I dunno. Maybe rock ‘n’ roll lost its punch with the introduction of grammar. As soon as songwriters got clever, or cleaned up their English, or started straying outside the jungle, the primal urge was lost. So the next time you sit down to bang out the next rockin’ ode to whatever, here’s a good […]
Music
Posted inMusic
Miles Davis
Seven Steps:
The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis 1963-1964
Columbia
Legacy
Posted inMusic
Blood of the Democrat
Every style of music you hear today gets a little splash of yesterday. Whether it’s soul, garage rock, blues, jazz, hard rock, swing, old-school hip-hop, metal, or whatever, artists — either out of reverence or because they need a crutch — rely to some extent on music’s ghosts. Hell, I’m doing it myself right now. […]
Posted inMusic
190 pounds of pimp
Russell “Spiderman” Jordan was the king of cool as he took the New York State Welterweight title from Kemo “Bad Boy” Kolonivic last Thursday for the Boxing at the Roc event held at the Riverside Convention Center. Kolonivic came on strong and seemed a little heftier than Jordan. But no matter how many punches he […]
Posted inMusic
Tales of the mundane
Harvey Pekar creates extraordinary art out of ordinary life. His ongoing comic book stories use the mundane detail of everyday existence. But in the flat nowhere zone he’s inhabited all his years, he also finds joy and meaning and sometimes revelation. He started writing comicsin the ’70s, providing text for a series of illustrators (including […]
Posted inMusic
Sinister strain
The neck on Colin Tyranny’s Gibson SG has been broken at least six times and apparently reaffixed each time with model airplane glue. The bridge was reinstalled crooked after he added a whammy bar. It looks like hell. Yet, plugged in and turned up it sounds incredible. Tyranny strikes the opening note on the opening […]
Posted inMusic
Nunchucks bump ’n’ grind
Seeing Seattle’s The Makers two weeks ago squeeze their big rock into the little Bug Jar made me dislike The Mooney Suzuki even more. When MS played here last they pranced around like arrogant pricks, even after The Datsuns mopped the stage with ’em. All these bands owe a lot to The Makers, who, on […]
Posted inMusic
The pipes are calling
Jim Malcolm, the singer and guitarist with the Scottish band Old Blind Dogs, is going to church before he plays at one of our local watering holes. In his online tour diary, Malcolm describes himself as being too ‘Presbyterianized’ to feel comfortable in the red-light districts of German cities where he plays, but it isn’t […]
Posted inMusic
Whoever, whatever, whenever
Roomful Of Blues November 12 Montage Grille * new entry KMFDM October 31 Water Street Green Day w/New Found Glory November 5 Blue Cross Arena Donna The Buffalo November 6 Water Street C.J. Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band November 6 NOLA’s BBQ Incubus November 6 Blue Cross Arena Tony Bennett November 7 Eastman […]
Posted inMusic
The font of consummation
The Tragically Hip is getting back to its roots. The band’s eleventh album, In Between Evolution, hearkens back to the quality and sound of earlier records, before the generally panned Music @ Work and In Violet Light of recent years. It may have seemed that the quintet was running dry after 20 years of writing […]
Posted inMusic
Cult thing
If you’re a novice Cramps fan, or completely in the dark, the band’s new CD, How To Make A Monster, on their own Vengeance Records label, ain’t for you. “It’s the kinda thing our fans really dig,” says guitarist, Poison Ivy. “If somebody had never heard The Cramps and that’s what they picked up, I […]
Posted inMusic
Back to the future
The four members of the Atomic Swindlers who gathered on a recent evening to talk about their new album are no strangers to CD releases. Different combinations of them have played in New Math in the early 1980s, Jet Black Berries in the mid 1980s, and the Raw MaGillys in the 1990s. “If we’d made […]
