Visual artist and avant-garde musician, Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, has died in a Northern California hospital at the age of 69 from complications arising from multiple sclerosis. The Village Voice gives their brief take here. Entertainment Weekly describes Beefheart’s five best albums here. Rolling Stone’s 1970 cover story on Beefheart can be quite …
[Update 12/21/2010: Committed has won The Sing Off in the final episode aired last night. In the embedded video below, host Nick Lachey announces the winners. Beneath that is the original article.] . [Ed. Note – Manly, gruff, security expert and sports aficionado, Ron Swanson has come to enjoy an NBC show featuring a capella …
We didn’t go to church much when I was a kid. St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in my hometown was the church we didn’t go to. Still, a few things stick out from the times we showed up. I remember being impressed that the priest was on a first name basis with the Pope—“pray …
. For whatever reason a few years ago, I wanted to hear the Edgar Winter Group’s “Free Ride.” Naturally, the first place I checked was YouTube. Yep, lots of videos for “Free Ride.” But wouldn’t you know it, on the first video I pick, there’s a link to Edgar’s brother, Johnny, performing “Mean Town Blues” …
. . It was February 12, 2009 when I started following the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. They are marching through nearly 200 dates this year, did the Obama inauguration back in ’09, been to St. Petersburg, Russia, quite the swoop of engagements and I think the trickle down effect is this: brass bands are now …
. The kids today have such a ribald good time in every video. Youth was never this good-natured or this fun back in the day and I have a hard time believing that it is even now: .
Within the last year or so, multimedia artist, Barbara Trentalange, had a baby. Balancing motherhood with creative expression, she completed a series of paintings titled, “Baby Napping Series.” “I started the series because I needed to be quiet around the house while my daughter napped,” says Trentalange. “Since I couldn’t write and play music (which …
. I was a Senior in high school and I was picking up the bulk for the Dutchess County News Tribune. It was a frozen, clear dawn with no birds in the trees or sky, quiet and moon bright. I fired up the Ford, scraped off the morning ice and dropped by Margaret Hamilton’s office …
. Driving to the train station the other morning, I had no idea that it was the first day of Hannakuh (Did I spell that right?). I was enlightened by Lin Brehmer, the ever resourceful morning man on Chicago’s finest radio station WXRT, who played this song. At long last an alternative to Adam Sandler’s …
. . I watched this movie last might. Loved it. Saddam didn’t like the physical act of headbanging because, according to one of the musicians, the movement is similar to when Jews pray. Saddam wanted men to have short hair. The musicians later persevered under Occupied Iraq, but checkpoints, snipers, tanks, unemployment, and overall risk …
. When most Americans think of actress and singer Doris Day (b. 1922), they imagine a virginal sweetheart or wholesome wife and mother – roles she often played in Hollywood and on television during her long career. But any contemporary glance at her legendary comedies with Rock Hudson reveal that the Doris Day of the …
. This is going to sound like they just do make ‘em like that anymore, but they don’t. As I regard one music video after the other, graciously placed on flat screens around the gym so I can rock my heavy lifting, I am plucked by the videos’ endless sea of sameness. Glossy, flat with …
. Tom Jones and Nina Persson of the Cardigans combine like sexual napalm and white tipped matches in this highly stylized rendition of a Talking Heads classic. Tom Jones simply brings it, and does so in a vein popping ventricular ejection. Makes me want to tear off my man panties and throw them at the …
. This is a nice clip. Aaron Tibeaux Walker. What can I say? Once almost as big as his contemporary, Louis Jordan, and now just as forgotten. A long, long string of r&b chart hits from the mid 40’s through the 50’s. A suave, seemingly effortless vocalist and guitarist, who penned most of his own …
When 5th season American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry sang a brooding cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” in 2006, Idol fans went universally ape shit, calling the arrangement “wildly innovative” and raving about how refreshingly far removed it was from the up-tempo original. What most didn’t realize was that Daughtry’s performance was not …
