by Mark Saleski “Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.” -William S. Burroughs.This seem true enough, and mine wants to live in that house. He whispers in my ear to leave almost everything behind. We get into these major fights about what stays and goes. The house is quite small, [...]
by Nick DeRiso A lot of singers have sung this one, from Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Mathis to Diana Krall and the Orioles, the post-war R&B vocal quartet. For me, though, Nancy Wilson’s has always been the definitive reading. She nails the sense of hopeful anxiety that surrounds Dec. 31 every year, even while continuing to display a hushed [...]
by Mark Saleski After years of writing reviews, I have now stumbled into what must be the most embarrassing way to discover music: via a tumblr photo blog. I can’t even remember what I’d been writing at the time, but I had googled the word “geek” and ended up on a site full of pictures of geeky women. Now of [...]
by Nick DeRiso Let’s get this admission out of the way: Picking the best of 2010′s unsigned treasures is like trying to determine your favorite grain of sand. There are far too many, really, to make any reasonable guess — and the whole time you’re walking around with a bucket in an attempt to actually decide, you keep finding more, [...]
by Nick DeRiso Taking on Nina Simone, a singer of dusky persuasiveness, might be foolhardy enough. Remaking this song, a Top 20 pop hit off Simone’s celebrated 1958 debut Little Girl Blue seemed like the worst idea of all. But Canadian singer Kellylee Evans finds a new light, even if it’s only a small sliver, within this dark tale from [...]
by Something Else Reviews Over the last few weeks, this merry band of music lovers has offered its varied take on the Year That Was. Now, we winnow it all down. First to go were the personal obsessions (Mark: Mary Halvorson; Pico: Greg Ward’s Fitted Shards), and other worthy entries that somehow didn’t gather critical mass (Tom: Field Music; Nick: [...]
by Nick DeRiso Miles Ahead was initially billed by Columbia Records, in the flatly obvious tone of the day, as “Miles Davis plus 19, with Gil Evans.” Right. Still, it was that last guy, the 20th man, who was the important one. After a burst of creativity in the late 1940s — the clearest result being the very cool but [...]
by S. Victor Aaron “If that guy hits you, I’m not stopping to help you!” “Come on, people, MOVE!!!” “Get your @#$% out of my way!” My wife, God love her, gets a little impatient with her fellow motorists and often has these one-sided conversations with them from behind the wheel. We sometimes joke that she needs some sort of [...]
by Pico Electric blues guitarist Melvin Taylor had been sporadically recording solo albums for 20 years when Dirty Pool arrived — and was somehow just beginning to find fame. Already a hit in Europe, it had taken a steady run of performing in Chicago’s famed blues clubs to slowly earn Taylor a well-deserved reputation as an equal talent among the [...]
by Something Else Reviews After a long winter’s nap, let’s rock a while to some of our Yuletide favorites — from the jazzy (Ramsey Lewis and Joe Pass) to the downhome (Koko Taylor and Kermit Ruffins), from the offbeat (the Temptations tearing up “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”) to the undiscovered (Erwilian, a terrific new find) … Click through the [...]
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