Where Is The Prog Love?
It's gotta be the shimmering robes. Once again the Prog wing (Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and if we're feeling rationally self-interested, Rush) has been snubbed by the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.Granted, Rick Wakeman (the keyboard player for Yes pictured here) is the poster child for Modern Elfwear, not for the snarling adolescent rebellion for which rock 'n roll is known and loved. And yes, it's hard to imagine Galadriel and the Hellcats. But still ... those bands made a lot of great albums and played a lot of great shows. No, really. And it's... read more
Indie Roundup - Querulous Barking Edition
I’m a guy who likes idiosyncratic - some would say bad - singing. Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are my heroes. But even I have my limits. These three indie bands push me to the brink. None of the albums are horrid, and all of them have their moments of inspired creativity. But oh, those voices. ... read more
David Foster Wallace
Several news sources are reporting that novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace hanged himself Friday night. Pardon me while I bang my head into a nearby computer monitor.... read more
Waco Brothers Alive and Kicking at Schuba's Tavern
In the taxonomy of local watering holes, Yuppie Fern Barn probably anchors the genteel, tame end of the scale, while Roadhouse probably stands menacingly at the other end. Campus Dive, my own choice for the best place to catch live music, is probably just to the genteel side of Roadhouse.... read more
Breakfast Wars: Pink Floyd vs. Nico Muhly
For almost four decades Pink Floyd's 1970 album Atom Heart Mother has reigned as the undisputed champion of breakfast sound effects. The thirteen-minute opus that concludes the album, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast," raised the bar so high in terms of the sounds of sizzling bacon, butter knives scraping on bread, and cereal crackling under freshly poured milk that it seemed pointless for other aspiring breakfast afficionados and musical freaks to even attempt to match its magnificence.... read more
The Ones That Got Away
As a general rule, outtakes are outtakes for a good reason. They're not as good as the tracks that make it to the officially released albums. But let's make an exception for the greatest songwriter of the past 50 years, shall we? As an obsessive collector of "rare" Dylan for more than 30 years now, I can assure you that Dylan has discarded more than his share of masterpieces in the studio, and that some (but far from all; the man is nothing if not maddeningly inconsistent) of his live performances are truly legendary. I have dozens and dozens of... read more
Neil Diamond
I can hardly stand to look at the man. There is, of course, the sculpted mane. There is the button casually left unbuttoned, and the chest hair. It is all enough to make me want to throw a banana cream pie in his face, or zap him with a cattle prod.... read more
Ed Askew -- Little Eyes
What are the odds that a former member of a band called Gandalf and the Motorpickle, and whose first solo album is called Ask the Unicorn, would release an album that approaches musical masterpiece status? I know, I wouldn’t make that bet either. But it’s happened. And you can chalk it up to the pervasive hippie influence of Vashti Bunyan. Ever since Vashti's "discovery," thirty years after the fact, small indie labels have been scouring the vaults to uncover the first generation of freak folk artists. Enter Ed Askew, who fits the bill perfectly. ... read more
Roots Roundup -- Watermelon Slim, Hacienda Brothers, Mando Saenz
Three new(ish) roots albums of note … Watermelon Slim and the Workers - No Paid Holidays Bill Homans’ (AKA Watermelon Slim’s) first record was a 1973 protest album. Recently back from a grunts-eye view of Vietnam, he used a tin can shard as a pick and his Zippo lighter as a slide, and laid down a series of bitter, acerbic ruminations on the horror and the folly of that memorable war. In the meantime he’s passed his days as a truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller, firewood salesman, collection agent, funeral parlor director, small-time criminal, watermelon farmer, college graduate... read more
The Baseball Project
I love baseball. I love all sports, and have been known to watch synchronized swimming and the Westminster Dog Show when there's nothing else on the tube, but I particularly love baseball. Every April I am imbued with renewed optimism as I contemplate the prospects of a world championship banner in Cleveland, Ohio. By July these hopes are dashed, cruelly, because the Indians suck. But I keep coming back, year after year, because baseball is the most human of all sports. It's slow. You can watch the grass grow between pitches. And you can watch that never-ending duel between pitcher... read more
Catching Up -- Bash and Pop, Black Francis, The Botticellis
I receive more music than I can listen to. Don’t hate me. I do the best I can. What that means is that I periodically go back and semi-sytematically check out what what I missed the first time. Today’s edition is brought to you by the letter B.I won't bother to tell you about all the crap I listened to briefly, and then disdainfully tossed aside. No sir, you get only the best, the cream of the crop, or, if you prefer, the Best of the B's, albeit belatedly.... read more
You're a Big Girl Now