. One of my favorite videos… not because of it’s excellent image quality (quite obviously NOT) but because it combines my favorite singer, Robert Plant, with one of my favorite bands backing him up, Pearl Jam, in my favorite city and hometown, Chicago, in an iconic club, House of Blues, for a very worthy cause, …
. Even when you’ve spent time as a professional rock critic, there are inevitably gaps in your musicology knowledge. And one of the aspects of music I’ve always loved is how musicians pay homage to mentors, inspirations, peers, and lesser-known talents by covering or, better still, collaborating with them, helping them reach a wider audience. …
. Many of the songs in Tom Lehrer’s small, dark canon of work still seem relevant today, though nearly all of them were written in the 1950s and 60s. Lehrer often wrote about subjects that were in the news of the day. For example, his song “Smut” (which may be heard in the video below) …
. At 21, she had a few years on me; nonetheless, I was sure that Maria McKee and I could somehow work it out. Oh, how I was in love with this girl during my last gasps of high school in 1985-1986. Coming along after X and the Blasters but years before the terms “Americana” …
. Even considering what a sucker I am for a love song, I do not think I’m overstating the sublimity of the lyric masterpiece She by Elvis Costello. Like many folks, the first time I heard the song was in the soundtrack for Notting Hill. Had Costello written it for the film, he surely would …
Nathaniel Hawthorne once observed that “easy reading is damned hard writing.” The same holds true in music, where great mastery is often found in the simplest performances. Booker T and the MGs, one of the greatest backing bands of all time, played with such a profoundly deep groove that little elaboration was needed. It’s fitting …
. I don’t know if you were aware of the major underground movement at my college, North Park University in Chicago, among the gals when this song came out. Many girls of a certain era know this song word for word and know how to wield that curling iron or hair brush as a mic…great …
. Chavela Vargas is something of a legend in Mexico City where I live. She’s still making records at 91. Muse to both the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar and the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (and reputedly also her lover), her endurance, depth of passion, outsized personality, and gorgeously fierce voice make here one-of-a-kind. She was …
. Scot-king songwriter, dark-hearted minstrel, troubled and temper-torn troubadour, bitter balladeer extraordinaire, roiling ace back alley jig picker Richard Thompson. I love this king of all the sad bastards with the golden hands, his records ooze delight and despair in the most organic and ornery of ways. Plays like the devil and knows all his …
. Although this video is listed as John Coltrane and Miles Davis, it should actually be listed as Miles Davis only. Coltrane was at this point simply the tenor man in Miles band, and as amazing as his playing is here the modal improvisations were more Miles’ innovation. It’s slightly disappointing to hear a different …
My appreciation for Bruce Springsteen happened much later than most people. It was 2005 to be exact. I was given a copy of “Nebraska” by Barton Carroll when we were touring with Crooked Fingers because I told him that I wasn’t a fan of Bruce. He told me to give that a listen and then …
Nils Lofgren is probably best known for his work with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. There is no doubt he excelled in both roles, but he also has a fine legacy as a solo performer. Lofgren is widely regarded as one of the best rhythm guitarists in the history of …
. I didn’t think it possible, but recently discovered a friend on Facebook who’d actually never seen the unforgettable “OK Go on Treadmills” video. As an actual treadmill owner, I can’t even walk by (notice I didn’t say walk ON) my treadmill without OK Go’s one-take masterpiece immediately coming to mind. And it’s not just …
Fellow Swede-Ams, it’s time to stop the madness! Santa Lucia day, the most sexist holiday in the global Scandinavian calendar, is fast approaching, December 13. Please stop the needless subjugation of Scandinavian women through, coffee, coffeebread, candles and white robes. Every year a new generation is scarred for life, sometimes physically if real candles are …
Tenor and global heartthrob Josh Groban’s new record, “Illuminations” is produced by Rick Rubin and six of the songs are co-written by Dan Wilson, of Semisonic and Trip Shakespeare fame. Groban and Wilson collaborated on “Bells of New York City” (below). My only question is, why no cover of “Erotic City?” Semisonic always had rollicking …