Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
The Return of Return to Forever: Going Nowhere?
Author: Anthony Medici
“FUSION LIVES!” trumpets the cover of August 2008 Jazz Times. “They’re Back!” screams the August 2008 cover of Downbeat. Two cover stories in the same month in the main jazz monthlies. What’s going on here? Well, for one thing, the hype machine is in Full Hot Air Mode. For another, the PR-driven, editorially compromised character of the primary jazz mags stands nakedly revealed. The Big Sell is on. Are you buying? Read the rest of this entry »
read comments (0)Hold Steady deliver again.
Author: Dan Gephart
What’s this? Talk-box guitar? A theremin? A banjo? Yes, that’s the new Hold Steady. But don’t believe what you’ve read elsewhere. The new Hold Steady is the same as the old Hold Steady. They’ve just added a few new instruments and a couple guest appearances.
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Mo choices, mo music!
Author: Dee
It’s the same thing every year; XPN puts on a four day music festival and then we’re asked to make lists of our favorites of eight hundred, eighty five something or another into to a “top ten” list format based upon our preferences.
A Hapless Solo Bear Watches Man And Sighs
Author: Jeff Boule
Chris Arduser is not now, nor will he ever be a household name. But I would rather keep this Chris Arduser in tact as opposed to some record label machination. I have come to know and love Deathy (as he is known in the inner circles of the Bear’s cave) through his work with Adrian Belew and the Bears, the Psychodots and later Raisins, Graveblankets and his own solo albums.
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Just about everyone I know has a “You haven’t seen” movie. You know, the movie you haven’t seen that is considered a classic – the one when you SAY you haven’t seen it, someone remarks “Wait, you haven’t seen (whatever movie)?” This is usually followed by some sort of action plan requiring you to see the movie immediately, even if you’re in the middle of mowing your lawn or something (though why you’d be discussing movies while mowing your lawn is kind of lost on me. But hey whatever, it’s your life). Anyway, many genres of music have the same type of thing. And if you’re down with the Metal and HAVEN’T heard ‘Reign in Blood’ by Slayer…. why haven’t you? Damn, stop mowing the lawn and listen to the record!
There’s a reason that you can go anywhere now and hear people randomly shout ‘Slayerrrrr!‘ every time something comes up that rocks (I heard someone say it at DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist’s ‘The Hard Sell’ tour!)…. and that reason goes back to Reign in Blood. It’s my favorite record ever, 29 minutes of thrash metal perfection.
And now, there’s a book about it.
Musician Deserving Greater Recognition: George Adams
Author: Anthony Medici
There’s a small group of musicians who occupy that difficult space between journeyman and artist. They have all the tools and skills of the fully-fledged journeyman but also touches of true artistic power. George Adams is one of these musicians; a tenor saxophonist of admirable skill, insight and authority, with an ability to project a unique musical lexicon. It’s unfortunate he has been largely overlooked and his legacy obscured since his passing 15 years ago. These musings on George Adams were produced by a recent trip through the aisles of Princeton Record Exchange (a plug? yes, but they deserve it). Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Hurtles Towards Oblivion
Author: Jeff Boule
As we recover from the Holiday weekend, we need to take it easy. With this in mind, we will be doing an abbreviated review (read: not a two-parter this week). During our lull in concerts this month, 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. Additionally, since the last entry about Devo generated some interest I need to address some comments that were left.
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WBGO: Lobotomized?
Author: Anthony Medici
In my blog last week I commented upon the bland, pasteurized and altogether uninteresting jazz music programming I encountered on WBGO (Newark) while visiting the New York area for the Vision Festival. I noted how I had always enjoyed listening to WBGO on previous trips to New York (I was born and grew up in New York City and still visit from time to time for special events and to visit family, so am up there a fair amount). I thought, possibly, that the yawn inducing music on the radio might have just been the result of a contrast with the white-hot intensity of the Vision Festival, which made WBGO’s programming seem so banal. Then I received a very polite response to my post from Cephas Bowles, WBGO’s General Manager, which shocked me! Read the rest of this entry »
Beautiful Mutants Were Heard In The Distance: Devo at Penn’s Landing
Author: Jeff Boule
When you think of Devo, certain things just don’t come to mind. Power chords, heavy, loud styles of music and guitars. Well at Penn’s landing on June 28th, Devo was all that and more! Performing their “stadium/festival” set; these are tracks that they can perform without the assistance of midi, sequencers or anything of that ilk. As if stripped down to their possible beginnings, Devo provided tones to enrage and engorge the attendees. Read the rest of this entry »
Camden – Susquehanna Center – June 19 2008
Author: Carl Homrighausen
We arrived to the wonderful stench of Camden, which is always an awe-inspiring thing. Truth be told, there’s nothing in Camden except a battleship, and aquarium, and an amphitheatre that I can honestly view as a second home. Thank you, Susquehanna Center, for making Camden worth existence. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Did I Not Think Of This Earlier?
