May 2011
99 posts
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Amade Ardoin & Dennis McGee
As evidenced by the blues, waltzes and one- and two-steps that form this set, the two men made music that was as lyrical as it was intense. At its core was a powerful mix of melancholy and jubilation, emotions born of the resiliency and persecution experienced both by the Acadian people who migrated from Canada to Louisiana and by the mixed-race descendants of the original Spanish and French...
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Robbie Robertson's Nazareth Inspiration
Finally, reaching way back, when you wrote “The Weight” and referenced “Nazareth” someone at The Martin Guitar Company told me you meant Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where their guitars are from. Not the birthplace of that famous baby.
I remember sitting around and trying to write that song. I wanted to take people on a journey, someplace they hadn’t been before. I stopped and looked into the sound...
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Jeff Levenson Talks To Brian Wilson Around SMiLE
VH1: Brian, do you have a sense of triumph or redemption? Brian Wilson: I think we kicked ass over the original version. I think the musicianship was far superior to the old musicians. VH1: Was the SMiLE music in your head all these years? Or were you able to set it aside? BW: My head was filled with drugs - LSD, marijuana, amphetamines - and our heads [the Beach Boys’] got into a bad...
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Don't Forget: Stompin' At The Savoy: The Original...
The premiere R&B label of the ’40s and ’50s was ultra reliable when it came to making all the party people jump. Everything is in the red zone on these 84 tracks of boogie, blues, and stomp. If it’s time to party, then someone’s got to shout it. If there’s drinking to be done, someone’s guaranteed to get blotto. Even the ballads are bellowed. Stuff’s...
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Teenage Symphony To God
With guidance from the minions/ mentors of his backup band, the beleaguered Beach Boy finished work on a program of elaborate, wondrous tunes that were scheduled to follow the revered Pet Sounds some 40 years ago. A patchwork sprawl of sounds that bring pop tunesmanship to a keen compositional sense, the disc mixes the sometimes surreal poesy of Van Dyke Parks into a fountainhead of instrumental...
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Levon Helm's Top 10 Vocal PHRASES
Survived Arkansas, survived the road, survived cancer. Today’s his birthday. Keep a going, Levon Helm. Here are some perfectly phrased snips of tunes that never leave your head once they’ve entered.
1. “It just old Luke, and Luke’s waiting on the judgement day.” - The Weight
2. “The bourbon is 100 proof.” - Rag Mama Rag
3. “And before the leaves...
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Awe
“It was like the first time I saw an Art Tatum transcription book. Unbelievable what had actually been put on the paper. What he actually DID. That it was possible. You know right away it’s something that really different and really great.” - Ahmad Jamal
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JoMo On The Cut
“We’re dealing with formulated abstraction rendered in a way that is, hopefully, palatable to anybody. At least over time. And it’s proven itself to be true, because if you listen to Louis Armstrong – man, anybody can like that. Little kids can listen to that. You listen to Monk now – my grandmother would like that. Coltrane – who wouldn’t like that? You can sit there...
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Spray On, Wes
Designed in the shape of a guitar to honor the park’s namesake, jazz musician Wes Montgomery, the new spray park features amenities shaped like musical instruments and notes. When activated, they spout water and play recordings of Montgomery’s music. His son, Robert Montgomery, worked with the city on the project.
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Ganz On Gaga
Excess is Gaga’s riskiest musical gamble, but it’s also her greatest weapon, and Born This Wayrelentlessly bludgeons listeners’ pleasure centers. - Caryn Ganz, Spin
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Move In Next Door, Or Marry My Daughter: The 10...
“When we’re sitting around at home we like to listen to the wild-ass stuff,” Marshall Crenshaw once told me, “like ‘Motorpsycho Nightmare’ and ‘Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat’ and ‘Million Dollar Bash,’ the humorous stuff with the crazy imagery and jokes - those are the ones I love best.”
Here are ten that bring laffs to the table.
...
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Here Come The Warm Jets
“It sounds fantastic but one of the things that I tried to do with Warm Jets was to bring musicians together who would normally never play together and to play a music that they couldn’t agree upon. The music would come from the chemistry. But of course, it was impossible to do. I couldn’t expect any of the session people I worked with to go along with it. They literally fought.” -...
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“I wanted something rougher around the edges, more oddball and genuinely...”
– Roy Nathanson talks to Larry Blumenfeld about the Lounge Lizards. Birthday party tonight at the Jazz Standard.
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Joan Morgan and Kristine McKenna, Too
http://flavorwire.com/180036/33-women-music-critics-you-need-to-read
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Was just listening to Pat Metheny’s spin on...
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Hmmm, is it Angus’ birthday, too?
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Lovano On Coleman
“If I hadn’t...
Want To Hear About Mr Palmer Buying a Hot Dog...
http://www.stoopstorytelling.com/storytellers/1068
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Do The Zimmy Scribble
“Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.” - Bob Dylan
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Dot & Betty Wiggin Recall Their Shaggsian Selves →
Press it and see.
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WatchEvery time the singer-songwriter Bill Callahan puts out a record, you want to listen lyrics-first. His words drip out so slowly that you could stone-carve an album’s worth of them without hitting pause. There’s also usually some evolution there. You want to know what new psychoses and vocabulary and levels of intent his characters have taken on: distanced and bratty; sentimental and sociopathic;...
