Asleep at The Wheel’s been rolling since 1974, but this is their first showdown with Willie. I’m happy to report that nobody gets drunk (that wasn’t drunk before), and nobody goes off the road. Willie nips ahead of a beat, ducks behind the next one, mock-stutters, loses himself in his own larynx and finds himself [...]
For those who tuned in late, Sly and the Family Stone released seven essential albums, from 1967’s A Whole New Thing to 1974’s Small Talk. Go out and get them. I’ll wait. The seven-strong, five-black/two white, five-male/two-female lineup hardly erased the Negro Problem, but it had a hell of a time, and a heaven too, [...]
To New York Senator Jacob Javits, trying to praise him, James Brown was “Jamie Brown.” To Boston mayor Kevin White, whom the singer introduced at Boston Garden that fateful night, James Brown was “James Washington” (mixed up, perhaps, with Walter Washington, first black Mayor-Commissioner of the nation’s capital) until “Brown” stuck in Mr. Mayor’s mind [...]
The crux of pianist Aaron Parks’ fifth album as a leader: time and tide. Time, in that even from the first notes of the “Travelers” leadoff cut, Parks puts meaningful lapses into a pattern suggesting sifting snowflakes. At medium tempos, brisk tempos, double-or-quadruple time keyboard runs, he effortlessly switches between staccato stand-alone tones and slurred [...]
Under normal circumstances I’d cite Mavis as rusty on pipes, and nevertheless imbuing more history, more life, into one knowing “heh!”, than the usual suspects (usually one-third her age) manage over chart-topping “statements.” Under normal circumstances, I’d point to guitarist Rick Holmstrom with his ever-appropriate throbbing, twanging swamp monster menace, as the musical lynchpin of [...]
Biggest All-Time (Rock/Pop, at Least) Music Rivalry Left Untouched: “Beatles vs. Stones,” maybe because too many readers would find the answer wrong no matter which author wrote which verdict. Finest Speaker of Truth: Richard Hell on “the Rolling Stones vs. the Velvet Underground,” where the irregular rock star and underrated scribe nails serious, subtle [...]
Banjomeister Bela trims the tree, pours out the eggnog, and lets anyone with the Christmas Spirit amble in to sit down by the fire. So when this intricate Yuletide set takes off with Tuvan throat-singers spinning their home-language take on “Jingle Bells,” well, if it sounds a bit weird, just tap your feet until your [...]
I spun Tyrant while reading Jerry Bledsoe’s Blood Games, a hurtfully true story of three boys, two with startlingly high IQs, who were caught in murder-for-profit. Death prose for a New Orleans death metal CD sounded reasonable and resonant enough for my mind. After cracking the Olde English-printed lyrics booklet, though (yes, death metal lyrics [...]
It seems redundant to take Trouble the Water’s message to New Orleans, the people who lived the movie’s story or a recognizable variation thereof during Hurricane Katrina, and to whom it’ll seem stale, soggy drowned-out news. The film’s awards at the Sundance and Full Frame Documentary film festivals assure that its message is spreading, though. [...]
Disc one, track six—“Shake”—second verse: “Ya shake it like a bowl a’ soup yeah / Ya let it go loopity-loop yeah.” Between the instructional of line one and the crisp but ecstatic release of the second, you get everything you absolutely need to know about Otis Redding. He gathers us together, gives unto us the [...]
