This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant
Richard Gehr | December 21, 2007
Singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg died of prostate cancer on Sunday at 56. "He was beautiful, an angel," Jackson Browne told Rolling Stone. "People either don't know it or don't remember it, but he had the highest harmonies. He sang above Don Henley and J.D. Souther. the ...My favorite song of his ['Same Old Lang Syne'] was about running into an old lover in a supermarket on New Years—I shouldn't admit it, but it made me cry. It encapsulated the passing of time and the revisiting of former hopes and dreams. He was a really emotional songwriter and a beautiful singer." Fogelberg croons "Leader of the Band" here.
Beatles cover band the Beatnix perform "Stairway to Heaven" as a ridiculously clever mashup with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Twist and Shout" in this early-'90s clip from the Australian TV show, "The Money or the Gun."
From September 24 to December 13, 2008, Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic celebrate the legacy of composer-conductor Leonard Benstein with "Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds." The Mahler lover's three symphonies, as well as his jazzier music for theater and dance, will be heard during 30 events featuring performances by New York, San Francisco, Baltimore, Israel, and Juilliard symphony orchestras and philharmonics.
The Latin Jazz Corner marks the Dec. 4 passing of Carlos "Patato" Valdez with a look at five essential albums by the famed Cuban congo drummer. Hint: Check out "Patato & Totico," an old-school rumba masterpiece.
The influential jazz-rock fusion group Return to Forever—with Chick Corea (keyboards), Stanley Clarke (bass), Al Di Meola (guitar), and Lenny White (drums)—reforms next summer for 40 to 50 dates.
Richard Gehr | December 13, 2007
By literally all accounts, Led Zeppelin put on a nice little old-fashioned rock 'n' roll extravaganza during Monday night's Ahmet Ertegun tribute in London's 02 arena. As David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone: "It is also important to note that Zeppelin left the building without making any reference to their future together, if there is one—no 'See you next year!' or 'Until next time . . .' The only message they left behind was, 'We were the best—and still are.'"
And no, the Zep won't be playing the June 12-15, 2008, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., as had been rumored. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will be there, however.
Sonny Cole's "Santa to the Moon," the Barnstompers' "Christmas Boogie," and Red Simpson's "The Old Christmas Truck" are just a few recent additions to MP3 blog Big Rock Candy Mountain's month-long festival of vintage seasonal rock, country, and hillbilly music. [via An Aquarium Drunkard]
Cultural exchange—it's back! Following a tour of China, the New York Philharmonic will perform in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 26.
Billy Joel neither sings nor plays piano on "Christmas in Fallujah," a new single inspired by soldiers' letters from Iraq. Cass Dillon, 21, sings on this caustic echo of Joel's earlier "Goodnight Saigon." Available on iTunes, the single benefits Home for Our Troops, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing specially adapted homes for severely injured service members.
Recorded on a wire recorder, "The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949" is the first live show by the legendary folksinger ever to turn up. Even Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie, had never heard his father perform. "It's not only that I hadn't heard him live," he told the Associated Press, "I hadn't heard many stories about him live." The 75-minute show consisted of two wire spools recorded by a Rutgers College student in Newark, N.J.
Richard Gehr | December 04, 2007
Broadway celebrated the end of the stagehands' strike on Friday with what sounds like a heckuva free show at the Marquis Theater. According to Playbill, "Broadway's Back!" opened with the Man in Chair from "The Drowsy Chaperone" discovering Bernadette Peters in his onstage refrigerator. And then:
Peters sat Martin back in his chair as she belted out 'There's No Business Like Show Business' from 'Annie Get Your Gun' (Peters performed that show on the Marquis stage a few years back). The fridge opened again, and (almost) all of Broadway poured forth, including cast members from 'A Chorus Line,' 'Rock 'n' Roll,' 'Spamalot,' 'Young Frankenstein,' 'Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas,' 'Chicago,' 'Jersey Boys,' 'Hairspray,' 'The Phantom of the Opera,' 'Avenue Q,' 'Rent,' 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,' 'Mamma Mia!,' 'The Seafarer,' 'Xanadu, Grease,' 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' 'Spring Awakening,' 'Les Misérables,' 'Legally Blonde' and 'Wicked.'
[via Blogway Baby]
Glen Campbell tells a joke or two in an interview ostensibly about "Good Times Again," a new DVD collection of highlights from his 1969-72 TV show, "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour."
Fearing that rock music is "an endangered species," "Sopranos" actor and E Street band member "Little Steven" Van Zandt has launched Little Steven's Rock and Roll High School. Van Zandt, founder of the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, developed the curriculum with the help of MENC: The National Association for Music Education.
Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman discusses "Don't Look Back," "No Direction Home," "Renaldo and Clara," "The Other Side of the Mirror," and other movies by and about Bob Dylan that are reflected (and refracted) in "the movie of the year," Todd Haynes's "I'm Not There." Of the recent flood of Dylan movies and releases, Hoberman writes: "Bob Dylan may not be one to ever look back, but his past has never been more present. 'I'm Not There' is part of the larger, ongoing Dylan revival brilliantly orchestrated by his manager, Jeff Rosen."
