Archive for the 'Musician Reviews' Category
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Deface The Beatles Music (Part Two)
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Picking up from where we (mercifully) left off last week, we are smack-dab in the middle of what is part of the box set from Todd Rundgren and Utopia chronicling their Deface The Music tour. To recap, Deface The Music was Utopia’s tribute to the Beatles. Rundgren and Sulton have frequently stated that the Beatles were tremendous influences on them both. Powell and Wilcox are more comfortable in the jazz realm, but also have Beatle-influence (come on, everybody has Beatle influence, even if you didn’t like them, odds are, many of the artists you DO like were influenced by the Beatles so vicariously, you are influenced).
But this isn’t about the Beatles, it’s about Utopia, maybe for this tour we should call them Beatleopia.
read comments (0)The Dead Tear Down the Spectrum
Author: Andrew Overton
I never had the chance to see the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia died when I was 7, but since high school I’ve been a student of jam–the Dead, Phish, Allman Brothers, etc. I not only have admired the musicianship of these bands, but envied their fans for the epics concerts they were able to attend.
My parents, both well aware of this envy, gave me an early birthday present this week: tickets to see the remaining Dead at the Spectrum. Warren Haynes (lead guitar) and Jeff Chimenti (keyboard/organ) were asked to join the original members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann for an American tour. For most of the tour the setlists have been packed full of hits and Saturday night was no exception. It became almost immediately apparent to me that these old fellas could still play.
Belated Record Store Day Recap
Author: jon
We’ve been very busy with back-to-back weekend events, so this is a little belated, but we wanted to give a big thanks to all the folks who came out and supported us on Record Store Day! Read the rest of this entry »
Whole Lotta Utopia Goin’ On
Author: Jeff Boule
Good readers I return from the Grand Parade Of Life-full Packaging (to paraphrase Peter Gabriel) where I am triumphant and have all the scars to show for it. Some of the those scars involve taking a thirteen-hundredth look at some previously published blogs that, for some inexplicable reason just, disappeared from the site. If this seems familiar, you are NOT having a Déjà vu, it is repeating the mantra (again from Gabriel) “Man feed machine, machine feed man”.
Punk Jazz: The Thing at Kung Fu Necktie
Author: Anthony Medici
No, not “Thing,” that disembodied hand that creeped you out in “The Addams Family.” No, “The Thing” I’m talking about is the kick-butt Scandinavian free jazz trio, with Swede Mats Gustafsson on tenor sax, and Norwegians Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. The band has been touring the U.S. behind its new album, “”Bag It,” and a new CD box set. These guys are as much influenced by the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash, as they are by Coltrane, Ornette, and Albert Ayler. When you go, you know it is going to be loud, intense and full of high-voltage energy. I could feel that energy traveling way down to DC, enough so to make me drop what I was doing and make the two and a half hour trek to club Kung Fu Necktie (no, I have no idea either what the name means) on North Front Street, in Philadelphia, this past Friday night. Read the rest of this entry »
Ms. Delmhorst and Her Little-Winged Bird
Author: HJ Mills
“I just want to be part of all this beauty, want to be part of all this flight on little wings”, sings the lovely Kris Delmhorst in her song, “Little Wings” I see her as one of the most remarkable musicians I have ever come across. Her lyrics are as beautiful as the leftover drops on bushes after a sweet summer rain. In her song, “The Drop and Dream”, Kris wistfully sings “It’s both our curse and our grace, here in this place to reach for heights that we’ll never climb”. She sculptures her pieces with light, philosophy, self-reflection, cracked bits of robins’ eggs, and broken guitar strings tied in a bow. Yet, her name is only whispered, and according to “Little Wings”, Ms. Delmhorst does not mind that a bit. She confidently professes, “Now I don’t want to be a jet airliner, I just want to be a little bird, I don’t want to rip the skies wide open, I just want my song to be heard” . I heard her exquisite melodies long after one of my favorite music writers unveiled her . Read the rest of this entry »
Going Dutch in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
Seeing Filligar Live
Author: Eliza Varner
Last Friday I had the opportunity to go to a Live Campus show here at Dartmouth. Held in the commonground of Collis (our student activities center), with a minimal donation, we could go see several live bands as well as get pizza, soda, and free beer (21+ with ID). What a perfect way to spend the first Friday night of Spring Term. Read the rest of this entry »
