Archive for the 'Editorials' Category
R.I.P. Jim Carroll
Author: Doctor B
Death as a subject in rock music (or “nec-rock-philia” as some wags have dubbed it) is nothing new. It showed up in everything from Mark Dinning’s 1959 one-hit wonder Teen Angel, to J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers’ romance-comic-like tear-jerker from 1964, Last Kiss to Bloodrock’s grinding, dirgey, death-metallic 1971 hit, DOA. Nonetheless, when Jim Carroll’s single People Who Died arrived at the radio station I spin for back in 1980, my jaw hit the floor. What was this guy up to? What was this guy on? Read the rest of this entry »
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Todd Rundgren poses as master of disguise during his time travel back to 1973. Photo by Lynn Vala
On the two and a half hour drive from my home base in the fascist surrounds of Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania to Stamford CT, all I kept saying to myself is “This better be worth it, I am too damn old to be doing this!!!” There were extenuating circumstances this time. I had first volunteered to assist in the production, working concession organization the night before. This was when the show was not yet a minor tour, and only happening in Akron OH on the sixth. I had even been contacted by my former band mate from The Goodz, Marc Blanc, and he had proposed my best thing to ever happen to me and I join him and his cousin Jaime to venture first to Penn State, then to the Rock and Roll hall of fame in Cleveland.
Their proposition had become pricey, and times, as you know and can well verify for yourselves, are tough.
I had decided as temping as this was, I had to decline. This is where the volunteerism had come into play. I made sure to contact one of the promoters, someone who I must interview, with his partner Cruiser Mel, as they are most fascinating topics, yet the nicest, down to earth people you will meet, Doug Ford and let him know I could not attend but would lend assistance in anyway possible, promoting it in the blog, etc. Did I mention they were nice? Mr. Ford then suggests that if my best thing to ever happen to me and I were interested, we could work concessions, sorting merchandise by size, type etc. the night before the show. This was when the show was in Akron OH and was a one-off. Interest became so great that a second show was added. Then a show in Stamford CT., then Bethesda MD, London, and more. I had contacted Mr. Ford and asked could the arrangements be switched, and while the opportunity to sell merchandise was occupied, the spots available were assisting in the ticket sales, Will Call and reserved V.I.P. tickets.
Follow me through an adventurous, enlightening and needless to say entertaining evening, an evening I like to call 999 (09-09-2009).
Rundgren takes the mic back from Sulton for the ever popular 'Soul Medley'. Photo by Lynn Vala
Rundgren reemerges with an Orange suit on, much like the one worn during the Liars tour. This medley is obviously what they rehearsed the most, or it at least sounded that way as apart from some errant Theremin notes (and those things were hair-trigger at best) this was as tight as it gets.
Ever enchanting Amos warms the ivories on her trusty Bosendorfer piano. Photo by Lynn Vala.
Picking up from last time, we are now reviewing the concert show for Amos’ most recent release Abnormally Attracted To Sin. Red Bank to the average visitor (which I consider myself to be) is a quaint hamlet akin to Philadelphia’s South Street before the Mardi Gras riots of a few years ago. After a lovely dinner at a local diner, we venture to the venue. An all-American meal before seeing a show from an all-American girl.
Who just so happens to live in England.
TORI AMOS ABNORMALLY ATTRACTED TO SIN ATTRACTS ABNORMALS OF ALL KINDS
Author: Jeff Boule
On the outskirts of town, there is a scarlet mansion. Well maintained, and heavily visited. The police know what goes on there, and they look away. Those who enjoy visiting the scarlet mansion come and go frequently. Each bringing in their cares and woes and after an hour or so visit, they leave without them. What is the attraction? The girls.
Anyone who knows Tori Amos, knows that she refers to her songs as girls. When the girls want to come out and play, Amos inserts them into the song list, records them, or just pals around with them. If there was ever an appropriate allegory for a Tori Amos album, the above seems to fit. On the outskirts of town? Definitely a fringe artist, Amos only enjoyed minor success at the beginning of her career. As she became more established, her sales numbers leveled off until she was unceremoniously dumped by Atlantic Records. She did sign a short-lived deal with Epic, and they released some very interesting if not earnestly successful records. My most notable is “Strange Little Girls” which was an album of covers done in her own inimitable style. A scarlet mansion? Come on, look at her.
I’m not about to call one of music’s smartest redheads a blonde-wood bungalow.
The Young Person’s Guide To Fripp & Eno
Author: Jeff Boule
Again, we have a reissued blog from a time lost to the digital gremlins:
Mr. Billingsworth,
Upon bringing in the email, I found your exchange with my Mrs. from earlier today regarding Fripp & Eno. I have a few points of interest and we can also discuss Prog matters in general.