More than 1,000 issues and 115,000 pages of Rolling Stone magazine are collected on "Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years," consisting of three DVDs and an accompanying book.
[via Boing Boing]
Richard Gehr | November 26, 2007
How do you get to Wall Street? According to Harris Research, 83 percent of people who earn more than $150,000 a year studied music in school, as did 88 percent of people with postgraduate degrees.
Bruce Springsteen announces U.S. tour dates, beginning Feb. 28, 2008, in Hartford, Conn., for what should extend into a typically epic global trek.
The Metropolitan Opera and Rhapsody are rolling out operas on demand. The recordings range from a 1937 "Carmen" to a 2000 "Don Pasquale" and include performances by the likes of Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, and Luciano Pavarotti.
Neil Diamond took an awfully long time to spill the beans about Caroline Kennedy inspiring his biggest hit, "Sweet Caroline."
Pianist Herbie Hancock didn't come up with the idea of recording an album of Joni Mitchell songs ("Shine"), he tells All About Jazz, but he ran with it anyway.
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival returns to its seven-day pre-Katrina schedule next year, from April 25 to May 4. The Neville Brothers, Tim McGraw, and Maze have already been booked.
Richard Gehr | November 15, 2007
Wynonna Judd's holiday tour begins Nov. 24 in Melbourne, Fla., and concludes Dec. 18 in Ashland, Ky. Before hitting the road, Judd will tape a "Tribute on Ice" TV special in Chicago on Nov. 20 with her mother, Naomi Judd, and skaters Brian Boitano, Kimmie Meissner, Evan Lysacek, and others. "Tribute on Ice" will air Dec. 23 on NBC. Wynonna will also perform at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Nov. 22 (check local listings).
Next year, the Judds will also make a rare headlining appearance at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival. Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts, Big & Rich, and Carrie Underwood are also confirmed for the May 3-4 shindig in Indio, Calif.
Classical Singer magazine offers free access to its archives through the end of the year to anyone who opens an account (minimal personal info required). This month's issue contains a feature on all-American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and reveals what really happens when mezzos play boys. [via Opera Chic]
Relive the excessive days of classic rock excess with photographer Ethan Russell's "Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones 1969 U.S. Tour." Russell was onboard the Stones tour that crisscrossed the United States and ended up in front of the 400,000 mixed-up souls at Altamont Speedway. "Let It Bleed" is a 420-page limited edition of 2600 signed and numbered copies that cost $650 (plus shipping). Deluxe copies, 750 of them at $950 each (plus shipping), are wrapped in red Japanese t-saifu fabric, befitting rock indulgence.
Let blues guitarist Buddy Guy take you by the ears and lead you through the "The History of Chicago Blues," via this free podcast. You can enjoy Guy's tour through the personalities, recordings, and nightclubs that define Chicago blues, either virtually or in the field.
Richard Gehr | November 08, 2007
Pianist Keith Jarrett, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, pianist Pierre-Laurent Almard, singer Diana Krall, and cellist Yo Yo Ma have all delivered revealing musical moments in National Public Radio studios across the country. All these, and a whole lot more, have been collected on the network's spiffy new NPR Music.
Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, minus drummer Ginger Baker, will reunite for something resembling their short-lived group Blind Faith for three nights, Feb. 25, 26 and 28, at Madison Square Garden. Enjoy "Presence of the Lord" and most of the rest of Blind Faith's semi-famous 1969 show in London's Hyde Park here.
For better or for worse, Garth Brooks (123 million units) has unseated Elvis Presley (118.5 million units) to become history's biggest-selling solo artist. The Beatles (170 million units), however, still reign supreme.
A study out of Tehran's Alzahra University suggests that classical music may alleviate depression. Fifty-six depressed subjects who listened to Beethoven piano sonatas twice a week saw their Beck Depression Scale scores diminish significantly.
In his roundup of recent rock memoirs, James Marcus observes that the '60s may never have ended for classic rockers, "those woolly mammoths who continue to roam the Earth, practically flaunting their pickled livers and capped teeth. For them, the gaudy decade has gone on and on, like a kind of prolonged childhood."
Richard Gehr | November 02, 2007
Dashing actor-singer Robert Goulet died Tuesday of interstitial pulmonary fibrosis at age 73. Goulet's career peaked with his famous 1960 "Camelot" performance, slumped during a middle-aged malaise marked by revival tours and Las Vegas stints, and then recuperated during the '90s with voiceover performances and commercial work. This 1967 performance of "Soliloquy" from "Carousel" makes a fine souvenir.
