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PIANIST VIJAY IYER PROFILED (2009): The jazzman has a master plan
Among the many things Wynton Marsalis learned from Miles Davis was this: never undersell yourself. If you know you’re a genius just say so. If you know the past and future of jazz just tell people you do. Don’t hold back, put yourself in the lineage, come off arrogant if need be. What Wynton didn’t learn was to say “and fuck you all”. He went for the grand... more >>
Added: 8 Feb 10
EVAN DANDO OF THE LEMONHEADS INTERVIEWED (2004): Learning to crawl
You know how the arc of fame moves in the States: you have a minor career in rock, hip-hop or the movies so you take to drink, drugs or become addicted to pain-killers. (Who knew there was that much lower back pain in success?) Then you spin out of control. You do silly things such as marrying in Las Vegas to someone you just met, date transvestites or punch a photographer. Then you get... more >>
Added: 1 Feb 10
LIKE, OMIGOD! THE 80'S POP CULTURE BOX (TOTALLY) (Rhino box set)
The Eighties was probably no more different or diverse than any other decade, but it does seem weird on reflection: Ronald Reagan and the Rubik Cube; the arrival of CDs, CNN and MTV; personal computers and ghetto blasters; Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta; Ozzy eating a bat and suave Duran Duran; cocaine and Jane Fonda's workout videos; Thriller; the departure of John Lennon, Bob Marley,... more >>
Added: 1 Feb 10
JEFF KELLY AND THE GREEN PAJAMAS: The other sound of Seattle
One day, just before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I had lunch with a friend. When I told him I was going to Seattle he said, "Are you going to see Green Pajamas? I had no idea what he was talking about, I thought he meant some stage play.At this point my friend -- who has a big-time job in a major record company -- regailed me with enthusiasm about the genius of Jeff Kelly, the... more >>
Added: 29 Jan 10
DANIEL JOHNSTON: In a mixed up, shook up world
Being eccentric or even downright loopy has never disqualified anyone from a career in rock culture. Indeed, some would argue being slightly off-beam is a prerequisite. Rock is littered with oddballs: acid-damaged Syd Barrett, who signed out of Pink Floyd in '68 and reality shortly after; those Fleetwood Mac guitarists who went walkabout mid-career; Brian Wilson lolling on his bed for a... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 10
LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING; SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970 (Rhino): Flowers and freak outs
Any box set or collection which tries to mop up an era, genre or decade is probably doomed to failure, not from lack of genuine effort but because some artists (the big ones) don't want to be included. So you can get a multiple disc, very inclusive set of the Eighties for example and it doesn't have anything by Madonna, Prince, Springsteen and Michael Jackson. That the Rhino label did such... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 10
THE AMAZING VOICE OF TIMI YURO: Soulful, sassy and show tunes
When PJ Proby burst onto the British pop scene in 1964 he was an amazing anomoly. The Texas-born singer had been doing demos for various people in the States (including Elvis) and arrived in the UK to appear on a Beatles television special. He cracked a number of big pop hits in '64-'65 (Hold Me, Mission Bell, Let the Water Run Down) and with his velvet suits and ponytail (adopted from the... more >>
Added: 17 Jan 10
PET ROCKS AND PUNK ROCK: Have A Nice Decade; The '70s Pop Culture Box considered
It might have been famously "the decade that taste forgot", but the Seventies has spawned an interesting nostalgia for smiley faces (on e-mails!), terrific films such as Dazed and Confused . . . and this extraordinary box set of seven CDs which unflinchingly collects up the great (James Brown's The Payback, Freda Payne's Band of Gold and Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train to... more >>
Added: 17 Jan 10
PETE HAM OF BADFINGER: Take a sad song and make it sadder
Put simply: Pete Ham was one of the singer-songwriters in Badfinger, the British pop band of the late Sixties and early Seventies which enjoyed the patronage of Paul McCartney. He gave them his Come and Get It (used in the Ringo-Peter Sellers movie The Magic Christian) on the condition they record it exactly as his demo. They did, it was a hit, and a band was born which always suffered... more >>
Added: 11 Jan 10
MOTOWN, THE FIRST TWO DECADES: There's a place in the sun
In 2009, Motown celebrated its 50th anniversary. Not that there was much to celebrate in 2009. The golden years for this classic and culture-shifting label had started to wither some three decades previous and it was notable that when it released compilation albums to cash in on this anniversary they were shoddy and sorry affairs, woeful in their tracklisting, and elevated Michael Jackson.... more >>