So I here I am in the New Jersey dust bowl sitting through Street Sweeper Social Club featuring Tom Morello. While he is an innovative guitarist, I got nothing for him, I got nothing for Rage Against The Machine. I am here for Nine Inch Nails. If this is truly going to be one of those farewell tours that precede another farewell tour later on, I will be pissed. Street Sweeper Social Club is a mutation of “Kid Rock meets Poser Metal”. The PNC dust bowl is filling up and the crowd is respectably mixed in demographic. Morello, the guitar player for SSSC, tells the crowd to stand up for their last song (thankfully) but I adhere to no such demands from any front person.
BILL BRUFORD – A DRUMMER OUT OF TIME: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Author: Jeff Boule
The Bill Bruford Autobiography, definitive reading for progressive music fans, jazz fans, music practitioners from the novice to the professional, this book is the 21st century musician's survival guide. (Photo permission courtesy of Bill Bruford)
A few posts ago, I wrote about Bill Bruford, announcing his retirement from public performance as of the first of this year. I was angry, I was hurt, I felt abandoned, and most of all I was disappointed that one of the primary warriors of mundane music had laid down his small wooden swords for the last time. I could not understand why the world’s greatest drummer would hang it up while he was still undeniably a force in the industry, the industry he labels as “the industry of human happiness”.
Sometimes you need a good autobiography to make things clear, to garner the inside perspective. But be warned, and I was taken aback by what I encountered, the ending of this book is not what you would expect from a player of Bruford’s qualifications.
SLIMMED-DOWN TUBES SPRING FROM NY ON WORLD TOUR – B.B. KING’S 05-31-09
Author: Jeff Boule
(Photo by Lynn Vala)
If you are a bit longer-in-the-tooth as I am, you remember a time when MTV played music videos, those alleged promotional devices that were short-form movies scripted to coincide with the lyrics and tone of the song being promoted. If you consider this time period (from 1981 to about 1992) when we were still recovering from the post-disco era, music that suddenly had images to accompany the sounds seemed like a logical place for this 7-piece-plus musical theater troupe of a band. Since their inception through their last major release, they have been minimally a 7-piece. TWO guitars, TWO keyboardists, bass, drums and vocals with occasionally added female vocals, dancers, roller skaters, actors, sometimes just the guys backstage would walk around on stage and it would be so heavily populated no one would notice.
Last Of Last Of The New-Wave Riders – Utopia Storm Tokyo, 1979
Author: Jeff Boule
Utopia bid adieu after a night on stage. Photo by Coming Age.
It is painfully; finally time to wrap up the on-going series of reviews tackling the Utopia box set Last Of The New Wave Riders. This set features Utopia playing to the American-culture-starved Japanese inquisitive yet reserved audiences. Japanese audiences were the most accepting of the some-time obscure and were willing to hear out the overtly obscure. No better place to play Utopia’s material. Unless you are Todd Rundgren and in your enthusiasm to entertain you do something that mortifies the people in the first few rows.
Acid Mothers Temple for beginners (like me!)
Author: Doctor B
I’d only heard a few of Acid Mothers Temple’s recordings before I saw them last April in Philadelphia. One of them was a seven-inch which sounded much to me like the output of any number of Japanoise bands, such as The Boredoms or The Machine Gun TV. Another was a live recording from 2004 which had them sounding like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd jamming with Blue Cheer with members of Pere Ubu sitting in. This turned out to be merely a fraction of a fraction of the output of this extremely prolific Japanese psychedelic-rock band One day while I was in Philadelphia visiting friends, I heard on the radio that Acid Mothers Temple’s 2009 North American tour would bring them to a club in Philadelphia called Johnny Brenda’s. So I decided to make the trip and check them out. Read the rest of this entry »
VALENCIA UPDATE
Author: Leigh Silbernagel
Direct from Valenica’s email newsletter, here’s the latest update about the Japan Tour and all of the Presale Information you need.
-leigh Silbernagel
LAST OF THE NEW WAVE RIDERS, UTOPIA LAND ON THE WRONG PLANET
Author: Jeff Boule
Roger Powell from Utopia Photo by Coming Age
For those of you following my blogs, you know that some of my earlier posts were eradicated through the magic of ones and zeros. The reason I am bothering to repost them is that some are referred to in other blogs. Then when the hapless reader looks for those blogs they aren’t even there! This blog is BRAND NEW!!! This section of the box set Last Of The New Wave Riders never made it to press as concerts came first. I won’t be making that mistake this time. We will finish the box set and THEN begin an onslaught of new reviews. Upcoming will be The Tubes from B.B. Kings in NYC and then the Nine Inch Nails FAREWELL TOUR. Yup, you heard it right, Trenty is hangin’ up Nails. At least for a while. New Tori Amos album Abnormally Attracted To Sin will soon be reviewed here, and hopefully some new releases as well, as well as dipping our toes in some literary territory.
It ain’t all about Utopia, but we are going to review two more discs from the box set then we have all new events and music to sink our teeth into.
