review Archive
03 Aug 2012
Album Review: The Germs – (GI)
I’ve remarked upon this phenomenon before, and it continues to amaze me. What was once in the late 1970s considered really edgy – unmusical even – today sounds fairly mainstream. […]
02 Aug 2012
Album Review: Bill Evans – Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate
The music of Bill Evans (and The Bill Evans Trio) is perhaps not the best place for a novitiate to begin exploring jazz. Evans’ approaches to phrasing and melody are […]
01 Aug 2012
Album Review: The English Beat – The Complete Beat
The Complete Beat is more than a comprehensive collection of the recorded output from The English Beat. It’s the sound of a band constantly moving forward. Right out of the […]
31 Jul 2012
Book Review: The Me Generation…By Me
As someone who (a) is a writer and (b) grew up immersed in the pop culture of the 1960s, Ken Levine would seem ideally suited to write a book about […]
30 Jul 2012
Concert Review: Papa Grows Funk – Asheville NC July 27 2012
Live performance and studio output are two wildly different things. Some bands are adept at crafting carefully-put-together studio albums, but when they take to the stage, they’re lifeless and stiff […]
29 Jul 2012
Sunday Bonus
You may know that Collectors’ Choice Music — the label, not the mail order catalog service — went out of business a couple of years ago. Not long before that, […]
27 Jul 2012
Album Review: The Steve Hillage Band – Live at the Gong Family Unconvention
Steve Hillage was (and/or is) the guitarist from British/European hippie collective Gong. Always possessed of a mystical bent, Hillage’s songs straddled the space between psych-jam and wide-eyed folike sensibility. His […]
27 Jul 2012
Album Review: World Famous Headliners – s/t
For twenty-plus years, Al Anderson was the guitarist in critics-darlings NRBQ. Though no longer a member of that band, Anderson has returned for occasional reunion projects and shows. But his […]
26 Jul 2012
Album Review: Chris Thompson Band – Berlin Live
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band were not among the most high-visibility of 70s rock bands. There were any number of reasons for this, few having to do with the quality (and […]
25 Jul 2012
Album Review: Michael Des Barres Band – Carnaby Street
Perhaps best known as the guy who sang Robert Palmer‘s Power Station parts in the touring lineup of that 80s sensation (I refuse to label them a supergroup: Chic and […]