LATEST ADDITIONS

Concert Reviews
What's Jazz Got To Do With It? Part 2
Roger Hahn  |  Dec 31, 2006  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  1 comments

Old-Time Standards the Old-School Way
With the eclipse of the Olympia Brass Band, it is generally acknowledged that the Trémé band, in all its multiple configurations, has now become the symbolic parade marshal for the Crescent City’s historic “street” jazz tradition. The mainstay of Trémé’s songbook are well-known New Orleans jazz tunes and old-time spirituals. With the rain pummeling the big tent into which maybe 500 or more of us had managed to jam ourselves, the band carried on as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

In the shoulder-to-shoulder crush I found myself standing beside a middle-aged woman with a tiny baby sleeping on shoulder. Behind her, a rugged-faced man stood guard at the helm of an empty baby carriage.

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Album Reviews
Only a Musical Scrooge Won't Love Marley's Ghost's "Spooked"
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

“Roots” music specialist Marley’s Ghost gets a turbo boost from producer Van Dyke Parks, who turns what could have been just another musical “Antiques Roadshow” into a truly special recorded event.

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Album Reviews
Everything Wrong With the Corporate Music Business In One Two CD Set!
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

The merger of Sony Music and BMG combined two of the world’s great film music catalogs, offering the potential for a truly exceptional film score compilation. This isn’t it. Instead this piece of shit excuse for an “essential” film score package is indicative of everything that’s wrong with the music business today. It lists for $25.00.

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Album Reviews
Easy Rolling With Mark and Emmylou
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

This superbly recorded, meticulously produced collaboration reminds me of an expanded version of Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’ “Happy Trails.” It’s packed with nostalgia and exudes a wistful, “see you around” vibe that at times gets downright suffocating.

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Album Reviews
The Final Chapter Of One of America's Greatest Musical Stories
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Johnny Cash’s final album is a tender and moving tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. The power and fascination of folk music is that the story is in the telling not in the technique.

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Album Reviews
Let's Impeach The President!
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Subtlety was not in Neil Young’s game plan when he sat down to write the tunes here, probably in a burst of creative energy born of frustration with the war in Iraq and other Bush administration activities over the past few years. Young’s moved quite a ways since his romance with the Reagan administration.

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Album Reviews
The Analog Revolution Leads A New Blues Renaissance
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Decide for yourself whether The Lovin’ Spoonful took their name from Mississippi John Hurt’s “Coffee Blues” (not to mention the tune for “Darlin’ Companion”) but fans of Taj Mahal will have no doubts about this gentle soul’s influence on Taj when you hear this earlier take on “Corrina, Corrina” and compare it to Taj’s on The Natch’l Blues (CS9698).

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Album Reviews
Classic 1967 Tim Buckley Elektra Title Gets New Life Thanks to the 4 Men
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Bongos and an A-bomb sound effect commence “No Man Can Find The War,” the dramatic opening tune on Tim Buckley’s second Elektra LP, recorded in Los Angeles, June of 1967 as the war in Vietnam burned itself into the American psyche. An anti-war song, like so many others of the time, it speaks to the futility of war and look where we are almost forty years hence.

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Album Reviews
Velvet Fog On Broadway
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Twelve Broadway chestnuts from the days when Broadway shows were produced for New York sensibilities instead of for the midwest bus-hoards. Nothing poisonal, mind you, but Broadway today is aimed at tourists, not New Yawkers.

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Album Reviews
Dire Straits Classic Resurrected As Double 180g LP!
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2006  |  2 comments

If you’re one of those who doesn’t “get” Brothers In Arms, originally issued in 1985, Robert Sandell’s liner notes accompanying this meticulously produced double 180g LP reissue provide a plausible, if not entirely believable explanation for its original and continued popularity.

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