Archive for the 'Literary / Publication Reviews' Category
Mayor of MacDougal Street Was King of Village
Author: Bob Bembridge
He was an early mentor to Bob Dylan and a pioneer of modern acoustic blues, but his music is seldom heard today.
Dave Van Ronk was the Grand Poobah of the early Sixties Greenwich Village folk music scene. Second only to Woody Guthrie in his influence on Dylan, Van Ronk never achieved the commercial success enjoyed by fellow folkies Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Yet it was Van Ronk’s bluesy growl that set the bar for Greenwich Village folk performers in the 1960s. Read the rest of this entry »
read comments (2)Elvis Schmaltz Obscures Role as Music Pioneer
Author: Bob Bembridge
Surprise quiz.
Who was a bigger influence on popular music, Elvis Presley or the Beatles? Read the rest of this entry »
Freewheelin’ with Dylan – A Sixties Memoir
Author: Bob Bembridge
Mention folk music today, and many Americans would think of the 2003 movie spoof, A Mighty Wind.
Yet the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s was a powerful influence on American youth. Folk music nourished college kids who rejected the mainstream pap offered by Frankie Avalon and Connie Francis. Read the rest of this entry »
Once upon a time, there was a band nobody heard of. The people HAD actually heard this band many times. MTV, they were the backing band for Meatloaf’s massive debut album. This band and many members of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band formed that famous backing troupe.
Woodstock Memoir Marks 40th Anniversary
Author: Bob Bembridge
There have always been two Woodstocks – the event and the myth.
Woodstock the event consisted of lots of rain, little food, bad acid, and sometimes bad music. Woodstock the myth, according to festival promoter Michael Lang, gave young Americans “a sense of possibility and hope” that “spread around the globe.”
Lang’s long-awaited memoir, The Road to Woodstock, sheds new light on the event even as it offers more undeserved hoke about the importance of those three days at Bethel, NY in August 1969. Read the rest of this entry »
“Our Noise – The Story Of Merge Records”
Author: Beverly Paterson
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.