In the future, a jazz historian leafing through old files of playbills and press clips could easily determine that 1998 was the year of Cuban piano player Jesus “Chucho” Valdes. It seems that Jesus has indeed been everywhere of late: playing a solo concert at New York’s Lincoln Center; performing…
Counting Crows Across a Wire: Live in New York (Geffen) Since the initial release of their wildly successful debut August and Everything After nearly five years ago, Counting Crows has managed only one other studio effort. But 1996’s Recovering the Satellites justified the long wait, bringing a harder, more electric…
It’s a broiling 92-degree Miami day. Fish are sweating, but Grant Livingston isn’t. He’s leaning back in a white plastic chair, sipping from a vat of iced tea. Shielded from the searing sun by his Panama hat and the green-and-white-striped umbrella overhead that resembles the pattern of his short-sleeve shirt,…
You almost could have added the debut album by Miami-cum-Gainesville’s Fay Wray to the ever-growing list of legendary longplayers that have never seen the light of day. It’s hardly the worst list to be on, as the company includes the scrapped or squelched efforts by some formidable names: the Velvet…
Robbie Gennet’s piano melodies are disarming little devils. The creamy rhapsodies trickling from his keyboard sound so classically familiar, so refreshingly catchy. Those rich tones emanating from his Fender Rhodes electric piano reverberate with such comfort but feel so vibrant. At first encounter, Rudy, the quartet Gennet fronts with unmitigated…
Jazz is terminally ill. That most American of musical genres is in serious danger of dropping dead, struck down by an incurable condition known as apathy. No one cares about jazz any more. But you know what? Jazz has grown boring anyway. Just look at all these pompous artistes tooting…
The proposition was this: From the thousands of unpublished lyrics housed in the Woody Guthrie Archive in Manhattan, choose a batch of lyrics by this American icon and breathe musical life into them. Only a fool would bite. Well, English-born singer-songwriter Billy Bragg and Chicago’s Wilco accepted the invitation from…
Cowboy Junkies Miles from Our Home (Geffen) The seventh record by Canadian mood-music purveyors Cowboy Junkies trades folk-rock simplicity for a West Coast sound that evokes California’s particular brand of sun-drenched angst and broken souls. From the Doors-like spell of “Blue Guitar” (co-written with the late Townes Van Zandt) to…
Evolution, blues purists believe, is for the birds. What the creators of modern blues should do, they’ll tell you, is leave well enough alone. Forget about the marching hands of time. Forget about new branches of music. Forget about artistic individuality. At least that’s what blues-rock guitarist Joanna Connor hears…
Brian Wilson Imagination (Giant) After the 1966 release of the Beach Boys’ seminal Pet Sounds, anxiety and substance abuse contributed to a growing sense of inertia in Brian Wilson’s life. His struggle was further complicated by his relationship with a host of toxic personalities, from his dominant, perfectionist stage father…
Rarely has it been ultimately advantageous for a band to affiliate with a suddenly hip musical movement. Cool, maybe, sometimes even financially rewarding, but not exactly good for career longevity. Witness the abrupt demise of successful Eighties big-hair bands such as Warrant, Poison, and Mstley CrYe at the onset of…
Meredith Brooks is livid. After a good twelve months of touring and national TV appearances, and after selling more than a million copies of blurring the edges, her 1997 debut album, Brooks has once again been mistaken for a mere rhythm guitarist by a big, nationally distributed guitar magazine. “That’s…
Lenny Kravitz 5 (Virgin) Poor, poor, pitiful Lenny Kravitz. He has spent the better part of the past ten years — and five full-length albums — carefully crafting an artistic persona that, upon close examination, amounts essentially to little more than a cartoon character: the supersensitive, superfunky, supersonic, superstudly superstar…
Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa was the first band I saw after moving to Miami in the fall of 1995 to work for New Times as music editor. Fittingly, they were the last band I saw before leaving in June of 1997 to move back to my hometown of Memphis. I only…
“I sat in throw-up,” declared a sweaty, somewhat disgusted sixteen-year-old girl who preferred not to give her name. Along with a half-dozen similar girls — thin, wan, and dazed, yet still smiling — she waited patiently for a stall in the suffocatingly hot bathroom of the Coconut Grove Convention Center…
Nowhere in the owner’s manual that came with South Florida music promoter Chrystal Hartigan does it say, “She can’t do that.” If those words ever did appear, somebody must have torn out the page long ago. And it wouldn’t be wise for anyone to scribble it back in, either. It…
Jeff Buckley Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk (Columbia) Late singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley was a rarity in this cynical age, an artist who wasn’t too cool to be himself. He had a yearning, confessional style and an uncommon amount of humility and passion. The quavering vocals, bold musical colors, and…
Neil Finn Try Whistling This (Work) New Zealand singer/guitarist Neil Finn has probably forgotten more aching, beautiful melodies and winning musical hooks than most artists will ever write. Through his career as the angry young sparkplug of Split Enz, the gifted, conflicted leader of Crowded House, and the perpetual rival/bandmate…
Buddy Guy has been waiting, frustrated yet determined, since the days when record stores carried only vinyl. Waiting for the day he can switch on the radio and hear his voice — his guitar, too — on a mainstream, big-city station. Before midnight, preferably. That radio airplay has eluded the…
Ritchie Valens Come On, Let’s Go! (Del-Fi) Whether or not listeners understand the Spanish lyrics that follow, the five-second guitar intro that kicks off “La Bamba,” the signature tune of tragic Fifties rocker Ritchie Valens, seems to affect most people the same way. Valens’s joyous reworking of the 400-year-old Mexican…
Ani DiFranco is a singer, a songwriter, and a producer, but you’d hardly know it from most of the articles that are written about her. “Music?” she squeals in mock terror in response to a question about her primary vocation. “What’s that? Nobody ever asks me about music.” Part of…
Devil worshippers, they said. In their naive enthusiasm, the four Californian musicians were adamant about their devotion to that baddest of all bad boys. Maybe it was just a phase, but from Slayer’s earliest incarnation, its members wanted everyone to know that, when it came down to the horny guy,…
