The career of England’s Orange Bicycle was as commercially unsuccessful as it was brief. Thanks to a mistranslation of the text on a French EP’s cover, the psychedelic pop sextet has often been said to have had a chart-topping single in that country. In fact, Orange Bicycle had no hits, much less chart-toppers, anywhere on […]
Music & Video Reviews: Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue Box Set, plus Robert Gordon with Link Wray, and Melissa Carper’s Christmas Album Just a few months shy of a half century after its release, the Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue is back in a “super deluxe” edition that includes four CDs (or five LPs) and […]
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Music & Film Reviews: Rolling Stones’ Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush, plus Sun Ra, Christopher Cross, and B.B. King A gargantuan crowd—like the estimated one-and-a-half-million fans who gathered for a 2006 outdoor gig in Rio de Janeiro—adds energy and excitement to a Rolling Stones show. But relatively tiny audiences also have their pluses. They inject a […]
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Music Reviews: Joe Grushecky and a Rolling Stones tribute, plus Lynne Hanson, Laurie Lewis, and Nat King Cole Joe Grushecky: Something Old, Something New Joe Grushecky, a household name in his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania hometown, has never achieved the sort of fame enjoyed by such similarly styled artists as Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, and John Mellencamp. […]
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Music & Film Reviews: Dion Girl Friends and the Rolling Stones Live at the Wiltern’ plus John Smith and Doris Troy Dion DiMucci, one of rock’s most deservedly celebrated singers, regularly occupied high positions on the pop charts from 1957 to 1963, first with his group the Belmonts, and then on his own. He hasn’t […]
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Music Reviews: the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds, plus James Talley, Clay Parker and Jodi James, and the Babys The last time the Rolling Stones released an album of new original material, 2005’s A Bigger Bang, George W. Bush’s father was president, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were 61, guitarist and bass player Ron Wood was […]
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Grrr Live! is at least the 10th archival audio/video concert package that the Rolling Stones have issued since 2017, so some fans may be running low on spending money or shelf space or may simply have had enough of recordings that feature overlapping setlists. That said, this latest album may be the best of the […]
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The Rolling Stones Hit the Big Apple You may or may not consider the Rolling Stones the world’s greatest rock and roll band, but you’d have to agree that when it comes to mining the vaults, only a few other acts are in their league. Just in the past few years, we’ve witnessed the […]
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The audience makes considerably less noise on the Rolling Stones’ new El Mocambo 1977 than on any of the group’s many other recently issued concert recordings, but that’s not because the shows it captures are any less praiseworthy. On the contrary, this Toronto recording ranks with the best of the Stones’ live LPs. Most of […]
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