On Nov. 5, you can become a "Wholigan." Fans of the Who who pony up $50 per year will have access to unreleased tracks, concert footage, and fan-only releases by the British rock group, (currently reduced to the remaining original members, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey) via TheWho.com. Members will receive a free copy of "View From a Backstage Pass," a double-CD album of live performances from 1969-1976. The rest of us will have to wait an entire day to purchase "Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who" on DVD.
Read the story behind the phenomenal rise of 26-year-old Argentine conductor Gustavo Dudamel, "the most talked-about young musician in the world."
Listen to Jefferson Airplane's final show with original (pre-Grace Slick) singer Signe Anderson (recorded Oct. 15, 1966, at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium) at Wolfgang's Concert Vault. Also check out hot new streams of shows by Canned Heat, David Bowie, Bo Diddley, and Flo & Eddie while you're there.
Grand Ole Opry star Porter Wagoner died Sunday of lung cancer at age 80. Known for his pompadour, rhinestone suits, artistic partnership with Dolly Parton, and last year's excellent album, "Wagonmaster," the singer known as the Thin Man From West Plains performed his final show as an opening act for rock duo White Stripes at Madison Square Garden in July. Boogie Woogie Flu pays musical tribute.
Richard Gehr | October 24, 2007
Teresa Brewer, whom Ed Sullivan once introduced as "the little girl with the big voice," died of a neuromuscular disease Wednesday at age 76. Brewer began her career as a country-tinged singer of novelty tunes, such as "Choo'n Gum" and "Molasses, Molasses," before developing into a respected jazz stylist. Watch her perform "Ricochet" on "The George Jessel Show," circa 1953.
Folksinger Fred Neil knocked out "Everybody's Talkin'," for the movie "Midnight Cowboy," in about five minutes at the end of a 1966 recording session. He then recorded it in a single take so he could zip home to Miami. More than a hundred other musicians subsequently covered "Talkin'," and Boogie Woogie Flu posts eight of the best versions here.
The conceit of director Todd Haynes's upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There," is that six different actors—Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Cate Blanchett among them—portray the artist at different points in his career. Another diverse array of impostors performs Dylan's music within the film, and some of them—including Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, My Morning Jacket, John Doe, Michelle Shocked, Dan Hicks, Al Kooper, and Joe Henry—will play Dylan again at a Nov. 7 concert at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre to benefit the nonprofit organizations 826 National and 826 Valencia.
Dwight Yoakam: "It was a relationship that was complicated and convoluted, which is my nature and Buck's. It was part friend, part sibling, and part parent. At various times it was hard to tell who was being the parent and who was being the child—most cases it was me the child and him the parent." Yoakam discusses his friendship with the late Buck Owens, and his new album, "Dwight Sings Buck."
Small, inexpensive, and easy to pick up, the ukulele is making a strong comeback as a starter instrument.
French actresses/singers Jane Birkin, Francoise Hardy, and Charlotte Gainsbourg talk to Vanity Fair about the main Frenchman in their respective lives, the "debauched, irreverent, misanthropic, crude, dissolute, provocateur, genius, alcoholic" singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.
Richard Gehr | October 17, 2007
The "lost" Duke Ellington album "A Morning in Paris," featuring the wonderful South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, is newly available for download via iTunes. Read the convoluted tale of the 1963 recording's disappearance and its 1996 rediscovery while listening to her gospel-tinged take on "Loveless Love/Careless Love" (available here). The album will also be available at Benjamin's performance at Manhattan's Sweet Rhythm tonight.
Watch The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini's nifty video tutorial about Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone music. It's a terrific accompaniment to his Sunday article about "arguably the most audacious and influential development in 20th-century music."
"I had gotten to hate music....I didn't listen to the radio...for my own pleasure or put records on. I couldn't remember what I ever liked about it." Joni Mitchell confesses to losing her faith in music prior to recapturing her muse on "Shine."
Glenn Frey talks to Billboard magazine about "Eden," the first Eagles album since 1979. "Eden" is due out October 30 (but only at Wal-Mart).
Billboard: Disc 1 kind of re-introduces the band and then Disc 2 has these massive powerhouse cuts that really take you on a journey. When you hear the whole thing at once, you really get that effect that it's a cohesive work.
Frey: Thank you for being an astute listener. I spent two days sequencing the record, and like you said I wanted to reintroduce everyone to the Eagles right away. Therefore, we put some of what I would call typical or classic Eagle's (sic) material right out of the box. And then slowly as the album plays along, we sort of get into some of the meatier lyrics. I felt that was the way we wanted to go. I didn't think you could come right out and have "Long Road Out of Eden" and "Frail Grasp" be the first songs on the record.
John Fogerty describes the changing audience reaction to his 2004 antiwar song "Deja Vu": "[B]ack in 2004 when I first started doing 'Deja Vu,' depending on which part of the country (sic), there would be perhaps a very loud bunch of boos and disagreement with what I had said. Even though what I said was not a challenging statement, they would voice their disapproval rather loudly. As time has passed, certainly this past summer, it was basically gone. It had gone the other way to where people stand up now and are very, very quiet during 'Deja Vu.'"
