel finished but then neither does Lennon’s Milk and Honey and that was his very first solo release. It feels like a trip not taken

You’ve got to be honest for the fans.I would say five songs on the last record were bad, but I will make it up… Re-Mit is going to terrify people. It’s quite horrible. The Fall have had enough and we’re coming for you.

Rap is rap and hip hop is hop, and they are both the children of James Brown, but soul, the songs of Motown, the brace of great singles that rushed the the 1960s and 1970s, that was not from James Brown

the early songs have such universal appeal and such simplicity that they are like Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies: everybody understood and adored them

It’s like buying a hamburger for lunch and the waiter giving you a Quiche Lorraine. The quiche might be fine, and Lulu was in great voice, but it wasn’t what you bought.

‘Singer songwriter, Lana Del Rey will collaborate with Jaguar on the launch of the all-new F-TYPE, a two-seater sports car that is a vivid representation of the vitality of the Jaguar brand.

In many ways I see this as a golden age but only musically, culturally it is irrelevant. If you don’t agree, if you think the music doesn’t matter because the music is no good, than obviously you won’t connect it to the vapidness of its surroundings

They have a captive audience and the Clubs and Arenas can ply them with overpriced alcohol and tee-shirts. Everybody knows Pianos, Arlene Grocery, all those clubs, make their money at the bar and not from the door. The longer you are there, the more they make.

Who could it be? fun. are too big, Shinobi Ninja too small. And neither represent a movement…

Back in full glory the bands tour sold out in seconds. Stub Hub became the saving grace for many but not all. There were ‘car crash hearts’ broken fans who sobbed openly knowing they wouldn’t be part of Mays shows.

Jim James has had one of the above for the past through years, good for moving a couple 100K of albums (half of that for the solo stuff) but no way to run a recording career.

She just kinda seems dead inside, like there’s nothing behind her eyes.” He added, “Like there’s nothing in her boobs anymore!”

From Sunday morning thru Sunday afternoon I listened to it incessantly. Wrote up a review late Sunday afternoon and it posted on rock nyc Monday Morning. And now it is Monday afternoon and the My Bloody Valentine story is just about done with. I mean it is so Satuday Night And Sunday Morning

The tedium and the pressure of work palls after decades of it, there has to be more somewhere in 1960 and I will be Chad and my problems? Join the family canning business, no Dad, I wanna go my own way, I wanna charter planes

Scott-Heron’s catalogue is a mess, many of the albums he recorded for Arista from 1974 to 1983 are no longer on the market and there are too many bargain bin compilations to address. It’s hard to know in retrospect if Scott-Heron was a brilliant artist that never had the opportunity for the following he deserved

Here’s the plan. We open up with a screening of “Meat Is Murder” while 500 cows enter the stadium. Morrissey can sit down so his ulcer doesn’t flare up. Follow that up with Chrissie Hynde singing “Bad Boys Get Spanked” in honor of all the ass high fiving

He went from a SuperFan of The Sex Pistols, to a member of ’em. He climbed the ladder and became a big name in the punk scene, and he was named after a freakin’ hamster because Lydon and him couldn’t have the same name without being confused. He was cool simply because he wasn’t.

In 1998, the twenty year old, second generation bass player founded the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. B.R.M.C. have released two albums that achieved gold status in England and remain respected by music fans on both sides of the pond.

I think I missed the entire Killers infatuation. At the time, I thought “Mr. Brightside” was cute enough; a sorta novelty song for losers. But I didn’t much attention to the rest of the album. So imagine my surprise upon discovering they were a Mormon U2

Beyonce’s refusal to make a statement seems like either fear or indifference. She should have said: “Because of the cold weather I used taped vocals. This is standard practice but now I wish it had been made clear.” She’s even acting like she was caught cheating on her SATs

Written about her Daddy and about moving away from her home, Laura is remembering being a seven year old girl walking with her father in the English countryside, Many years later her terminally ill parent asked Laura to take her back to the hill before he died so he could see one final time how beautiful the world is.

Jason’s fans will go because, well, that’s what fans do, but what about normal folks? I will go because I care about country when it is healthy and I care about country when it is ill and if this guy is a poster child for what country music means in 2013 the way Reba McIntire was for country in 1985

Frank Ocean got lucky: the right sound, the right publicity, the right album. And more power to him. But that doesn’t make Channel Orange much more than a pretty good album.

Here is the fun thing, as much as I want to smash this kids piece of crap car to smithereens with a bat is as much as I admire the kids music. Without his ghetto swag I would never have discovered Don Omar

The song isn’t great, though it is good, the two parts don’t fit very well together and the song is lugubrious. Plus I don’t much like Henley’s vocal. But something about the chorus seems to reach into what I am feeling. I don’t feel so innocent any more, like all ex-lovers I feel defeated and shallow.

In 2013 expect Avril Lavigne to Kanye West to lead a pack of rock stars not as much fun as they used to. That’s the problem with years that end with the number three, they are all a settling in year, long enough into a decade where the sense of enhanced possibilities have kinda gone and we are settled into the calm of it all.

Laura Marling’s “Goodbye England” came on my Ipod. The song is quite recent, 2011, but it is a timeless, gentle ode to time and loss and to England, the home I never much loved

Remember we were still buying CDs and Spotify was not even showing up in our wildest dreams. Now, 10 years is a long time, can you imagine how many albums, how many songs have been released since? Tons! I don’t know what this says about me (too attached to the past, should I let it go?)

Winner – Victoria Soto – Some deaths simply define us. And Victoria Soto who was murdered in a rush of bullets while saving her young students defines not just herself but what we all hope we are. Paul Simon played “The Sound Of Silence” at her funeral, but if ever a funeral needed a sound, it was this one. The sound of the children who were saved and the sound of the children of the children yet to be born. And the parents and brothers and sisters and friends… The sound of all these people raising their voice because of one persons sublime bravery.

With a bedrock of faith in a life everlasting the tragedy, without narrowing fits into a larger picture, but no larger than this: First Grade Teacher Victoria Soto, 27 years old, died when she threw herself in the path of the gunmans bullets to protect her children. Certainly, in this world there is nothing more important than Ms. Soto’s sacrifice

All three acts had a problem with their biggest hits, to put it bluntly we had heard them once to often. But, with Nesmith back in the fold, the Monkees were playing minor hits as wel

Any real music before punk was being ruined by record companies. Got watered down. Then the hippies started to suck- they went from weed to heroin, so they were going nowhere. Through this, new bands formed.