When Neil Young pulled out of Farm Aid breaking a more than thirty year September tradition, he cited worries about COVID. In comments on his website, he called concert gatherings super-spreader events. Against a rampant surge of cornavirus in recent weeks caused by the Delta variant is the pent-up demand for live music. On […]
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“Charlie’s pretty good tonight,” a fan yelled out after “Rocks Off” two summers ago at FedEx Field outside Washington, D.C. “Get down tonight Charlie!” It was a line he borrowed from Mick Jagger who coined the phrase “Charlie’s good tonight, ain’t he?” on the band’s live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out, the cover featuring […]
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(Photo by Sherri Kauk) Early into the film VINYL NATION, a record store owner recounts how a conference of indie store owners was held in the midst of an existential crisis. The narrative was that record stores were closing. With nothing less than the survival of the stores at stake, he had an idea. “Maybe […]
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Mick Jagger never liked to explicitly tell you what he was singing. Maybe he got the idea from Fats Domino who said you should never sing the lyrics out very clearly. Jagger called it great fun trying to decipher lyrics. In an interview with NME he explained why you never saw the lyrics in a […]
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Something strange and unexpected happened a few weeks ago for broadcaster, journalist and sometimes performer Steve Houk. Hosting the annual Cancer Can Rock benefit at 868 Vineyards in Hillsboro, Virginia, Houk watched a crowd that was hugging and shaking hands. Nobody was wearing masks. It almost felt normal. “It felt different, but fabulous,” Houk shared […]
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On the small stage at Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall in Mandeville, Louisiana outside New New Orleans, Maria Muldaur came to celebrate. She began her show with an admonition. The name of her new album is Let’s Get Happy Together (Stony Plain Records) so that’s exactly what she asked the livestream audience to do. […]
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“If not now, then when?” So said Mick Fleetwood at the tribute concert he put together, Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate The Music of Peter Green and The Early Years of Fleetwood Mac last year in London and which is available on CD and and a CD/DVD box (BMG). From his spot in front of […]
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In the year before he celebrated his 80th birthday, Tom Rush was heading home for a week to his native Massachusetts when he was diagnosed with COVID. As he started feeling better, he got a surprise call one Friday night urging him to get to the ER. “We’re concerned you’re going to have an event,” […]
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Apart from the time the jazz band Hiroshima called me at 7:00 from Japan, the earliest interview I ever did was with Rusty Young of Poco. “Rusty likes to get up early,” his publicist said, assuring me he had cleared it with Rusty’s wife Mary. But when the phone rang in Young’s house in the […]
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Back in the days when we had live music, I found myself standing one night outside the Pearl Street Warehouse in Washington, D.C. with an extra ticket to see Kasey Tyndall. I spotted two people standing together and when I caught their eye, walked over and told them I had an extra ticket if they […]
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