The Appropriate Category for Amadou & Mariam’s Music is “Great”
Author: John Moses
I’ve been telling my friends about how much I like Amadou & Mariam’s music. Since they’re not well-known in the U.S. yet, the question that inevitably comes up is, “What sort of music is it? Who do they sound like?” After trying several weakly descriptive, “it’s-sort-of-like-this-and-sort-of-like-that” responses, I’ve settled on, “It’s just great, fun music. You should give it a listen.” Read the rest of this entry »
Vocal Blanketing: Ethereal Music for Rainy Days
Author: Adrienne Brown
Recently, during a rather frazzled moment of negotiating the vehicular nightmare that is Commercial Avenue in New Brunswick, I heard one of the most soothing songs to ever reach my ears. My radio was tuned in to 90.3 The Core (Rutgers University Radio) and the song that was playing was Generosity by Mirah. Not only was her vocal style an unexpected comfort as I weaved through traffic and random pedestrians, but the accompanying violins brought me to a place far from the industrial landscape. As a voracious reader of music magazines, I encountered articles extolling the wonder of Mirah, but had never actually given her music a listen.
Some Other Stuff
Author: Anthony Medici
It arrived on the scene inconspicuously, without fanfare. It had been on my want list for ages. I only came across it online while I was looking for something else. I found out it was released on February 24, 2009 in its current incarnation. A welcome arrival, indeed. What am I talking about (you may well ask)? I am referring to the Rudy Van Gelder series release on Blue Note of trombonist Grachan Moncur III’s laconically titled Some Other Stuff, recorded July 6, 1964 at RVG’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and released initially in 1965 on Blue Note. It is one of the great “inside -outside” albums produced by Blue Note. For some reason, previous issues of this album on both LP and CD had proved hard to come by. Even repeated trips to our dearly beloved PREX failed to turn up a copy. I mulled purchasing the Moncur 3-CD box set on Mosaic just to get it, but I had all the other albums contained on the set and was loathe to pay the asking price just to complete my Moncur collection. Now the Moncur set is out of print (and already commanding high asking prices), but here was the individual album that I sought, complete with Reid Miles original and enigmatic cover art, and with an added annotation by Bob Blumenthal. It did not take long to hit “Buy,” and pop it into the CD player on arrival. Read the rest of this entry »
Animal Collective Live In London
Author: Andrew Overton
Last night I finally was privileged to experience the magic of Animal Collective live. The band (less Deakin) has been tweaking many of the tracks that eventually ended up on the brilliant Merriweather Post Pavilion. Since the ground-breaking album dropped on the 20th of January AC has only done four gigs in the U.S. so very few Americans have heard their favorite Merriweather tracks live. I am fortunate enough to be studying in England and was able to catch them towards the end of their European tour at the HMV Forum in London. Read the rest of this entry »
Pazz and Jop with The Bad Plus
Author: Anthony Medici
The title of the new The Bad Plus (hereafter TBP) CD on Heads Up, “For All I Care,” is as ambiguous, ambivalent, and inscrutable as the rest of the album. Perhaps the band is telling us that it cares for all types of music and things and people, that its approach is determinedly egalitarian and universal. Or maybe it is telling us, defensively, in advance, and in anticipation of the usual TBP criticism, that it doesn’t much care what we think of the album, that they are going to do what they want, not what we want them to do. I suppose that it is both of these things. They want us to hear them; they’re not terribly interested in hearing us. For example, their blog, DO THE MATH, demonstrates their wide interests in things musical and cultural; however, they long since stopped accepting comments from readers on their posts. It’s a High Modernist conception of the artist as creative and aloof, and perhaps more, creative because they are aloof. No matter, for in “For All I Care,” they have created an album that challenges and connects. Read the rest of this entry »
ROGER POWELL, EATIN’ AN APPLE, SITTIN’ ON BLUE NOTE RIDGE
Author: Jeff Boule
Blue Note Ridge is Roger Powell’s fourth solo album. The largest difference between this album and the three preceding ones is that these previous albums were significantly synthesizer-based. As his former band–mate, Todd Rundgren used to say, “you were born, to synthesize”, and this new CD on Fossil Poets Records is largely based on piano. Plain old acoustic piano with maybe a synth note here and there.
