Celebrating Nick Cave on his 66th birthday. —Ed. Need a fitting soundtrack for tuning up that rattletrap fuel-guzzling dragster in the garage? Or are you looking for a fab backdrop whist brushing up on the books of the Old Testament, though not for their supposed lessons but rather for their rampant bloodletting and begetting? Maybe […]
Neil Young’s years spent “in the ditch” (his words) remain, for me, the most vital of his entire career. As the hippie dream fell apart so did Young, and on albums such as 1975’s Tonight’s the Night (a “howling facedown with heroin and death itself,” in the critic Robert Christgau’s words) and 1973’s live Time […]
Remembering Jesse Ed Davis, born on this day in 1944. —Ed. Prior to his death in 1988, the noted Native American guitarist Jesse Ed Davis played on records by numerous big names, including Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Taj Mahal, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson. If you’ve heard the guitar solo in Jackson Browne’s […]
Cécile Schott, who records and performs as Colleen, is no stranger to this column and TVD’s year end Best lists. Initially coming to prominence as a skilled player of the viola da gamba, on her recent albums that instrument has been set aside as she excelled at wedding experimentation and song form. But on her […]
When Paul Simon released his album In the Blue Light in 2018, it had all the earmarks of a final work. It also came the same year that Simon said he would stop touring, with a show in Corona Park in Flushing Meadows, Queens, in New York, on September 22, 2018 to be his last. […]
The spark plug that fires The Garment District’s engine is multi-instrumentalist Jennifer Baron, though on new album Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World, she gets a big assist from her cousin Lucy Blehar, who handles lead vocals across seven of the set’s nine tracks. There have been other notable contributors to prior recordings, […]
Celebrating Paul Williams on his 82nd birthday. —Ed. It is the fate of some singer/songwriters to be the worst interpreters of their own work. Burt Bacharach springs to mind. Ditto Hoyt “Joy to the World” Axton and Jimmy “MacArthur Park” Webb. Kris Kristofferson falls into this category—unlike Webb and Axton he’s instantly recognizable for his […]
Post-punk side projects don’t get much better than Second Layer, a dark and edgy electronics and guitar excursion featuring Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey from the critically lauded outfit The Sound. Earlier this year, the 1972 label collected Second Layer’s early material onto the Courts or Wars LP, and that set’s been promptly followed with […]
Remembering Dee Dee Ramone, born on this day in 1951. —Ed. It’s easy to take this the Ramones’ landmark 1976 self-titled debut too seriously. Sure, it signaled a seismic shift in rock music, exploding like an M80 in the minds of every cretinous young thing who’d had it up to here with the pompous, bloated […]
Like the Henry Cow that calved ‘em, the Art Bears are a shut up and take your medicine proposition. I don’t think you’re supposed to enjoy their hifalutin’ take on progressive rock—no, you’re supposed to listen to it because it’s good for you. Their music is high in avant garde fiber and listening to it […]
Remembering Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, born on this date in 1928. —Ed. Blue Note Records celebrated 75 years of existence by giving numerous key titles from their incomparable catalog high-quality vinyl reissues, and it’s fitting that we began our tribute to the label’s longevity with a look at one of their very finest releases, the great […]
On 1989’s Monsters Phoenix, Arizona’s the Meat Puppets finally got around to doing what they’d been threatening to do for a while–went heavy metal. For a post-punk band with more in common with the Grateful Dead than the Misfits the move might have seemed a shocker. But with their first three albums the Meat Puppets […]
Celebrating Pete Agnew on his 77th birthday. —Ed. The Scottish clods o’ peat in this hard-working, hard-rocking man’s man band never won any originality awards, and weren’t exactly well-versed in the songwriting arts either, and given their high scunge factor, I doubt they’d even be allowed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as […]
Recorded in 1990 and released on compact disc two years later, Circular Temple by the Matthew Shipp Trio is a fathoms-deep excursion into a jazz avant-garde that was revitalized and on the move. On September 15, the record, which showcases bassist William Parker and drummer Whit Dickey with pianist Shipp, is receiving its second reissue, […]
Remembering Craig McGregor, born on this day in 1949. —Ed. Here’s an interesting historical tidbit: I was the geezer wot gave Foghat their name. It happened like this: we were all (the band and I) totally pissed in Rod “The Bottle” Price’s bedsit in manky Manchester, when “Lonesome Dave” Peverett rolled a J the size […]
