When it comes time to assemble a retrospective box set, record labels undoubtedly start by evaluating what material is available as well as possible production costs and revenues. Then they decide whether to spare no expense; to deliver a few modest extras; or, sometimes, to spare almost every expense and offer a barebones package. This […]
By Bill Bentley Will Birch, Cruel to be Kind: The Life and Music of Nick Lowe. English rock & roll always seemed to try harder than its American equivalents in trying to make its mark on history. Maybe that’s because the Brits were shooting from the other side of the ocean and had to aim […]
Continue Reading
Asked to name a favorite Doors album, many fans would pick the group’s eponymous 1967 debut, 1970’s Morrison Hotel, or 1971’s L.A. Woman. Some might vote for 1967’s Strange Days or 1968’s Waiting for the Sun. Few, one suspects, would point to 1969’s The Soft Parade, the group’s fourth album, which is widely seen as a bit of a misstep because it frequently eschews the Doors’ trademark hard […]
Continue Reading
If you want to know how Nashville has changed over the years, Charlie Daniels is a good person to ask. Just look at the back cover of “Nashville Skyline,” the 1968 record by Bob Dylan on which Daniels played as a session man. Daniels points out that there was only one skyscraper at the time, […]
Continue Reading
A HALF-CENTURY-OLD TIM BUCKLEY CONCERT SURFACES Nothing in my rather gigantic CD collection means more to me than the music of Tim Buckley; his soaring, arresting vocals and penchant for experimenting with the fringes of jazz-tinged folk/rock resulted in some of the most memorable albums of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like his son […]
Continue Reading
The tall elegant Allison Moorer had barely taken the stage and said hello when the evening’s moderator, NPR correspondent Melissa Block, had a few words of warning for the audience: “It’s going to get pretty heavy real soon.” Inside the intimate Jammin’ Java, a club in Northern Virginia just outside Washington, D.C., arriving patrons has […]
Continue Reading
Bruce Springsteen’s moving and mesmerizing Western Stars, which I reviewed when it came out less than five months ago, enjoyed the success it deserved, though it perhaps wasn’t “#1 on charts in every continent on earth,” as a recent press release claimed. (They have record charts in Antarctica?) Now Springsteen has taken the unusual step […]
Continue Reading
The Rolling Stones have often been right in step with their times but never more so than in the final two years of the 1960s. Having dispensed with the psychedelia of 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request, they returned the following year with Beggar’s Banquet, which includes lines like “I shouted ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’ / […]
Continue Reading
“Maybe someone knows what fate is, maybe someone just knows why,” Gene Clark posited in a wistful melancholic meditation that makes “Some Misunderstanding” one of the climactic moments and centerpiece of his 1974 album No Other. Looking back the singer seems to be sharing the most intimate and vulnerable details of his complex character, the […]
Continue Reading
Joseph Arthur, Come Back World. If there is a present day hidden missile waiting in the rock ranks ready to explode, look to Joseph Arthur. With decades-long dedication to chasing his inner muse, sometimes in the open and others in the darkness, the Akron, Ohio native has never wavered from the course. His albums […]
Continue Reading