B.B. King’s Latest–Do Yourself a Favor
Author: John Moses
There must be something about the blues that keeps its disciples young. B.B. King turned 83 last September (16th). I saw him last June at the Chicago Blues Festival, when he headlined the festival on a rainy Sunday night. We were getting soaked, but the crowd kept growing, right up until show time. He walked onto stage very slowly and he performed sitting, as he has for a few years. Old age might make walking difficult, but it hasn’t silenced his booming blues growl and it sure hasn’t weakened his guitar skills. Read the rest of this entry »
Right Place, Wrong Time: A Jazz Messenger Comes to D.C.
Author: Anthony Medici
The liner notes to his recent CD, “Sketch,” put it bluntly: “David Schnitter is the jazz world’s forgotten messenger, a marvelous musician who just happened to be in the right place before the right time.” Except I would amend that statement to read: “…in the right place after the right time.” For Schnitter was not just a “jazz messenger,” but a “Jazz Messenger,” one of the members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, a graduate of Blakey’s famed College of Hard Bop, that saw such other alumni as Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Jymie Merritt, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller, and Bobbie Timmons. I went to Twins Jazz last night to hear Schnitter and to see if the jazz message was still being delivered. Read the rest of this entry »
A LIVING TRAGEDY… THE WORLD’S GREATEST DRUMMER RETIRES FROM PLAYING LIVE
Author: Jeff Boule
With each day, more and more disparaging news comes across our collective desk. This could have been titled The Death Of Progressive Part Two. The world’s premiere drummer, Bill Bruford, announced on his website his retirement from public performance effective the first of this year. Before you all get bent out of shape about who the best drummer in the world is, remember, at the top of this post it SHOULD say “opinion” or “editorial”. Remember, you don’t have to agree with my opinion. But let’s examine what, in my opinion, makes Bruford the best.
Pop! Straight Out of Scandinavia
Author: Adrienne Brown
When it comes to our choices of music, we all have guilty pleasures. During my formative years, I was a huge New Kids on the Block fan. I tortured my parents to purchase every poster, cassette tape (yes, it was that long ago), and piece of merchandise I could get my hands on. My love of NKOTB even helped me to become elected to my intermediate school student council. However, as time moved on, so did my taste in music. By the time high school arrived, I had abandoned pop music in exchange for alternative bands like Nirvana and Depeche Mode.
First Impression & First Aid Kit
Author: HJ Mills
Greetings to my fellow admirers of audio rivers. My name’s HJ. I’ve been writing my own music blog semi-frequently since September ‘08. It started as a class assignment, then grew into one of my favorite things. Music is my passion, and I’m here to share and celebrate my passion with you. I always love metaphors, a ripe mango, tea with steam dancing on the top, scarves that are lovely, silver rings, scripture, and the gritty smell of camp fires. Read the rest of this entry »
Dance of the Rain Gods: Crispell and Hemingway in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
The rain has played a soggy ostinato to my recent jazz adventuring. A cold, hard rain fell as I set forth for Baltimore Saturday to catch the Marilyn Crispell/Gerry Hemingway duo performance at An Die Musik. The Beltway was choked with traffic and fender benders littered the highway shoulders. “Surely,” my Inner Couch Potato protested, “it would be better to stay home, slumber on the couch, listen to a record.” But I have learned that regret is a stronger motivator than reluctance, and I would have regretted missing this performance by these two Guggenheim Fellows and alumni of Anthony Braxton’s famed Quartet. Read the rest of this entry »