meet The Spiders From Mars, Ziggy Stardust’s backing band. they were originally were called David Bowie & The Hype (only with later manager Tony Visconti on bass). when the Ziggy Stardust album came out, their name was changed to The Spiders From Mars. but, they played on all the tunes, helped craft the music, arranged …
Month: December 2015
I’ve been trying to get my hands on this album for decades, today is the day I’ve got it in my hands! Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames live at The Flamingo Club in September 1963 recorded by Glyn Johns. The music has been described as involving “distinctly sensuous body movements and even the most …
December 1979’s Concerts for Kampuchea, a fairly successful meeting between 70s classic rock in its final breaths and a crop of ‘new wave’ bands starting to hit commercial success. Plant was the only old dude to mix it up with a ‘contemporary’ band – although nobody thought about it at the time – Rockpile’s frontmen …
This early Saturday Night Live video (season 3) is astonishing too, and bizarre, and awesome — for a couple reasons. 1. John Belushi’s Samurai character. He did it in a number of contexts, I think some of the cultural context is lost now, or maybe it was never there and that was the point, an …
Wheaton College is a nondenominational evangelical Christian institution located in the Western suburbs of Chicago that maintains a special relationship with the Reverend Billy Graham (currently 97 years old). Wheaton operates the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, The Billy Graham Museum and Archives, and the Billy Graham Scholarship Program. According to a website called First …
The Revenant!!! Yes, there’s a lot of anguish and pain on screen, and I had questions about how they might have enriched the story more, but as filmmaking, it’s fantastic. Gripping, poetic, beautiful and utterly transporting… You will see things you haven’t seen before. Winter is coming, upper Missouri River 1823 (Montana, the Dakotas) and …
Jerry Douglas and Peter Rowan will be appearing at Portland’s Alberta Rose Theatre on New Year’s eve. Should be a great show. Jerry Douglas is the Bela Fleck of the dobro. This is high praise indeed. By this I mean he has taken the sound and performance capacity of the dobro to the highest levels …
Some old friends are making a great film about MALI, its music, and the culture of a special place in a difficult time. if you can throw them even a few bucks so they can finish it, that would be great. >>>>>>>>>> “Malian Pieces is a feature documentary and accompanying online series that follows musician …
These agile musicians get a great sound, an urgent beat, and the brass section busts some surprisingly nimble dance moves while playing a bass sax. Thanks to Daniel Housman for sending along this viral vid to me. 20 years ago Daniel and I saw Morphine, that excellent 90s sax-based band, at the Off Ramp in …
On Friday night December 18th I sacrificed seeing the new Star Wars on opening night to instead see Nick Lowe at Seattle’s Neptune Theater. The sacrifice was well worth it. Now white haired and bespectacled, Nick Lowe got on stage as a solo act for about the first two or three songs. Then the real …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQSYlBiGEE
I caught this on the local jazz station a few days ago. Called “Christmas Will Really Be Christmas,” this 1967 tune is an extraordinary Christmas meditation which deserves some reconsideration in 2015. As one friend described it, “Damn man, this really is a stone groove. Totally dig it.”
My one regret this season is to only have been able to put on the suit once… twice, if you count putting it on for my nephew, for this photo. A couple of years ago, a friend gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, buying a suit and asking me to play Santa for an …
After Sgt. Pepper, many of us Baby Boomers became so, uhhh, “sophisticated,” that we began sneering at many of the early British Invasion bands who served as our first introductions to rock ‘n’ roll. So many superb bands, including The Hollies and The Zombies and The Searchers, got shuffed off by us in our unwashed …
Rebecca Jade understands the pure, indomitable magic of fifties R&B. Profoundly aware of the ebb and flow of her sound as well as the soul-derived beauty of the art, “Weather The Storm” is the first single from her upcoming record, A Shade Of Jade due out in 2016.