Cream became a "con" according to the author of "Clapton: The Autobiography."
Richard Gehr | October 09, 2007
CMT.com asked Merle Haggard to comment on the state of mainstream country music: "'Perfect' is a good word. Perfect, always perfect. Nobody's gonna take a breath. You're not gonna hear breathing on it. Used to, you could hear Elvis breathe. You knew he was a man. But nowadays, it seems like everything is digitally perfect—boringly perfect." The Hag answers 19 other questions here.
El Cantante stars Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony proved themselves the Faith Hill and Tim McGraw of Latin pop during their Sunday-night show at Madison Square Garden.
Brian Wilson will sing "God Only Knows" with the English National Ballet at the Intercontinental London hotel in London (natch) on Nov. 11.
If you're into Garth Brooks and live in the Greater Kansas City, Mo., area, you may be in luck. Brooks's scheduled Nov. 14 date has expanded into nine shows between Nov. 5 and 14, with nearly 160,000 tickets sold in less than two hours on Saturday. The country star will also release The Ultimate Garth Brooks, a three-CD box set, on his own Pearl label Nov. 6.
Boogie Woogie Flu posts a bunch of MP3s to make you think.
Road Trips: Aimee Mann's second annual Christmas Show tour begins Nov. 29 in Solana Beach, Calif., and wraps up with a two-night stand Nov. 17-18 in Alexandria, Va....John Mellencamp's tour, which continues Oct. 26 in Terre Haute, Ind., has been extended to Dec. 15 in Atlantic City, N.J....Brad Paisley's extensive Bonfires and Amplifiers tour continues Thursday in Virginia Beach, Va., and burns out Feb. 22 in Peoria, Ill.
Richard Gehr | October 04, 2007
Martin Scorsese will direct a documentary about the life of George Harrison, a cool choice considering Harrison's involvement in the film world as producer of such movies as Monty Python's Life of Brian and Time Bandits. Scorsese, of course, has previously directed the music docs No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and The Last Waltz, which chronicled the final shows at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Ballroom. Shine a Light, Scorsese's film focusing on last year's Rolling Stones tour, is in a pre-release holding pattern.
Meanwhile, Peter Bogdanovich's Runnin' Down A Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will debut this month at the New York Film Festival. Bogdanovich is best known for directing The Last Picture Show and for his role as therapist Jennifer Melfi's own shrink in "The Sopranos."
Faith Hill discusses her video for "The Kiss," pregnancy, exhaustion, and airbrushed cover photos with CMT.com.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's latest US tour opened in Hartford, Connecticut, Tuesday night.
Starbucks' Hear Music will release a deluxe edition of Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full on November 6. The album's extra shots will include three unreleased tracks and a live DVD.
Graham Nash, sixty-five, will pack exactly that number of tracks into a boxed set titled Reflection, due in February. It will include music by the Hollies; Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young; Nash's longtime duo act with Crosby; Nash and Young together; and Nash's solo work.
Road Trips: Hall & Oates will bring comfort and joy to the northeast during a holiday tour featuring songs from last year's Home for Christmas. Their tour begins November 30 in Chicago and wraps up December 17 in Philadelphia....Elton John's US tour continues tomorrow in Columbia, Missouri, and will conclude in Estero, Florida, on November 11.
Richard Gehr | September 26, 2007
Amazon's new MP3 download service, transparently called Amazon MP3, opened for business yesterday. I celebrated by dl'ing (as they say) Pierre Boulez and Der Bayerischen Rundfunk's version of Olivier Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques. You need to download an application, but the installation process is quick and painless. At $.089, this lovely thirteen-minute piece costs a dime less than at competitor iTunes. Most new albums cost $8.99 or $9.99, with a suprisingly large number available for $7.99 and less. Following subscription service eMusic's lead (disclosure: I write eMusic's international column), Amazon MP3s blessedly lack Apple's infamous DRM (digital rights management) limitations, i.e. I can copy it to as many devices as I want rather than the five "authorized" devices Apple allows. Amazon boasts 2.5 million tracks in its store, while iTunes has 6 million and eMusic more than 2 million. Unlike iTunes, Amazon does not yet sell the catalogs of the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG but that could always change depending on profits. Bottom Amazon MP3 line: so far so good.
Bruce Springsteen played an Asbury Park benefit dress rehearsal for his upcoming tour with the E Street Band on Monday and Tuesday. He premiered seven new songs from his upcoming album Magic.
Under pressure from his three-year-old daughter Beatrice, Paul McCartney may write the songs and score for the fourth Shrek film.
James Taylor's One Man Band, a CD and DVD documenting a couple of summer performances, will be released in November. The one-man-band himself begins a month-long tour with a benefit show October 20 in Richmond, Virginia. His tour ends November 16 in Reno, Nevada.
