Led Zeppelin’s image, dating back to the band’s debauched 1970s heyday, has grown so outsized that it sometimes obscures, well, the music. You May Also Like: Why ‘Celebration Day’ Provided the Perfect Farewell for Led Zeppelin

Immediately recognizable saxophone voices: Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane. To this list we must add Jan Garbarek.

A couple of years back while covering a record by the whack jazz-funk-rock big band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber I picked out Living Colour’s Vernon Reid’s contributions to the collective, but he wasn’t the only guitarist on there. You May Also Like: Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber – ‘AngelsRead More

by Tom Johnson I awoke at 3 a.m. and that was it. My sleep was over. I laid awake for hours, mentally shaking an invisible, frustrated fist at the darkness. It wasn’t the first such night; it won’t be the last. You May Also Like: Richard Turgeon, “Car Crash” (2019):Read More

Quintus McCormick doesn’t quibble with genre on this new project from Delmark Records. Instead, he sings with a remarkable facility, at once bright and sweet then hard and accusatory, sounding at times like some after-midnight deep bluesman and then like a spit-shined mainstream soulster You May Also Like: No relatedRead More

Percussionist Chris Jones leads a relentlessly groovy ensemble through a series of songs as rhythmic as they are spiritual on Mardi Gras Indian Funk, issued recently by Mardi Gras Records. For the uninitiated, “Old Black Johnny” details the history and passion of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, in the personRead More

by Tom Johnson It’s not so difficult to imagine Skinny Puppy continuing to exist through the mid-90s – most of the solo output of the members over that period actually sounded more like Skinny Puppy than the band’s own “final” album You May Also Like: Why Pop Will Eat Itself’sRead More

Teddy Presberg is the kind of jazz guitarist whose greatest appeal likely to come from those music fans where the closest they come to jazz might be Booker T. And the MG’s, early Meters or Harvey Mandel: bluesy and soulful funk instrumentals. And to be sure, Presberg’s songs on OutcriesRead More

So, what’s it like renting instead of owning? A friend of mine asked me this question, knowing that I’d been piggishly consuming a bunch of new (and old) music since signing up for Spotify. You May Also Like: For the Love of Vinyl: An Appreciation The Night When David CrosbyRead More

by Fred Phillips Ah, the tribute album. It started out as a good idea — current artists getting together to salute a classic artist that had a major influence on them. But, then, it spiraled out of control. You May Also Like: Shooter Jennings – ‘Shooter’ (2018) Various Artists –Read More