by Pico When the phrase “jazz musician from Louisiana” is thrown out, thoughts of New Orleans immediately spring to mind. And while it’s true that NOLA is the state’s, natch, the region’s jazz hub, you can find a few from Up North over in Nick’s neck of the woods who have met success. Take, for example, Shreveport native Brian Blade. [...]

by Pico From Stanton Moore we make a short hop to his Garage A Trois bandmate Charlie Hunter. Even among eccentric acid-jazz musicians, Hunter stands out. First of all, for all the soul-jazz, funk and world fusion he paints on his canvas, he is a bop man at heart; most of his records will even feature a Mingus or Monk-type [...]

by S. Victor Aaron To kick off the Acid (jazz) Redux series, I’m gonna cheat and start with an album review I already wrote back in September of 2002. But since the artist in question is a good ol’ boy from Louisiana and the album in question is so danged bitchin’, I couldn’t think of a better way to start [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Most bluesmen sing the blues with sadness, resignation or even celebration. Not Otis Taylor. He’s got the blues and he’s pissed about it.

It’s hard to define Aaron Neville’s music. Even for Aaron Neville. Rhythm and blues? He nods. Soul? He nods. Gospel? Now more than ever. But country? He and his brothers do it all. In fact, Neville’s signature move is pure country: a falsetto, yodel-like tremolo. Even with the success that collaborations with Linda Ronstadt brought in the 1990s, he never [...]

by S. Victor Aaron The Cars. Yeah, you heard of them. If you’re between the age of 35 and 55 you’re probably even muttering “sure, but they were way overplayed”. I know I’ve heard my lifetime quota of “Let’s Go” before 1981. But let’s face it, they were a damned good rock ‘n’ roll band. The one new wave group [...]

by S. Victor Aaron An event has occurred that hasn’t happened in eight years…the Rolling Stones released a new record. It was also an event that hadn’t happened in over 25 years: the Stones actually released a good record.

by Nick DeRiso They haven’t taken more than a week off since Nixon’s first term. They’ve withstood disco, fathering a rafter-shaking, swing-blues style that saw its own too-fey-by-half revival. (Did you ever notice that all those bands a few years back had names with the word Daddy in them?) So it is that after 30 years, nine guys still make [...]

by Nick DeRiso They were the Chanteuse, the Wild Hair (in more ways than one) and the Songstress. And now Fleetwood Mac has had a hit album in every decade since the 1970s.

“Across the Universe” – stripped bare on this new version of the Beatles’ penultimate record, Let It Be – finds John Lennon alone in his ringing chorus: “Nothing’s gonna change my world.” The world of Let It Be, it’s clear, has been drastically changed. There are no chicks in the background, anymore: THE BEATLES — LET IT BE … NAKED [...]