Richard Gehr | September 20, 2007
Emmylou Harris has nice things to say about Neil Young in a CMT.com interview focusing on her new box set, Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems: "You've got the great giants like Neil Young who couldn't care less about how many records he's sold, but he's had such incredible success that he's been given carte blanche to do whatever he wants. I don't believe he takes that lightly, but he waits until he has a real idea, and he's truly inspired, before he goes in. He's kind of my hero."
And speaking of Neil Young, anyone purchasing tickets to his tour that begins October 18 in Boise, Idaho, through Ticketmaster will receive a free digital copy of his upcoming Chrome Dreams II via Warner Brothers Records' online store.
An unusual lineup including Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Garth Brooks performed a "Dream Concert" at Radio City Music Hall last night to help raise money for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation.
CMT will obsessively air Carrie Underwood's new "So Small" video for six straight hours today between 6 a.m. and noon (EDT). Or you could catch it once or twice on iTunes beginning later in the day.
Opera Chic was at Sunday's "Tribute to Beverly Sills" at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House. Enjoy her detailed report and extensive fashion commentary: "Among ten speakers and a handful of performances, Sunday night's tribute brought both laughter and tears. Lots of visible young MET singers filled seats, with a packed house and a supremely mixed crowd from casual dress to formal."
Richard Gehr | September 14, 2007
Soul singer Bobby Byrd, seventy-three, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Loganville, Georgia. As James Brown's singing sidekick in the Famous Flames, Byrd is best known for the repeated phrase "get on up" in the funk masterpiece "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," which was subsequently sampled by countless hip-hop producers. Byrd was a remarkable soloist as well, as demonstrated by this 1968 performance of "Soul Man."
The Hatto Hoax, wherein many other pianists' recordings were released under the name of pianist Joyce Hatto on her husband William Barrington-Coupe's record label, is recounted in vivid detail by Mark Singer in The New Yorker:
[Barrington-Coupe] had not merely pinched or polished a few, mostly marginal, recordings. With his collection of more than a hundred Joyce Hatto CDs, Barry had created the most diversely prolific and gifted pianist to emerge in decades, with a corresponding narrative that aroused the esteem and good will of music lovers around the world. Since early in his checkered career, he had deftly manipulated musical identities. What he confected on his wife's behalf, in her twilight, was vastly more audacious than anything he had pulled off during his "super-bargain" years. The alchemy that transformed Joyce Hatto into "Joyce Hatto" was, in its twisted way, a tour de force, a dazzling work of art, literally the performance of a lifetime.
Neil Young, Metallica, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Vedder, John Mayer, Regina Spektor, and Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet will perform at the twenty-first annual Bridge School benefit concerts to be held October 27 and 28 at Mountain View, California's Shoreline Amphitheatre. The Bridge School helps kids in need of "augmentative and alternative communication" to replace speech. It was co-founded by Young's wife, Pegi, in 1986.
Mamas aren't necessarily smartening up their babies by forcing them to listen to classical music. "I would simply say that there is no compelling evidence that children who listen to classical music are going to have any improvement in cognitive abilities," says psychologist Frances Rauscher, who introduced the so-called "Mozart Effect" in 1993.
Yoko Ono unveils the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 9, John Lennon's birthday. According to Ono's statement, "In 1967 Lennon predicted that the conceptual light tower would one day become a reality."
Richard Gehr | September 07, 2007
Brian Wilson talks about The Lucky Old Sun (a Narrative), which premieres Monday at London's Royal Festival Hall:
"Something just got into me. I wrote 18 songs last summer. When it rains it pours and I put my buckets out and caught everything I could. You want song titles? Well, one's called 'Mexican Girl' and one's called 'Oxygen to the Brain'. One's called 'California Roll' and another one's called 'The Good Kind of Love'. It's crazy lyrics and crazy narration, just little stories about my day. You remember Smile? When you hear the new song cycle it's a teeny bit like that."
The fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love drew to its inevitable wistful conclusion Sunday in San Francisco with a free concert for 40,000 fans in Golden Gate Park. Scheduled performers included various incarnations of Moby Grape, Taj Mahal, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Canned Heat, Dan Hicks and Hot Licks, and the Charlatans.
Hello. That's the theme of the first show of the second season of DJ Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour," which begins September 19 at 10 p.m. on XM satellite radio's Deep Tracks channel. Expect John Prine's "Hello in There," the Mardi Gras Loungers' "Hello, Mello Baby," and other swinging salutations.
Know what's the "little special touch" that makes Paul McCartney's mashed potatoes so fab? Chopped onion.
Jazz/r&b/pop stars D'Angelo, Corinne Bailey Rae, Anthony Hamilton, and "possibly Justin Timberlake" will lend their youthful vigor to Al Green's next album, due in the spring. Hip-hop drummer ?uestlove, of the Roots, will produce.
Richard Gehr | September 05, 2007
Fingers crossed, but I wouldn't expect a lot of—well, make that any—onstage duetting between Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello when they play twenty-two shows together (with Amos Lee) from September 22 in Duluth, Georgia, to October 26 in Omaha, Nebraska (and more dates could conceivably be added). The tour marks Costello's first solo outing in twelve years.
