Back in the late 1970s, when Walt Austin was a third grader at Gaines Elementary School in Athens, Georgia, he had the mistaken impression that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was written by the Bee Gees. After all, it was their version of the classic Beatles tune that was…
Argentina’s Eighties transition from military dictatorship to democracy was sung by an army of balladeer poets, postpunk nihilists, and pop pretty boys. The national-rock scene roared with optimism at government-sponsored festivals, and multinational labels opened subsidiaries to commercialize the abundant local talent. (The newly “discovered” scene had been happening on…
I am not a rock critic. Rock critics are a sorry lot. Too many frustrated musicians who use their platform to snipe at the luckier or more talented souls who have actually made it. Or glorified groupies willing to trade print blowjobs for the opportunity to hang with the band…
Perched on a stool center stage at the Stephen Talkhouse in February, John Hammond was busy conjuring up the ghosts of Robert Johnson and Son House from the hard-strummed strings of his acoustic guitar. And although his brilliant 1992 release Got Love If You Want It had earned the blues…
It was last summer and local band Lavalas was playing the Orange Blossom Lounge in Ft. Pierce, another booking in an obscure out-of-town venue they were told attracts a Haitian crowd. In a video of the concert you can see a few disinterested patrons of undetermined nationality standing around what…
When Pearl Jam performed in Miami a few weeks ago, fans had the opportunity to enjoy two spectacles A one outside the Bayfront Park Amphitheater, one inside. With the gates supposed to open at 7:00 p.m., but not opening until about an hour after that, some slight civil unrest was…
If, like his mother said, Kurt Cobain wanted to to join the “club” whose members include Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and other dead rock stars, at least he should have stuck around long enough to make a couple of decent albums. Pardon me if I’m less than impressed…
It is one of those just great time slots clubs bestow upon local bands: Sunday, midnight. It’s the end of the weekend and the rooms are desolate, a couple of disinterested pool players and one bored bartender. A few dedicated fans. And most likely, the band’s cut of the door…
Bean, Ben, and Prez. It’s almost a mantra for anyone who loves tenor sax (that is, tenor sax before ‘Trane, Newk, and ‘Nette bent the horn around new dimensions). Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young. The tenor trinity’s impact is so deeply felt it’s almost impossible to trace a player…
Ted Hawkins The Next Hundred Years (DGC) Every so often you hear a performer for the first time and the experience actually changes you. Such epiphanies are usually delivered by someone with an intensely personal vision, one that penetrates directly to your core, cuts you open and crawls inside there…
Elvis Costello sang about it. Not that he’s any expert. But hearing the sloppy guitar tangle, the talkin’-to-God vocal intro, the drum blast, and those words spilled out, a mental image grows: “There’s a girl in this address/There’s always a girl in distress/She’s just a shabby doll…she’s just a shabby…
“If there is a sound that says ‘Chicago Blues’ to the world,” Alligator Record’s founder Bruce Iglauer once said, “it’s the sound of a harmonica blown through a hand-held microphone blasting through an amplifier.” Urban, gritty, roaring like the El over Wabash, blues harp is alive and well in the…
Rock and roll is supposed to sound like Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Rock and roll was born to be wild, loud, angry, aggressive, cocky, horny, irrepressibly youthful. Listen to the frenetic gospel piano vamp at the beginning of “Jenny Take a Ride!” It sets the tone, building the…
William S. Burroughs, the godfather of slack, said that Truth lies in the number and the number is 23. He was referring, of course, to a system involving the magic of Chaos (five, or two plus three) and the arcana of ace conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson. But he left…
It must have been odd for middle-age black men like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson to suddenly find themselves revered by a bunch of scraggly, skinny, long-haired white boys with funny accents. Even the second generation of Chicago bluesmen A Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley A found that…
The good news is that Kenny Loggins is not reaping a financial bonanza from Schlock Jock Rock royalties. We know you were worried about that. Loggins, of course, was once the supremely untalented half of the duo Loggins and Messina who went on to find success in the Eighties as…
Transmitting from studios on Lincoln Road since October, the Spanish-language music network MTV Latino now reaches more than two million 12-to-34-year-old viewers in seventeen Latin American countries and another 500,000 in the U.S. Producers at the cable station are realizing that they must deal with a cultural obstacle to their…
After nine months of warehouse hibernation, they’re back in the local spotlight, finishing their first release as a signed South Florida band. It’s day ten at Gled Studios, and while the ink is still drying on their contract, the three original members, one newcomer, and former Saigon Kick drummer Phil…
Steve Ellis doesn’t seem to mind his day job as much as he resents the difficulties of finding the right musicians to work with. He will moan on at length about the trouble he’s had putting together a band and a sound he’s happy with, but you have to drag…
By Bob Weinberg Jazz and blues. Blues and jazz. These bastard sons of the same mother have become so intertwined they’re often taken for one another. Once was a time, not long ago, record sellers and radio charts made no distinction between the two. New Times puts blues and jazz…
Reverend Billy C. Wirtz Pianist Envy (HighTone Records) By Bob Weinberg The cover photo shows the tattooed Rev with his leopardskin-go-to-Hell boots plunking a Shroder-size toy piano while dreaming of a baby grand. Pianist Envy! Get it? (On a label called HighTone, yet.) All that’s just a taster of Wirtz’s…
In this great future you can’t forget your past So dry your tears, I say — Bob Marley This is not a story about Bob Marley. That story’s been done and done and done to death. We know Robert Nesta Marley died on May 11, 1981, in Cedars of Lebanon,…
