Music and Recording Features

Mary Halvorson: Melt the Frame

Ken Micallef May 05, 2021 First Published: May 05, 2021

In her reworking of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from my Friends," on the 2018 tribute album, A Day In The Life: Impressions Of Pepper (impulse records), Brooklyn guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson reinvents both her instrument and the song.

Most baby boomers can hum the tune of the Beatles' classic, from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in a handful of notes. It might take longer to recognize Halvorson's joyous, angular version. A master of jazz phrasing, guitar technique, avant-garde discourse, and effects pedals, Halvorson bends the Beatles song to her 21st century will.

Music and Recording Features

The Harry Smith B-Sides

Sasha Matson Apr 08, 2021 First Published: Apr 08, 2021

The Harry Smith B-Sides
Various Artists
Dust-to-Digital Records DTD-51 (4 CDs). 2020. John Cohen, April Ledbetter, Lance Ledbetter, Eli Smith, prods.; Michael Graves, audio mastering and restoration.

Few music anthologies have been as influential as Harry Everett Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways SFW 40090), which was first released in 1952 as an 84-track, 6-LP set. Without it, it is possible that many of the musicians represented would have languished in obscurityincluding such artists as Mississippi John Hurt.

Music and Recording Features

The Reservoir Story

Thomas Conrad Mar 11, 2021 First Published: Mar 11, 2021

Full Disclosure: All jazz writers fantasize about owning a jazz label. These fantasies persist even in our post-CD, download era, when the record industry as we knew it has been laid to waste. It is reasonable to speculate that, as a reader of this magazine and therefore a music junkie, you may have had an entrepreneurial record label fantasy or two of your own. For us, it should be interesting to hear from Mark Feldman, because he actually did it. In fact, he did it twice.

Music and Recording Features

Book Review: Make More Noise!

Phil Brett Feb 04, 2021 First Published: Feb 04, 2021

Make More Noise! Women in Independent Music UK 19771987
Various artists. Various producers.
Cherry Red Records. CRCDBOX99. 4CD set and book.
Music *****
Sonics ***

The title of this set4 CDs and a bookcomes from British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst's call to arms for women to fight for their rights: "You have to make more noise than anybody else," said Pankhurst, who died in 1928.

The first words you hear on Disc One of Make More Noise! are sung by Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, who was born almost 100 years after Pankhurst and died a decade ago, in 2011: "Some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard." This opening lyric, from the song "Oh Bondage Up Yours!," is followed by a raw sax solo by Styrene's bandmate Lora Logic.

Music and Recording Features

David Bowie: Curated

Phil Brett Jan 06, 2021 First Published: Jan 06, 2021

I remember when I first heard that David Bowie had died. I was half-listening to the radio as I prepared for work. I was stunned. I just looked at my partner. To my surprise, a tear ran down my cheek. I had always been rather sniffy about people who got emotional when famous people died, people they had never met, who had never heard of them, who had lived lives of wealth.

Music and Recording Features

Looking Back at Fleetwood Mac

John Swenson Dec 10, 2020 First Published: Dec 10, 2020

I've just recently finished reading guitarist/vocalist Walter Lure's autobiography, To Hell and Back. Walter has a great story about his days in Johnny Thunders's Heartbreakers and his own Waldos. Until he died in late August, you could still hear him playing with the Waldos and running periodic tributes to Johnny. But he also took some space to write about his first band, a hard-rock dance band called Bloodbath that pounded the risers in the North Bronx at the dawn of the 1970s.

Music and Recording Features

The Classical Voice: Finding Your Way In

Jason Victor Serinus Dec 08, 2020 First Published: Dec 08, 2020

How to explain the power that trained operatic voices hold over many of us? For me, the pull began days after I was born, when acoustic 78s of tenor Enrico Caruso and coloratura sopranos Amelita Galli-Curci and Luisa Tetrazzini played in the background. There was something about the way the dramatic-to-the-core Caruso sang, as if his life depended on it, while the high-flying coloraturas skipped lightly through impossible strings of notes. It moved me like little else.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

The Wind Cries Marty (Krystall)

Sasha Matson Nov 05, 2020 First Published: Nov 05, 2020

Marty Krystall is a musician's musician, highly regarded and known to his peers in the LA music world as a triple-threat wind player equally adept at jazz, classical, and in the studio. He is also an audiophile, a recording engineer, and a record company owner, having created the K2B2 label with bassist and colleague Buell Neidlinger in 1979.

Music and Recording Features Revinylized!

Revinylization #11: James Booker, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Joan Armatrading

Jim Austin Oct 21, 2020 First Published: Oct 21, 2020

Last month, I received so few vinyl reissues that I had to invite a guest writerjazz critic and political commentator Fred Kaplanto fill in. Fred had managed to grab an early copy of the excellent Analogue Productions 45rpm reissue of Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I didn't get mine until a week or so after his review was submitted.

This month, I have a tall stack to choose from, so I'll mention several.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Maria Schneider: Is There Anybody Out There?

Ken Micallef Oct 08, 2020 First Published: Oct 08, 2020

"The data lords are gathering data and giving it to organizations that then manipulate us with the things they know about us, things that we don't even know about ourselves," says five-time Grammy Awardwinning composer, conductor, producer, and band leader Maria Schneider. "They give our data to any company that'll pay for it to manipulate you, specifically targeting your vulnerabilities. It takes away freedom of thought, a true discourse where people are thinking for themselves. Count me out."