Sir Paul McCartney will be Nic Harcourt's guest on "Morning Becomes Eclectic" tomorrow. If you've never listened to Harcourt's show before, this would be an excellent opportunity to make the acquaintance of a thoughtful DJ who plays grownup music recorded by artists of all ages. The show celebrated its thirtieth birthday yesterday. And you can listen online, of course.
Only one in ten thousand people has perfect pitch. And the reason it exists at all may lie in a single gene along with early musical training. Perfect pitch also tends to deteriorate with age, alas.
Sirius Satellite Radio launches its commercial-free Grateful Dead channel on Friday with a promising 1974 Hollywood Bowl. Guitarist Bob Weir will host a special show afterward.
The Latin Jazz Corner collects some seriously great footage of Cuba's Irakere, which combined hot jazz with rhythms reflecting Cuba's African roots.
Richard Gehr | August 27, 2007
Yoko Ono didn't break up the Beatles; the death of manager Brian Epstein did. As responsible for the group's success as at least two of its members, Epstein overdosed on barbituates in August 1967, two months after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. After seeing the Beatles in Hamburg's Cavern in 1961, Epstein signed them, cleaned them up, and made history. Without Epstein at the helm, the Beatles made business decisions that ultimately tore them asunder. But things could have gone very differently without his attention, according to Glenn Frankel in The Washington Post.
"As far as I'm concerned, Brian Epstein was the man who destroyed Mersey Beat," [says former Liverpool bandleader Ted Taylor]. "He made London groups out of Liverpool bands. When you see the Beatles, their first TV appearance, all dressed up like tailors, well that wasn't Liverpool." Others were more sympathetic. "The whole of British popular culture at the time was controlled by people more than a generation older than us," says Bill Harry. "And, quite frankly, the Beatles as they were, the black leather and rough look, would never have made it in Britain. What he was doing was processing them and making them conform to the establishment." John, the self-styled rebel, performed with the top button of his dress shirt unfastened and his tie loosened as a protest.
The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool notes the anniversary of Epstein's death with an exhibition.
New Orleans musicians hit the streets yesterday in a silent "Solidarity March" for more money, respect, and support from clubowners and city government. According the to the president of the local musicians union: "Our musicians are suffering. We hate to come out here and beg, but we have no alternative at this point."
On October 16, Neil Young will release Chrome Dreams II, which contains three songs from Chrome Dreams, an album he began some thirty years ago but never released. He performs a live version of one of the three long original tracks, "Ordinary People" ("Ordinary people/ They're gonna bring the good things back./ Nose-to-the stone people/ Put the business back on track") in 1988 with his Bluenotes band here.
New York's Metropolitan Opera hosts a tribute to the late Beverly Sills on October 16. Singers Natalie Dessay, Anna Netrebko, and Nathan Gunn are scheduled to perform. Tickets will be distributed free beginning at 5 p.m. the day of the show. It will also be broadcast live on Sirius radio and streamed via Real Networks.
Richard Gehr | August 21, 2007
"Gypsy Biker," "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," "I'll Work for Your Love," "Long Walk Home," "Devil's Arcade"—hmm, sounds like a new Bruce Springsteen album. Magic, Springsteen's first album with the E Street Band since 2002's The Rising, arrives October 2. Until then, Springsteen pops up on wife Patty Scialfa's solo album, Play It As It Lays, due September 24, and duets with old-school folkie Pete Seeger on upcoming anthologies Feels Like Home and Sowing the Seeds: The 10th Anniversary. And rumors of the inevitable epic tour begin here.
Tony Bennett stepped up and delivered at Los Angeles's Greek Theater last week says this review.
Doping in the opera world? Uh-oh. The physical and emotional demands of singing Wagner flawlessly are compelling performers to consume both performance-enhancing as well as anxiety-reducing drugs, according to England's Observer:
Endrik Wottrich, a popular fixture at the annual Bayreuth festival in Germany, has revealed opera singers are turning to drugs and other stimulants to cope with the pressure from the increasing commercial demands on them. 'No one talks about it, but doping has long been the norm in the music world,' he said in an interview with music critic Axel Bruggemann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 'Soloists are taking betablockers in an attempt to control their angst, some tenors take cortisone to ensure their voices reach a high pitch, and alcohol is standard practice.'
[via Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog]
When Igor met Coco: Jessica Duchen also points to a London Times interview with actor Marina Hands, who will play Chanel in Coco & Igor, a biopic about designer Coco Chanel's patronage of composer Igor Stravinsky to be directed by William "The Exorcist" Friedkin.
The great mandolin and fiddle player Sam Bush talks to CMT about his old band New Grass Revival and his new DVD On the Road. "You might as well call it I'm Schizophrenic—and So Am I," says Bush.
