Music Reviews

Whether the members of Cream were considered “cream of the crop” players or ELP debuting before a crowd of 600,000 at the Isle of Wight, supergroups became a hot-button commodity that granted success in the late 1960s. Although Humble Pie may have included members of Small Faces, The Herd, Spooky Tooth, and the Apostolic Intervention, they were keen to distance themselves from any preconceived connotations by the music press. The foursome established a sound rooted in... Read More

The years after the liberation of France from German occupation in August 1944 were not easy ones for the great guitarist Django Reinhardt. Somehow, during the occupation, he had managed to remain in France and continue to play professionally with great success and even record while hundreds of thousands of fellow members of the Romany ethnic group were murdered by the Nazis.After the war, he and violinist Stephane Grapelli, on several occasions, the last in 1948, had... Read More

When jazz aficionados see the phrases Miles Davis and Prestige Recordings in the same sentence, they think of the “marathon sessions” of 1956, where the trumpeter and his quintet (known in retrospect as his 1st Great Quintet: John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) blazed through four albums’ worth of material (released over the next few years as Relaxin’, Steamin’, Workin’, and Cookin’) in just two days (May 11 and October 26), to complete... Read More

David Bowie recorded Station to Station—one of his greatest records IMO—at Cherokee Studios sometime in 1975 the same year as this Basie, Bellson, Brown album was put to tape in the same place. Bowie was in mid-career greatness, the jazz masters were clearly playing prime time but not at peak musical creativity, nor, to be honest, were most jazz fanatics paying much attention. Norman Granz started the label to give these greats an outlet, almost as a tribute space.... Read More

I can't better describe this than the annotation's second sentence, but might as well begin with the first: "The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and... Read More

By 1971, things were finally starting to come together for Genesis. Vocalist Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, and guitarists Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips initially churned out short baroque pop pieces on their 1969 debut, From Genesis to Revelation, while they were still pupils at England’s prestigious Charterhouse boarding school. Producer Johnathan King fought to keep the group’s arrangements concise to a simple pop formula, but Genesis was keen to... Read More

Bill Evans in Norway is a double album with a never before heard recording of an excellent 1970 concert from the Kongsberg Jazz festival featuring the Evans trio with bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Marty Morell.

You needn't read the liner notes to feel from where drummer/composer Jacob Wendt draws his inspiration. The front cover photo and art direction offer a hint. The back cover does not, but drop the stylus on the title track opener and you'll hear Rudy's classic Blue Note stereo spread and feel Horace Silverness of it. The "Sidewinder"-ness of the follow up tune, "New Groove" is even more obvious, but on neither tune nor on any of... Read More

Serious Green Day fans will tell you American Idiot is not their favorite G.D. album and I'm not going to go down the road of naming names and producing my Top 10 G.D. albums. Your choice, but there are so many great ones, mostly fast, furious, Clash inspired all-American teen-angst infused punk with sly humor added. 2004's American Idiot is Green Day's Tommy—an ambitious, tune-filled, provocative rock opera that critiqued life in W's America and... Read More

If you were not expecting greatness from this set be prepared to be disappointed. The box set's producers understood that the high bar set by the all-analog 2014 The Beatles In Mono box set required this American follow up to be at least equally good, if not better, even though it covers but a single year in the life of The Beatles and the group's relationship with Capitol Records. But what a year it was! Filled with label competition, marketing intrigue,... Read More

On 1973’s Living in the Material World, George Harrison’s capacity for subtlety began to elude him in earnest.Six years earlier, he’d released “Within You Without You” on Sgt. Pepper’s — scolding, to be sure, but above all gorgeous, enveloping, and innovative. (Plus, the snickers at the end made it all land.) On the 1968 B-side “The Inner Light,” he channeled the Tao Te Ching with sweet poignancy. On other key songs I don’t need to name, he deftly threaded eros and... Read More

1957 was a landmark year for Thelonious Monk, possibly the most overtly original pianist in jazz history. He started playing in New York nightclubs again for the first time in six years, owing to the return of his cabaret card (essential for the city’s musicians back then), which had been suspended due to a drug charge. He recruited John Coltrane, who brought a thrilling new timbre to his band. And he recorded Monk’s Music, one of his most splendid albums—a brash... Read More

Thumbing through my parents’ record collection as a kid was the equivalent of an archaeologic excursion. Records were an object of wonder long before I became a bonafide collector, down to how the grooves came across the speakers and the mythology behind the album artwork. When I was five years old, my eyes became fixated on a cartoonish-looking album featuring four men donning a uniform of leather jackets and ripped jeans. My ears were eager to hear what it entailed,... Read More

“I have seen the future in pop music, and it is a band called Queen” - Jac Holzman, Elektra RecordsThe beginnings of Queen came from the remnants of guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor’s former group, Smile. The two bounded together and recruited vocalist Freddie Mercury, who pushed to rechristen the group Queen, and they added bassist John Deacon. The group gigged around England’s college circuit before cutting a demo at De Lane Lea Studios to test the... Read More

What with having to stare down pension plans and reduced bone density, it’d be reasonable to think that the release of a new Cure album might not have flicked across the radar of their original fan base. But anyone who caught one of the sold out gigs on their last live go around knows that’s fairly unlikely. Especially since the band did their part by opening all of those shows with the lead cut from the record everyone knew for some time would be called Songs of a... Read More

Bassist-composer Ben Wolfe is one of those “musicians’ musicians,” little known even among aficionados but a staple on the New York scene, adept at jazz and classical, rarely straying from the straight-ahead, but carving melodic lines and harmonic colors well outside conventional boundaries. His latest album, his 11th as a leader, is called The Understated (on his own Resident Arts Records label), and that’s one fair description of the music. Of its 10 tracks, all... Read More

Spiritual pursuits and work as a sideman in music circles primed guitarist Robert Fripp to form the group he envisioned in 1981 after laying King Crimson to rest in 1975. Along with drummer Bill Bruford, bassist Tony Levin, and guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Adrian Belew, the quartet called themselves Discipline. The influence of new wave and post-punk made the group indicative of the time, bearing no resemblance to Crimson’s Mellotron swells and free improvisation.... Read More

When it comes to classical music, brass instruments have experienced, or, to put it more precisely, endured, a long march towards respectability over the past half century or so. Brass instruments played an increasingly prominent role in orchestral works by Bruckner or Mahler, but they really were not vouchsafed much solo literature until the latter half of the twentieth century. It was the French virtuoso Maurice Andre who first wielded his piccolo trumpet during the... Read More

Albert King teaches a master class in blues guitar soloing on this classic Stax release recorded June,1968 at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, opening with a funked up version of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" that may not immediately be recognizable to Herbie fans but once you catch the groove, oh wow!Next up is a scorched earth take on King's "Blues Power", his defining song. King's playing is hard-etched deliberate,... Read More