Author: Melissa
In my last post, which I am assured was not my best, I said that not much was happening musically in my world. However, over the week I just remembered that it’s not necessarily true. I would like to maybe take some time these upcoming weeks to chronicle the production of a musical event that I am participating in at Westminster Choir College. The Westminster Conservatory Youth Opera Workshop is currently getting ready to perform it’s latest production, “Pandora’s Box”. Read the rest of this entry »
Vision Festival XIII: The Aftermath
Author: Anthony Medici
A few stray thoughts, dear Readers, fueled by potent antibiotics to treat a nasty case of bronchitis, following the epic Vision Festival XIII in New York City, which I blogged about last week. To wit: Is the Free Jazz aesthetic in need of a makeover? Is jazz radio WBGO (Newark) in need of a makeover? Click the link and read on. Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Deface The Beatle’s Music (Part Two)
Author: 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 the rest of this entry »
Bret Michaels at House of Blues
Author: Leigh Silbernagel
June 24, 2008: The vox from Poison; like Bon Jovi, he is another former 80’s glam rocker turned Pop-country-southern rock. I went to hear the Poison songs, and to tolerate the Southern rock- Americana- country-rock newer stuff (which he didn’t play too much of—which made me happy). Read the rest of this entry »
5 Cool Songs To Graduate To
Author: Melissa
Not too much happened in my little world, so I decided to make a post about Graduation. The time where we celebrate milestones in ours and others lives. Many people think that certain songs can be used for certain times, a belief that shows through during Graduation. Below is a collection of my favorite graduation songs(because “Pomp and Circumstance” isn’t too fun anymore). The list would be longer, but I go to that many graduations. Read the rest of this entry »
VISION FESTIVAL XIII: Shock and Awe
Author: Anthony Medici
I’m still somewhat agog over the recent Vision Festival XIII in New York City, produced by Arts for Art, Inc. If one word could sum it up, it would be: Intensity. The music, the playing, the heat, the marathon hours. They all contributed to feelings equal part rapture and exhaustion. Being somewhat new to the free jazz scene, I did not know what to expect, but came away feeling deeply moved. Driving away from the festival site on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a lot of the music on the radio felt pallid and tired and derivative. To borrow a phrase that was all the rage about five years ago, the festival produced a sense of shock and awe. Read the rest of this entry »
In conjunction with, but not necessarily a part of, The Summer Concert Series feature I have undertaken on this here PREX site, I am also reviewing some rare, unearthed, it took me several distributors to find this, live Utopia. Featuring a frequent blog topic, Todd Rundgren and his four-piece model of Utopia. This model was the version with Wilcox, Powell and Sulton. I can hear you all asking: “Who are these people?” Read the rest of this entry »
Album review: Judas Priest “Nostradamus”
Author: Keith
So what shows up in the mail the other day but my pre-ordered copy of ‘Nostradamus’ by Judas Priest, ordered for one reason and one reason only – along with it came the chance to attend a Judas Priest in-store signing. Which was a great idea, except the Jersey Turnpike had other plans (which you can read about in a previous blog here). So with no autograph to show from the signing and the only other release from the last 10 years the subpar “Angel of Retribution”, I was thinking this album better be good‘. And damn… it IS. Judas Priest is pulling a Bernard Hopkins on us.
Summer Concert Preview: Devo – What Can We Expect Now That It Has Been Told?
Author: Jeff Boule
As part of our Summer Concert Preview/Review, we will be looking at a concert disc by the Spudboys from 1988. They were ten years in and disillusioned from all the abuse from critics, non-fans, their label at the time, Warner Brothers, and so on. Yet that disillusionment NEVER affected the music! Read the rest of this entry »
“Tradition and the Individual Talent”
Author: Anthony Medici
In his famous essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” poet and critic T.S. Eliot famously stated, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” I listened recently to three albums that seem to me to seek to place the individual artist in the tradition, while simultaneously moving beyond that tradition, an act both necessary and presumptive. An act that says, “I am here now, I am alive and new, and, by implication, “That was then, the past, which I am replacing.” Yet at the same time, all three albums also acknowledge the importance of the past, of the tradition. The three albums I want to consider are: “Ellington & Coltrane (1962);” Archie Shepp’s “Four for Trane” (1964); and, Marion Brown’s “Three for Shepp” (1966), all on Impulse Records. Read the rest of this entry »