Richard Gehr | August 13, 2007
Exceptionally cool actor Michael Caine, 73, will release Cained, a compilation of some of his favorite "chill-out" tracks, in Britain on September 3:
"I've loved this type of music for years and have literally hundreds of CDs," Caine said of the mellow, generally slow-tempo genre. "I've been buying them for about 15 years and really know my way around."
Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett has been banned from Umbria's jazz festival for taking cellphone photographers to task in rather salty language (consider this an advisory). His message, in short: turn off the cameras now or we're leaving town. It was all captured on YouTube, too. [via Idolator]
Don't hold your breath for Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light. Its release has been delayed to sometime in 2008.
CMT editor-in-chief Chet Flippo touts female country singers Ashton Shepherd ("stands to become a major new country artist"), Sonya Isaacs ("a truly gorgeous vocalist), Suzy Bogguss ("one of the best singers Nashville has ever produced"), and Jackie Bristow ("totally occupied my car's CD player for the past week or so ") unto thee.
Video footage of the recording of John and Yoko's "Give Peace a Chance" (recorded on the final day of their week-long 1969 "bed-in," with backing vocals by Petula Clark, Timothy Leary, and Tommy Smothers) will be released for the first time August 28 on DVD in Britain.
Do we hear digital music differently than we hear analog sounds? Do our brains, forming fewer neural connections due to compression, actually need to work harder to process digital music? Should you maybe not have given away your turntable? The San Francisco Chronicle's Joel Selvin offers a pretty good introduction to the world of digital sound and neuroscience. [via Idolator]
Richard Gehr | August 06, 2007
Lee Hazelwood, who wrote "These Boots Were Made for Walking," "Sugartown," and "Some Velvet Morning" among other shadowy country hits recorded by the likes of Nancy Sinatra and Kris Kristofferson, died of cancer Saturday at seventy-eight. Hazelwood released his swan song, Cake or Death, earlier this year.
As tourism declines and venues close, New Orleans musicians are just getting by with the help of cooperative music offices sponsored by the legendary club Tipitina's and other local institutions. Meanwhile, a community of musicians grows in New Orleans. Initiated by Ellis Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., Musicians Village will consist of seventy single-family residences in the ravaged Ninth Ward with the Ellis Marsalis Music Center as its virtual town square.
Neil Young will "create" a comic book—I mean graphic novel—based on his 2003 album, movie, stage production, and website Greendale for DC Comics' less-superheroic Vertigo imprint.
Madrid, according to The New York Times, has become a kind of neutral zone where both pro- and anti-Castro musicians can create together minus the polarizing political confrontations common in other parts of the world. These even include relatives such as eighty-eight-year-old jazz pianist Bebo Valdés, who fled Cuba in 1960, and his jazz pianist son, Chucho Valdés, 65, who maintains a home in Havana.
Life should be a lot more like music, said philosopher Alan Watts, a point illustrated with uncustomary gentleness by the South Park guys here.
Richard Gehr | July 27, 2007
Joni Mitchell will release her next album, Shine, on Starbucks' Hear Music label on September 25. Unhappy with the handling of 2002's Travelogue, the painter-songwriter had been threatening to leave the music business altogether. But Hear Music's success with Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full seems to have changed her mind. Titling the album the same as this flop, however, may not have been the wisest decision.
Several radio stations are webcasting this year's Bayreuth Festival, which kicked off yesterday with a new production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger.
[via Sounds & Fury and The Rest Is Noise]
Jimmy Page will tour with a version of the Yardbirds this fall. But not Jeff Beck.
A trio of singing contortionists' nineteen-fortysomething tribute to potato salad is one of the stranger yet somehow most endearing musical clips ever YouTubed. [via Boing Boing]
American composer William Duckworth is writing what he calls an "iPod opera," based on the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. iOrpheus will be presented in Brisbane, Australia's Southbank Parklands late next month. The work will use PitchWeb software to transform cell phones into virtual musical instruments alongside traditional instruments. "We're just trying to get it all back to where people aren't afraid to participate," Duckworth told ABC News, "so we've created instruments where you can't really make a mistake, but you can tell the difference between when someone's doing a good job and an okay job."
Wondering what the difference between Latin jazz and salsa is? The Latin Jazz Corner explains it all for you. Here's a sample:
Both Salsa and Latin Jazz share common roots in Caribbean dance rhythms, but the two traditions diverge in their musical function. Salsa prioritizes the dancer and musicians perform dance floor-ready consistent creations. Salsa exists within the popular realm, so musicians aim recordings at commercial consumption. Although Latin Jazz contains danceable qualities as well, musicians create it as a means of expression. Latin Jazz artists want to sell records too, but new releases serve as snapshots of their current artistic development. The two styles serve different functions and the intention behind their creation follows divergent paths.
The Microscopic Septet, a great New York jazz group that blissfully blurred the distinction between "outside" and "inside" music for a dozen years before calling it quits in 1992, has posted some fine unreleased tracks on their MySpace page. Their Seven Men in Neckties: The History of the Micros, Vol. 1 and Surrealistic Swing: The History of the Micros, Vol. 2 are well worth checking out, too.
