Some Enchanted Evening
Back before the ring-a-ding-ding Reprise records, where the brass blew and the fingers snapped, Francis Albert made a lot of overtly sad records for Capitol.
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Robert Baird
A Tribute in Jazz
There’s a recent recording project that I have to say exemplifies that hard as it is to believe, there are still human hearts beating in the biz.
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The Wild Geese
If you want to complain that young rock bands have no sense of the past; no melodies; no hooks; no hope then what do you call a young band with the sense and taste to take a freaky masterpiece like Zep III as a model for their debut? Weak? Lazy? Unworthy of a listen?
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Jackson Browne: Enter The Natural
For famously civilized and jaded New York City, the crowd at the resplendent Beacon Theatre is uncommonly involved. Loud requests, many in tangled liquor dialects, boom from the balcony:
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"'REDNECK FRIEND'!"
Onstage, Jackson Browne smiles and shakes his head.
"'COCAINE'!"
"I could do that, but it would have to be the rehab version." [crowd roars]
"'FOR A DANCER'!"
Oh, waitI'm yelling that.
Stax After Otis
After the death of the label’s biggest star Otis Redding in December 1967 (damn those small planes!)...
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Kingship
And so what really were the great Stax/Volt albums after 1968?
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Monk Makes Singles
The whole idea of jazz “singles” seems a little absurd.
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Bloodshot Records Turns Twenty!
It’s the day after the office Christmas party and yet Bloodshot Records founder Rob Miller gamely agreed to have a chat.
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“Our party’s been at the same Mexican restaurant for the past 19 years and I have an incredible superstition that if the bar tab is not bigger than the food tab then we’ve had a bad year.”