Jerome, Jerome, Jerome Blazé. Is that bla-zay? Can’t be, unless you’re the master of some sort of Australian irony. On JB’s (if I may please take such license) title track “Lone Pine,” JB makes a winning case for his art and electronica. Reviewing music is a little bit like screening resumes. And I almost round-filed …
Frank Sinatra in 1968 singing Laura Nyro’s “Sweet Blindness” (from Eli and the Thirteenth Confession) dressed as the 6th member of the 5th Dimension – let’s go down by the grapevine, drink my daddy’s wine, get happy! – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975.
The other morning I had to take my car in, and instead of Uber-ing home from the garage, I decided to walk the couple miles back to Venice; it was a blustery morning, and I headed into a strong wind, with not a small amount of trash and dust kicked up in the air. I …
“Ava taught him how to sing a torch song. She taught him the hard way.” —Nelson Riddle The idea is that Frank Sinatra’s impossible, unresolvable romantic relationship with Ava Gardner—for whom he left his wife at a time (1950) when it simply wasn’t done; to whom he was married for a brief, tumultuous period (1951–53*); …
John Trudell, poet, activist for American Indian rights, dies at age 69 RIP John Trudell. I’ll never forget hearing him speak 20 years ago in a basement hall at the University of Washington, at a time when the case of Leonard Peltier was getting renewed attention (which did not result in his pardon), and Trudell …
Correatown’s new collection of wet, somehow magical little stones has been glistening in the dabbled sunlight of it’s musical dawn for a couple of weeks now. I stumbled across them just now. Let me show you some?! This one, “Longshot” (below), is for when you’re having trouble smiling. See its color? That’s dandelion. If you …
This is a recent conversation between two unquestioned experts on Sinatra, Pete Hamill, author of Why Sinatra Matters, and Jonathan Schwartz, the writer and radio host who coined the phrase “Chairman of the Board” in regard to Frank. A pleasant remembrance. http://92yondemand.org/pete-hamill-with-jonathan-schwartz – Chuck Strom
Unleashed from Los Angeles, ELECTRIC PARLOR creates honest, raw music with a live feel to it. Inspired by the past and the hard, loud lessons learned by the crazed, inspired, burning forefathers and foremothers of rock and roll, this conquering band and their wild woman lead singer Monique Alvarez seek to catalyze a new sound …
If anyone hasn’t heard by now about the fantastically good year Stephen Curry has had so far, this video will satisfy all curiosity. The sequence is very instructive, if only to show how many shots Curry makes in traffic, sometimes while being knocked to the floor. If there was ever a reason to unload your …
Listen to the song above and you can be certain these LA kids are on to something. They’re having fun and so are we. The product of top notch songwriting and interesting progressive elements, here is a glimpse into the hearts of some of LA’s most happening creators. http://www.facebook.com/mleoband
A couple of Spotify samplers for Sinatra anniversary week. The first recreates (almost) the singer’s last recording project, now out of print: Everything Happens to Me, a self-selected anthology of the songs that meant the most to him. No ring-a-ding-dings here; just the deepest ballads and most penetrating readings from his later years. In the …
In September 1998, shortly after Frank Sinatra’s passing, the jazz critic Francis Davis described Sinatra’s career in The Atlantic as a two-decade procession of taking songs off the market, meaning that once Frank had recorded them, his interpretations were immediately accepted as definitive and thereby discouraged other singers from recording them afterward. I thought of …
Meet conscious hip hop dynamo Sheik aka SK with his fresh single “The Breather”. Dubbing his unique style ‘New School Poetry,’ Sheik’s sound is a clusterfunk of afro punk, jazz, hip hop, soul and blues. “Music is better with no makeup on, people always relate to raw shit whether it’s a love song or a …
One of the more hilarious BBC clips I’ve ever seen, as The Faces thoroughly exploit the fact that TOP OF THE POPS used to insist on canned backing tracks, while ALSO insisting on live vocals (cf. several tracks from The Who’s ca. 2000 BBC cd compilation, which feature live Roger Daltrey vocals atop the familiar …