Richard Gehr | July 20, 2007
Alan Gilbert, the forty-year-old son of two Philharmonic violinists, will be the New York Philharmonic's new musical director. His pedigree also helps makes him the first native New Yorker to hold the job. He will succeed Lorin Maazel in 2009.
The provenance of this alleged 1973 Sausalito, California, Bob Marley & the Wailers radio broadcast may be a little iffy, but it's still a terrific show.
Los Lobos, who once told me that it was a band policy to return home at least every two weeks on the road, will be touring for the next few months beginning today in Reno, Nevada. And lo and behold, note the several-day gaps in their schedule....Lucinda Williams continues her trek up and down the East Coast tomorrow in Pittsburgh....Merle Haggard spends the first half of August alone on the road, beginning August 2 in Owensboro, Kentucky, before rejoining Willie Nelson and Ray Price to continue the "Last of the Breed" tour August 17 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
I heard laughter during Sunday's BBC Proms Broadcast of the Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists, but I didn't realize there were pillow fights involved. As Jessica Duchen writes,
It would be so easy for an event like this to become portentous and preachy, but that was never going to happen: the Compagnie Roussat-Lubek, founded by two dancers who trained in mime, circus and acrobatics as well as ballet, offered such quirky imagination, from orange frock coats to pillow fights to a ballerina in a false nose tossing glitter over the tenor, that joyousness remained uppermost for its own sake. Then in came their secret weapon: a cherubic, curly-haired little boy, who we reckoned couldn't be more than 4 years old yet performed with the assurance of all the adult dancers on the stage with him. Imagine the noise in the RAH [Royal Albert Hall]!
Led Zeppelin—The Ride, a sixty-five-miles-per-hour heartbreaker recently completed at the Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, joins the pantheon of musical roller-coasters alongside Dolly's Iron Butterfly at Dollywood.
Architect Frank Gehry will transform the stage of Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall into an intimate Portuguese bar for the October 28 performance of the fado singer known simply as Mariza. That sounds like the opposite of saudade.
Richard Gehr | July 11, 2007
The Smoking Gun website compares twenty-three-year-old singer-songwriter Mandy Moore's minimalist tour rider (water, fruit, yogurt) to the somewhat more extensive "Diana Krall Wine List (North America)." More on musicians' backstage needs here.
The Latin Jazz Corner wants you to know about four contemporary Cuban pianists that "moved Latin jazz into the twenty-first century."
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic are bringing Mahler's ninth and unfinished tenth symphonies to Carnegie Hall and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to New York City students in November. "Mahler is the reason I became a conductor in the first place," Rattle declared in a recent Q&A.
The upcoming movie Hairspray is an hour shorter than the Broadway musical from which it was adapted. (Of course, the original 1988 John Waters movie that inspired the musical clocked in at an economical ninety-two minutes.) The musical's creators, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, explain what had to go and why here: "A tougher excision concerned 'Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now,' a song that Wittman describes as 'very popular at bat mitzvahs,' to which Shaiman can't help but add, 'and the occasional bar mitzvah!' More seriously, he says, 'We get what's happening in that song in 10 seconds.'"
The Miami Herald suggests that the future of music may lie in Brazilian technobrega: "While media giants spend millions fighting music piracy, tecnobrega singers record their songs on home computers and send their music directly to bootleggers, who burn hundreds of copies and sell them at sidewalk stands next to illegal copies of the latest Hollywood blockbusters."
Richard Gehr | July 06, 2007
The third incarnation of Manhattan's Copacabana nightclub will close Saturday night following a performance by salsa stars Gran Combo. The club opened in 1941 and became a Rat Pack hangout during the fifties, figured prominently in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, and inspired a Barry Manilow hit. Owner John Juliano is considering a move to the Bronx. "It would kill me," he told the Associated Press, "but what are you going to do?"
The Section specializes in string versions of Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, and Kiss. But Dead Symphony No. 6: An Orchestral Tribute to the Grateful Dead may well be the first complete symphony devoted to a rock band. Lee Johnson composed the commissioned work, and he conducted the Russian National Orchestra. "The Grateful Dead embodied such a huge swath of the late twentieth century," Johnson told the Associated Press, "that they are just a wonderful place from which to have a symphony in which you can explore and come out with a response to American popular culture."
During his June 22 Celebrate Brooklyn performance, Richard Thompson and his son, Teddy, sang Dad's "Persuasion" together. It was the emotional high point of a show marred only by a British rain Thompson père apologized for bringing along. His band performed the following night in Washington D.C., and you can download NPR's podcast of it here.
"Why have you chosen to come back now," David Kamp asks Sly Stone in a lengthy feature about the reclusive funkster in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. "'Cause it's kind of boring at home sometimes," Sly replies.
The blog Latin Jazz Corner wants to help you s 
