On May 6, The Waterboys released All Souls Hill, the band’s fifteenth album (seventeenth if you count Mike Scott’s solo branded records from the 90s). It’s fabulous. Scott may stand alone among rockers of a certain age in his ability to write songs that sound fresh, vital, and dear I say, age appropriate. Those of his […]
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Stevie Van Zandt’s Unrequited Infatuations is the best biography of a rock & roller that I’ve ever read. He avoids the pitfalls of tedium and banality that typically plague similar books. That is, they spend inordinate pages on aspects of their life conveying nothing about the magic of their success as a musician. And when […]
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A Different Take on Get Back – The Beatles Documentary On his way to writing perhaps the best review of Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back for Slate, Carl Wilson wrote that “it’s an act of witness and recovery of misplaced history, though this time from a tale that has been in a sense too well known for […]
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Lindsey Buckingham — Magnolia Theater 12/3 On December 3, 2021, Lindsey Buckingham’s tour behind his new eponymous album came to The Magnolia Theater in El Cajon, California, a working-class satellite city to San Diego. The 1210 seat theater, which just underwent a $7 million renovation, was packed to capacity with adoring fans. San Diego audiences […]
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Reckless Kelly — Belly Up Tavern 11/9 On November 9, alt. country rockers Reckless Kelly brought their roadhouse music show to the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, CA, just north of San Diego. Reckless Kelly is a band you go to see for the tradition. Willie Braun’s going to play an acoustic guitar that […]
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On September 17, Lindsey Buckingham released his seventh solo studio album entitled simply Lindsey Buckingham (Rhino Records). The former Fleetwood Macster recorded the album at his home studio in LA, playing all the instruments and singing all the parts. He served as his own producer and engineer, mixing the songs with Mark Needham. Stephen Marcussen did […]
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On September 10, 2021, Reckless Kelly released its latest album 9/11 Demos, a collection of 16 songs originally recorded on September 11 & 12, 2001. At that point, the band – consisting of brothers Willie and Cody Braun and their drummer Jay Nazz – had two albums under their belts. They’d booked studio time at […]
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Brian Wilson was touring again, and I had to be there. It was a sad affair. He could barely move; they had to help him on stage. And singing, forget about it. It was more of a rough growl. And his bass guitar, I suspect the soundman had it turned off. The best he could […]
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On August 1, 2021, Vivien Cooper and Brother Paul Brown – organist (and the only American) in The Water Boys – released their first collaboration: a quarter-hour children’s album The Instrumental Alphabet. Cooper wrote the poem that playfully, but challengingly for a child just learning, meanders through the alphabet with words beginning with surrounding […]
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I fell in love with Rickie Lee Jones a long time ago. I remember the exact moment. And no, it wasn’t when I heard “Chuck E.’s in Love” or the rest of her first album. It should have been. I just relistened to it, and it is the best début album by a female solo […]
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