Added: 11 Jan 10
MARIANNE DISSARD INTERVIEWED (2009): The Tucson chanteuse
Marianne Dissard is a woman whose music confounds expectations, yet there is an impeccable logic to it: she is French but lives in Tucson, so there is an almost inevitable marriage of chanson and Americana on her album L’entredeux which was produced by Joey Burns of Calexico, who also wrote the music which envelops and supports Dissard’s poetic lyrics. She in fact has also been... more >>
Added: 7 Jan 10
TRAVELLING RIVERSIDE BLUES: Robert Johnson, the blues and Clarksdale, Mississippi
The intersection of highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale in northwest Mississippi doesn't look particularly special: there's a car yard, a service station, a couple of kids listlessly kicking a ball outside Abe's barbecue shop . . . Just the usual stuff. The only thing to distinguish it from hundreds of other such intersections in the state is the odd looking monument-cum-sculpture thing at... more >>
Added: 4 Jan 10 
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NU METAL IN 2001: Look at the nu boss, same as the old boss
Heavy metal is for young men without a war of their own, wrote a wag in Creem magazine some time in the early Seventies. At the time Led Zeppelin were stomping across the planet delivering their stolen blues and post-pop at ear-shattering volume. You can catch it in their concert film The Song Remains the Same -- and they look like a bunch of pussies. Metal these days is a much more... more >>
Added: 1 Jan 10
NEIL COWLEY, UK JAZZ PIANIST PROFILED (2009): Hip and riffing
In August 2009, to belatedly commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release of The Beatles double album (aka The White Album of ‘68), some Australian singers (including Tim Rogers of You Am I and Josh Pyke) got together with an orchestra to play the whole thing live. Well, not quite the whole thing of course. It would be a brave or foolish soul who undertook the sound collage of... more >>
Added: 24 Dec 09 1 Comment
TOMASZ STANKO INTERVIEWED 2009: A blow for freedom
To hear trumpeter Tomasz Stańko tell it, life in Poland in the 1960s might not have been quite as grim and mono-chromatic as we believe. -Certainly there was the irony of playing free jazz in the politically repressive atmosphere, and he laughs knowingly when offered a quote by composer-pianist Thelonious Monk: “Jazz and freedom go hand in hand.” “But you see in... more >>
Added: 19 Dec 09
THE ROLLING STONES' GET YER YA-YA'S OUT! (2009): The '69 Garden party
The live album -- or double live as was standard in the days of vinyl -- has had a chequered history in rock: some live albums defined an artists career (Frampton Comes Alive, Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous) and others added little to the sum of our knowledge (most of Dylan's). Some artists regularly drop live albums (Paul McCartney, who has a huge backlog of songs to draw from) and others... more >>
Added: 13 Dec 09
HOSSAM RAMZY INTERVIEWED (2004): Egypt's music ambassador
Hossam Ramzy, who has a home in England and an apartment in Cairo, is a hard man to pin down. The first call is to the British office where the Egyptian composer and percussionist is supposed to be. No, he's flying right now but you could try him on his cellphone in two days at noon, his time. Fine, that's 10pm here, so the call goes through - and the racket from the other end... more >>
Added: 7 Dec 09
MIKE McGEAR'S VANISHED MASTERPIECE: Brother can you spare me the time?
Perhaps "masterpiece" is too strong a word, but the singer-songwriter Mike McGear -- a member of Liverpool's poetry/music group the Scaffold who scored the '68 hit single Lily the Pink -- did crack quite a remarkable album in 1974, which seems to have disappeared entirely. Simply entitled McGear, it was originally released on Warners and in 1991 given CD reissue by Rykodisc. The... more >>
Added: 7 Dec 09
JAN GARBAREK, ECM SAXOPHONIST (2009): The times they have a-changed
When my dad was boy he used to make his own crystal sets, small radio receivers so finely tuned if you breathed hard they’d go off the exotic overseas broadcast you were picking up. Within his lifetime he lived from crystal sets into the CD age. I thought of this when Jan Garbarek’s new album Dresden arrived in late 2009. I remembered I first came on this austere... more >>
Added: 30 Nov 09
LENNON AND McCARTNEY 1967-72; COMPOSING OUTSIDE THE BEATLES (Triton DVD)
While you might think there is little left to be said about the Beatles after the break-up and their subsequent solo careers, the narrow and deep focus of this two hour doco is surprisingly interesting. By just taking that period when Lennon and McCartney were starting to go their own ways, and pulling on the handbrake before Wings really took off, you get a real insight into just how... more >>
Added: 30 Nov 09
