Archives for 2008 » October
Column from web archive October 9, 2008
Black and white, then and now
Last week, a dear friend of mine was fired from the Friday night DJ gig he has held at a popular nightclub for the past four years. The reason? Management wanted to hear more pop and top-40, and less hip-hop and R&B. My colleague, who is black, was flabbergasted. Hip-hop and R&B is top-40 these [...]
Record Review from web archive October 9, 2008
The Imus Ranch Record
Benefit collections such as this are almost never going to get bad press because, well, who wants to put down a record made for a noble purpose? (In this case, the cause is talk-radio jock Don Imus and his wife Dierdre’s ranch in New Mexico which hosts children afflicted with cancer or serious blood disorders.) [...]
Record Review from web archive October 8, 2008
Nick Pagliari
The second full-length disc from Memphis native, former Nashville resident, and current South Carolinian Nick Pagliari finds him at a stylistic crossroads between tightly orchestrated pop and a more relaxed alt-country sound. Recorded in Memphis, the album makes it obvious that he has soaked up more than a little of that town’s legacy of horn-inflected [...]
Column from web archive October 8, 2008
Charlie Haden goes to where it feels like home
Returning home to one’s roots is not only a time-honored theme in popular music, it’s also a time-honored career move. Home is where, when you go there, they will applaud you for remembering where you started and for honoring the people who helped you on your way. For roots artists, going back to ground zero [...]
Live Reviews from web archive October 7, 2008
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass: Sunday
If the entire weekend didn’t already belong to festival sponsor Warren Hellman, he certainly staked a reasonable claim to Sunday morning. By 11 a.m., the small hillside in front of the Porch Stage was filled with folks eager to see what the benefactor of this grand annual bash could do with a banjo. I suspect [...]
Record Review from web archive October 7, 2008
Jackson Browne
On the song “A Piece Of The Pie” from his new album Harps And Angels, Randy Newman assesses the state of our nation this way: “Jesus Christ it stinks here high and low/The rich are getting richer, I should know/While we’re going up you’re going down/No one gives a shit but Jackson Browne.” Make that [...]
Column from web archive October 7, 2008
Understanding the sacrifice, fully
Despite my long-running admiration for and interest in bluegrass – an affection which reaches deeply into my childhood – and despite the fact that a number of people whose opinions I respect have highly recommended them, I’ve sort of missed the whole Cherryholmes bus. Partly because it’s kind of a weird bus, beginning with the [...]
Record Review from web archive October 6, 2008
Crowe Brothers
The Crowe Brothers – Wayne on bass and lead vocals, Josh on guitar and tenor vocals – sing the high and tight harmonies that are a staple of bluegrass. Though the Crowes’ string band shares those same mountain roots, their musical heritage is more clearly drawn from brother harmony acts such as the Blue Sky [...]
Live Reviews from web archive October 5, 2008
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass: Saturday
The Arrow Stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass sits in Speedway Meadow at a kind of crossroads between the main Banjo Stage and the more remote Star and Rooster stages. At noon on Saturday, people traversing the now-worn path to the food and beverage vendors and to the bigger-name acts could not help but be drawn [...]
Record Review from web archive October 5, 2008
Browns
The Browns’ biggest hit, “The Three Bells (Les Trios Cloches)”, has to be among the least unexpected, just plain weirdest successes in the annals of country pop. A Swiss ballad first made famous throughout Europe by French chanteuse Edith Piaf, “The Three Bells” is the homely sketch of country boy Jimmy Brown, told via snapshot [...]
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