Instead of taking the train out to Brooklyn for Lights' special Valentine's Day show, I kept still inside my old, crooked apartment and listened to many, many records. It felt fine. It felt good.
Here's what I listened to.
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Though earlier in the day I had entertained ideas of soaring through the cold night, piercing hearts from here to Williamsburg and back, when it came time to make my move, I could only sit there, alone, still and quiet and entirely comfortable on my warm, orange couch.
It’s a bad idea to gin up expectations, but two concerts this week at Town Hall in New York City are worth the risk. Each commemorates Thelonious Monk’s big-band concert at the same Town Hall on Feb. 28, 1959—exactly 50 years ago—but in very different ways. This Thursday, Feb. 26, Charles Tolliver leads a 10-piece band on a straightforward (if that word can describe anything related to Monk) re-creation of the concert. The next night, Feb. 27, Jason Moran leads an octet on a bold re-conceptualization of the event, a sort of post-modern audio-video collage that aims to capture the spirit of…
I have a little space heater that I keep in my kitchen because the kitchen is where it's coldest. The wind whips against our old apartment building and rattles the old windows and sets the sparrows and the starlings fluttering into my thin walls where they've made their nests. If there was ever any insulation in those thin walls, it must be long gone.
I don't know what to do about these birds. I knock on the walls where I hear their noise, hoping to scare them away. Sometimes I bark like a dog. They are like Newark Avenue's homeless, curling themselves up into dark shadows at…
During a recent e-mail exchange with Music Direct's Josh Bizar, the topic turned to record cleaning. Josh shared with me his "Secret Record Cleaning Method."
Josh Bizar's Secret Record Cleaning Method
1. Buy a VPI 16.5.
2. Buy a simple record cleaning fluid.
3. Clamp a record on the cleaning machine.
4. Set platter in motion.
5. Apply about 12-15 drops of fluid and spread it around with a good (clean!) record brush.
6. Stop the platter and let the fluid sit there for a minute or so to loosen debris.
7. Scrub the LP on 1/4 of the record surface at…
If you visit our News Desk, you'll find my announcement of Michael Fremer's latest DVD, It's A Vinyl World, After All. While Michael offers an entertaining look into the world of vinyl manufacturing and provides tons of valuable information on record collecting, handling, cleaning, and storage, I did have one minor criticism:
Mikey does ramble. Fortunately, the dude is charming as all get-out. While the scenes at the Pallas and RTI record-pressing plants are scripted, the scenes shot in Mikey's home are clearly off the cuff. He stutters, he stumbles, he makes mistakes (then…
The “Monk at Town Hall” tribute-concerts on Thursday and Friday night (which I previewed in my last blog) were as riveting as I’d expected—in the case of Charles Tolliver’s re-creation of Monk’s 1959 concert, much more so. Tolliver transcribed the original concert off the Monk LP, assembled a top-notch 10-piece band to play the parts, and conducted the score with precision except to let the hornmen improvise their solos. It’s a risky enterprise to invite comparison to a classic (cf. Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho), but Tolliver roared into the ring and more than held his own. It…
Among the many compelling jazz pianists still around, Ran Blake may be the oddest (and the most unjustly, though understandably, obscure). He can’t swing for more than a few bars; he tends to change keys at random intervals; for this reason, he usually plays solo, figuring that few musicians have the patience for his quirks (though some of his best albums—The Short Life of Barbara Monk, Suffield Gothic, That Certain Feeling, and Masters from Different Worlds—were collaborative efforts, involving such established artists as Steve Lacy, Clifford Jordan, and Houston Person). Yet there’s magic in…
John DeVore designs loudspeakers and plays a nasty air guitar.
It was around 1am at the Monkeyhaus. The song, I clearly recall, was the Pretenders' "Precious."
I can see the scene now, Gary, the mighty Max, the Big Man, all standing around the studio, looking at their feet, afraid to tell Bruce that one of his new songs, the otherwise very charming, “Outlaw Pete,” has a melody very similiar to the one found in KISS’ “I Was Made For Lovin’ You Baby,” their successful quasi-disco single off their otherwise weak 1979 stylistic stumble, Dynasty.
So wait, no one told The Boss that he was channeling KISS? Where are his lawyers? His management? His friends and friggin’ family?
Of course that's not what happened. The real story is Bruce…
The lovely, fashionable, and hell-raising Coral, dressed to kill and with all of today's hottest accessories.
I first heard about it in our forum. Selfdivider alerted us:
There's an article in this month's GQ about record stores. Online, they have a slideshow of photos.
Then I received an e-mail from Jon Lambert, general manager of our favorite record store, the Princeton Record Exchange. Jon was pretty excited:
GQ magazine has listed Princeton Record Exchange as one of their 20 favorite record stores. In fact, we topped the list! (Alright, so the…