I once took a class called "Sociology of Rock 'n Roll" at Ohio University. It met on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from 1:00 - 2:00, but the Friday afternoon session usually carried over to the Union Bar on Union Street, and sometimes we were still debating social mores and The Rolling Stones at midnight. It was the best class I ever took, although my parents probably viewed it as a waste of money. It wasn't.... read more
Jamey Johnson -- That Lonesome Song
Jamey Johnson looks like an escapee from The Hell's Angels, so you'd be forgiven if you expected some sort of death metal caterwaul to erupt from your stereo speakers.Instead, Johnson sounds like a good ol' boy from Montgomery, Alabama, which is what he is, and his second album, That Lonesome Song, recaptures everything that was great about those classic Merle Haggard and George Jones honky-tonk singles from the mid-to-late '60s. The pedal steel weeps, the lead guitar rumbles deep in the bass range, and Johnson unleashes one of those voices that is equal parts heavenly soul and red clay dirt.... read more
Quick Takes: Adele, The Ting Tings, Blind Pilot, The Gabe Dixon Band
Adele - 19 Members of the breathless British music press have hyped Adele as the next Amy Winehouse. She’s not. Where Winehouse traffics in updated Phil Spector and Motown, Adele takes her cues from Nina Simone and Dinah Washington. She’s an old-fashioned torch singer who is more beholden to blues and jazz than soul and rock ‘n roll. She’s also very good. The “19” of the title refers to Adele’s age, and there are some predictable problems in the songwriting. In the liner notes Adele states that she loves poetry; not to read it, you understand, but to write... read more
Adam Marsland
I don't know Adam Marsland's previous music, so I'm assuming that Daylight Kissing Night: Adam Marsland's Greatest Hits, the title of his latest album, is intended ironically. Marsland was the leader of L.A.'s Cockeyed Ghost, who reportedly recorded five good albums in the '90s. I wouldn't know. Labels imploded, distribution fell through, radio airplay was non-existent, etc. It's an old and all too familiar story. He then embarked on an under-the-radar solo career (including an intriguing album of Wilson covers -- Dennis and Carl only; no Brian), quit the biz, and has now re-recorded a batch of his old songs,... read more
Folkie Roundup -- Johnny Flynn, Bon Iver, Chris Knight, Drakkar Sauna
Some new folkie releases that have impressed me … Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit - A Larum English boarding school alum, former choirboy, and erstwhile Royal Shakespeare Company actor Johnny Flynn goes slumming on his debut album, adopting a Dickensian ragamuffin persona that is so engaging that you quickly forget that he’s never gone dumpster diving in his life. There are echoes of Trad stalwarts throughout - Martin Carthy and Mike Waterson in the singing, Bert Jansch in the supple guitar work - but Flynn is no retro iconoclast, and his biting social commentary owes more to... read more
War and Peace
I am slowly, very slowly, making my way through Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s a daunting task, one I’ve started before, but this time I’m determined to make it. Still, several factors make this difficult. First, the names. There are more than 500 characters in War and Peace, most of them bearing names like Anya Dmitriovronsky Putinsvetlanaskayaverarovich (who should not be confused with Anya Dmitriovronsky Rasputinsputnikskaya) and, well, the head hurts within a remarkably short period of time. ... read more
Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel
Former Mott the Hoople singer/songwriter Ian Hunter once released an album called You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic. It’s an aphorism that Will Johnson has taken to heart. Johnson is the leader of two bands, South San Gabriel and Centro-Matic. Although the bands are (mostly) comprised of the same members, they could not be more different. South San Gabriel plays sprawling, ruminative folk and alt-country; music dominated by acoustic guitars, cellos, and atmospheric pedal steel. Centro-Matic plays loud, distorted, lo-fi rock ‘n roll, a sort of Guided by Voices meets Modest Mouse mashup. And, just to keep things interesting,... read more
Iron Man
The appeal of superheroes and superhero movies basically escapes me. I never wanted to fly or leap tall buildings in a single bound. Belch and talk at the same time, sure, at least when I was 11. But I've honestly never given much thought to what the world might be like if I had superpowers. Hence I probably have little interest in watching guys in capes defeat nefarious criminals. In general, guys in capes scare me. I remember Genesis and Yes from the early '70s.... read more
Guilty Pleasures
We all have ‘em. Admit it. You do too. It’s not as big a problem with iPods, unless you happen to share your playlists with your friends. But with vinyl albums and CDs, they’re out there for all the world to see, displayed on the shelves. So if you’re like me, you do what any self-respecting music lover would do: you hide them behind various kitschy knickknacks and brick-a-brack that your wife purchased at vintage stores, and you hope that no one looks behind the lava lamp. Let’s just say that there are certain albums that push the Hopelessly Unhip... read more
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