Michael Fremer

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Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  1 comments

Few jazz musicians attain pop star status while retaining credibility with their "base." Louis Armstrong managed and of course so did Miles Davis. Stan Getz was another.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  1 comments

Still raw from 9/11? It's difficult to believe a decade has passed. So imagine this Louis Armstrong concert from 1956. For most of the audience, and for much of America, except for the "Baby Boomer" youngsters too young to remember, World War Two and the enormous human toll it took on families across the country was still a current event.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  0 comments

After a series of albums that tried too hard to advance the cause and so seemed self-consciously so, Paul Simon has produced his best since Graceland. The album title explains how he's managed. It celebrates the significant but demolishes it at the same time.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  0 comments

There's no mystery about why this seventh Foo Fighters album succeeds artistically and commercially. Dave Grohl tempers his scream fest tendencies with focus, clarity and discipline. Producer Butch Vig, who worked with Nirvana tightens it all up and doesn't leave any loose ends hanging in a recording done in Grohl's garage. Grohl brings back Nirvana and Germs guitarist Pat Smear as well as Krist Novoselic on bass and accordian on "I Should Have Known." It's almost a reunion.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  1 comments

In 1975, with complete artistic control written into his new Columbia Records contract, Willie Nelson entered Autumn Sound, a small Garland, Texas studio, to record a sparely arranged concept album based upon the semi-obscure song "The Red Haired Stranger," written by Carl Stutz, a Richmond, Virginia based radio announcer  and Edith Lindeman Calisch, the amusement critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper. The pair was best known for writing "Little Things Mean A Lot," which was a hit single for the pop star Kitty Kallen back in 1954 and featured on the wildly popular TV show "Your Hit Parade." Stutz went on to become a high-school math teacher.  

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  1 comments

Paul Simon can't go back to his folk-rock roots. It's too late for him to turn around, but a younger generation surely can use the hybrid genre as a start-up base of operations. The first and second Fleet Fox albums demonstrate that. 

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  2 comments

Knowing Bernie Grundman, there’s something amusing about thinking of him cutting the lacquers for this ORG reissue of Nirvana’s “cull” album of demos, outtakes and radio broadcasts.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011  |  0 comments

No one has ever claimed PJ Harvey creates music made for easy, or even pleasant listening. Much of it is dark and painful, but even at its weakest, Harvey's music is provocative and worthwhile.

Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2012  |  1 comments

"My girlfriend loves everything at the beach except the sand, the surf and the sun."  That lyric pretty much sums up the playful, sensous, and dangerous kitsch-world of this exotic six person  L.A. group fronted by the black widow spider persona of the sexy Cambodian pop chantreuse Chhom Nimol whose fixation with '60s Cambodian pop fuels the music. 

Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2012  |  2 comments

Let's divide the world into two groups: one that says "Gene who?" and the other that recognizes the late Gene Clark as one of the greats from the rock era. That's my side of the divide.

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