by Tom Johnson This is an album I grew so comfortable with so quickly that it nearly slipped my mind that it came out only in 2004 and is actually not an album I grew up listening to. Granted, Phillips has hardly changed his MO since disbanding Grant Lee BuffaloRead More
One litmus test to tell if you’re a baby boomer or older is if you can remember when the term “dude” was only used by surfer dudes or stoners out in California. In those days, everyone was aware of the term, but most people outside those two groups generally stayedRead More
Nashville-based saxophonist Chris West continues an intriguing exploration of his own composition “Surprise,” this time alongside Jeff Coffin of the Dave Matthews Band. Appearing as the closing track on the new Disc 2 of his on-going Surprise Trilogy, “Surprise 3” finds West and Coffin intertwining through a series of conversationalRead More
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
