I love rock ‘n’ roll, but I’m tired of having to look in the rear view mirror to get it, so I sift through the myriad bands that pitch it retro and throwback — bands that sort of lose the point as they wallow in cliché. Few bands the world over get it right, so […]
Rock ‘n’ Roll
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Album Review: ‘Stackhouse’
Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost “Universal Vagrant” Mean Disposition Records gregstackhouseprevost.com If you take into consideration the raw trajectory set forth by his first solo record, “Mississippi Murderer,” then Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost’s new record, “Universal Vagrant,” sounds more like his third rather than his second. The precision is more direct on this album, but it ain’t overly […]
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Album Review: ‘Miss Leading, Phil and the Danish Wedge’
The Chinchillas “Miss Leading, Phil and the Danish Wedge” Jargon Records facebook.com/thechinchillasrochester It feels like I grew up on The Chinchillas, Rochester rock ‘n’ roll’s answer to the Swiss Army Knife. The boys have shown up again with a brand new one, “Miss Leading, Phil and the Danish Wedge.” I swear they just had a […]
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Hot Mayonnaise slathers on the rock ‘n’ roll
Rochester band Hot Mayonnaise is reverential in its handling of rock ‘n’ roll. But the quartet also knows that rock ‘n’ roll, the beloved icon, is itself iconoclast: It’s a snake that sometimes needs a little help shedding its skin. So for the last two years the band has taken music from an era that […]
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McKinley James plays beyond his years
The joint was packed and jumping. It was shoulder to shoulder on a hot Rochester night when McKinley James took the Harro East Ballroom stage. The crowd came on like a groundswell. There was nothing standing between James and the nearly 1,000 voracious spectators except for his red guitar. He had missed freshman orientation at […]
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Facilitatin’ a sweaty mess
Rock ‘n’ roll in the atomic age — what with its social fallout — presented more of a threat than the bomb. With its savage heat, beat, and promise of promiscuity, rock ‘n’ roll threatened the very soul of 1950’s white picket fence, Granny-panty America. Libidos were honed and the color line got faded, […]
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Tempted
I’m telling you, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Playing “Remember When” is a waste of air. Pining for long gone bands is futile. So let’s squash the commiserating so we can rave about The Temptators. Shout Bama Lama! For those of you who like classic transistor pop and rock, The Temptators is your […]
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Foxy Laddies
Though the band is up and running in high gear, Rochester cool, rhythm and blues sensation, The Fox Sisters still has a little of that new band smell wafting in there with the Aqua Velva and sweat. The band has now horned up the ranks with a little hard-hitting brass atop the bruising rhythm section. […]
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Who catches what
There’s no mistake. You can distinctly hear Fran Broderick in all of his projects: the casual gravel and grind of his voice, his broad, chunky attack on the acoustic guitar, and lyrics that swing from the personally bittersweet to the flat-out hysterical. You may recognize Broderick from his work with Friday in America. You may […]
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The Empty Hearts
Andy Babiuk just wanted to have fun. But after a three decade run with influential garage giants The Chesterfield Kings, some of the fun had checked out. He felt beat up, beat down, wore out. “I’d been doing the Chesterfield Kings for 30-plus years,” Babiuk says. “And it was getting to be a lot of […]
Posted inMovies
“Only Lovers Left Alive”
Leave it to Jim Jarmusch, the director who gave film audiences the “psychedelic western,” 1995’s “Dead Man,” and the gangster/samurai hybrid, “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” to find a way to put his own unique stamp on that most trendy of cinematic monsters: the vampire. In “Only Lovers Left Alive,” Jarmusch finds a […]
