If you are all like you me, you viewed the release of Micheal Jackson’s This is it! with a great deal of suspicion and cynicism. The endless torrent of tabloid information surrounding his career coupled with the bizarre reality of the actual circumstances of his untimely death, overshadowed any chance of objectivity walking into this…
For many, the Who died when the wildest of rock and roll drummers, Keith Moon, died in 1978. Moon has proven to be irreplaceable, and the Kenny Jones/Warner Brothers period of the Who which followed, with the exception of Eminence Front and Another Tricky Day, is mostly forgettable. Rock’s most articulate talking head, windmill armed…
I am one of those people that love concert DVD’s. If I have guests over I love having them rather than standard CD’s providing the background music. Concert DVD’s, by offering unfamiliar takes on popular songs, showing artists in performance, can be a catalyst to great conversations about music. Now that many concert DVD’s are…
“Rock and Roll’s Finest Night!” So said Little Steven in his incredibly eloquent “power of rock and roll” prelude to his induction speech for the Hollies. The head scarf wearing former Soprano Steve Van Zandt continued, “The Grammy’s? Nice people, nice show, but they go f*** themselves!” He was right. If you want a real…
Fans of guitar are overly familiar with lists of great guitar solos and great guitarists. There are hundreds of these on the Web with the usual suspects, “Stairway to Heaven,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Comfortably Numb” and my personal favorite, “Kid Charlemagne.” These lists are fun to debate, and often provide the motivation to review…
There are records, records full of great songs with meaningful and effective lyrics and nearly flawless execution that despite these attributes fail to find a significant audience. The Jazz idiom in particular has been plagued with this problem, but matching quality to quantity extends throughout all popular music. Now with the whole music business essentially…
The mostly terrific Classic Albums series serves up another musically focused documentary – this time with Heavy Metal pioneers Black Sabbath. While metal may not be your thing, there can be little debate that Black Sabbath is ground zero for the genre. The great thing about the Classic Albums series is being a fan is not a…
“Nights in White Satin” is a truly timeless classic rock ballad. It will be played until the end of time. The Mellotron, second only to the Theramin as Rock’s most curious instrument, was never more tastefully integrated into song than through the masterful playing of Mike Pinder on mostly ethereal compositions that were frequently weighted down with…
The band Rush is the Rodney Dangerfield of music – no respect. Despite dozens of gold albums and decades of consistently sold out concerts – Rush’s extraordinary musicianship and half dozen bona-fide rock anthems are consistently ignored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and critics in general) in favor of esoteric critic’s darlings…