Soundtrack To Watermelon Munching
Author: HJ Mills
The seasons are nomads, and Summer has come back for a visit. Watermelon and berries are no longer in hibernation. There is now potato salad to make for the backyard barbeques to come. The beach becomes an opportunity again. Ball Mason jars are just waiting patiently to house freshly caught fireflies. And the songs of summer are ready to prove that they are just as luminous as sunlight glimmering through the trees. Read the rest of this entry »
Goodbye to All That (For Now)
Author: Anthony Medici
I’ve been writing for this blog since its inception, more than a year ago. I’ve decided it’s time for a rest, or maybe a change. Sometimes a rest is a change. I hope you have enjoyed what I have written. Or, if not enjoyed, at least found yourself thinking about the subject at hand. Thank you for reading, and thank you to Princeton Record Exchange for providing this forum. I have tried when and where I could to argue for the necessity of keeping the art known as jazz fresh, vibrant, indeed revolutionary, as it has always been at its best, but now seems in danger of ossifying under commercial pressure. There is no point to jazz’s survival, if that survival is one of only dreary “repertory” renditions, tired variations on tired themes, and endless reissues of many-times-reissued before albums. I have directed criticism at public radio and TV for its timid cowering to commercial and organizational pressure, its abysmal failure to offer content with “the shock of the new,” its dereliction of cultural duties that are its real reason for existence. Endless Yanni offerings, or pallid cocktail jazz, are not valid exercises of their public trust. Instead, public programming should stop acting like an also-ran commercial network, and start being a cultural change-maker. They do it much better in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
Meeting People Is Easy
Author: Andrew Overton
For the last four years without question Radiohead has been my favorite band. Never has a band held my heavyweight title for that long. I’ve never been big on watching videos or movies about bands, but I make an exception for Thom Yorke & Co. I’m lying down to watch the documentary
Meeting People Is Easy , which follows the and during their infamous 1997 OK Computer tour. I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts and ramblings throughout the film.
92 in the Shade
Author: Anthony Medici
92 in the shade. An emblem of heat. The title of Tom McGuane’s modern classic novel. Phoenix was not quite that cool. It might have been all of a balmy 98 in the shade on my last trip there. 102 in the sun. Carless, and on foot, I was in search of LPs. Vinyl. Jazz vinyl. I scored my first vinyl at Grandiose, on East Pierce, a hip boutique with records, clothing and art. There I picked up a sealed copy of Stuff Smith’s Black Violin on MPS. I also picked up a double-LP on Arista Freedom (a short-lived but great label), Ornette Coleman’s The Great London Concert, recorded 1965, with David Izenzon, Charles Moffett and a small classical ensemble. I hadn’t seen this one before, and was glad to get it. There was also a nice copy of Jimmy Lyons’ “Some Other Afternoon” on BYG, but I already had that, so left it for the next vinyl hunter. In search or more vinyl, I was directed to Wax ‘n Trax, further along on Central Avenue, at Camelback; too far to walk. I would need to take the light rail train that runs along Central. As I attempted to finagle a ticket from the station dispenser, as the sun beat mercilessly down, and my hot sweaty hand clutched my bag of vinyl treasures, the question occurred to me: what is the melting point of vinyl? Read the rest of this entry »
Jude the Unobscure
Author: Lydia Pudzianowski
After a long hiatus (and one blog), your favorite post-grad is back for some guaranteed Sunday blogging. Now that I have a BA in writing from the University of Pittsburgh, I’m qualified to do this (apparently that’s it though, as no one wants to hire me). Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Hurtles Towards Oblivion
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Once again, we revisit, review and revise a blog lost to zeros and ones…
As we recover from the last two back-to-back weeks of the Deface Tour, we need to take it easy. With this in mind, we will be doing an abbreviated review (read: not a two-parter this week). We are continuing with our examination of the Utopia box set, Last Of The New Wave Riders. A set of live performance CDs spanning from early in Utopia’s career up to almost the end. This particular show, the Oblivion Tour, is a single disc. The only one in the box set that isn’t a two CD set. VALUE!
BACH BEETHOVEN BROTZMANN
Author: Anthony Medici
It was the second day of a business trip to Phoenix, in the never-more-aptly named “Valley of the Sun,” where the temperature hovered around 100* and the sun and heat felt like a hair dryer blowing in your face. I had used my post-business “happy hour” scouting some local record stores (a story for another post). Heat-struck and foot-worn, I was consoling myself with a pizza and beer, when my cell phone signaled a text message. It was a ten second clip of German free jazz avatar Peter Brotzmann performing that night at D.C club Velvet Lounge, sent by a friend to offer a small degree of consolation for having missed the performance. Opening that little video clip in the desert night was like a visitation from another world, as if an old Norse god, perhaps Wotan himself, decided to offer a glimpse of an unseen world for just a fleeting moment; unlike the place I inhabited at the moment, this one was dark, mysterious, loud, seemingly violent and stormy , yet compelling. It lifted my spirit and increased my expectation for Brotzmann’s next performance at Wind Up Space in Baltimore, this past Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »