From the Blogs

• A Tribute to The Doors Ray Manzarek 1939-2013
  "You don't make music for immortality, you make music for the moment, capturing the sheer joy of being alive on planet Earth... Everybody should live it that way."    Ray Manzarek   In the summer of 1967 The Doors played the Anaheim Convention Center. I was 12 years old. I was completely transfixed by the band. Having an older musician brother […]
• CD Reissue Review: Irma Thomas - In Between Tears (Fungus/Alive, 1973/2013)
  Irma Thomas' lost early-70s soul sides After relocating from New Orleans to Los Angeles, soul queen Irma Thomas largely disappeared from public view for a few years. But a series of singles produced by Jerry Williams (a.k.a. Swamp Dogg) on the indie Canyon, Roker and Fungus labels led to this eight-track release in 1973. Williams had proven himself… […]
• CD Reissue Review: Eddy Arnold - Complete Original #1 Hits (RCA / Real Gone, 2013)
  All twenty-eight of Eddy Arnold's chart-topping singles For most artists, a twenty-eight track collection of their biggest chart hits would be a fair representation of their commercial success. In Eddy Arnold's case, twenty-eight #1 singles only very lightly skims the surface of nearly thirty-nine consecutive years of chart success that stretched… […]
• Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell at Sage Gateshead
  What can I tell you? I’ve been a fan of Emmylou Harris since I first saw The Last Waltz at the cinema in 1979 and Rodney Crowell ever since a friend gave me a copy of Diamonds and Dirt on cassette as a birthday present. So, finally seeing not only one of them in concert, but both together had made me nervously excited for weeks in advance. If you don’t know […]
• Great Escape, Brighton, UK - Day Three
  By day three I'm starting to flag, but Canada House at the Blind Tiger looks intriguing: a line-up sponsored by music organisations from three of the western provinces. I'm off to Alberta at the end of July, so this could be a good warm-up. 'We're here to show you that Western Canada is about more than just wheatfields, gravel roads and k […]
• Life At the Edge
  Brown Bird's Dave Lamb faces a crisis, and his fans have his back in a big way. Spend a few minutes hanging at the warm side of street musicians’ guitar case, lost in the rawness of word and melody, and a niggling sense will creep into your reverie: Playing for quarters and raggedy dollar bills is a scary way to make a living. That musician, however, mi […]