by Nick DeRiso The worry, with any rock-guitar virtuoso’s recording, is that it will quickly devolve into onanistic noodling. But Tony Savarino’s Guitaring adroitly sidesteps the problem with a keen eye for variety, and a welcome sense of unselfishness in the studio. The Boston-bred musician is a dabbler, with aRead More

by Mark Saleski Sometimes, the history of music is full of surprises. Another way of looking at it: I’m surprised by my own ignorance. When I think of the South and old-time music, the blues, whites, and blacks, I tend to think of the musics as being mostly separated, withRead More

by Mark Saleski There are so many things we depend upon in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire that it’s sometimes easy to forget that not all of them have been around forever…or will continue to be so. Just as the mountain itself solidly anchors our mental picture of theRead More

By Nick DeRiso At once neo-renaissance, new age and something akin to blissed-out bluegrass, Erwilian’s holiday-themed concert recording Midwinter’s Night neatly sidesteps the pre-conceived notion of sickly sweet Yuletide fare. Midwinter’s Night, instead, is a concert souvenir from warm night of remembrance, affection and camaraderie – sparked by these friendly-as-familyRead More

by Mark Saleski Walk down the street and stop twenty random people, asking them their opinion of Esquivel? If you get less than 19 “Huhwuh?”‘s, I’d be impressed. That’s sort of too bad because Juan Garcia Esquivel had far too many musical ideas in his head. Add some pedal steelRead More

by Mark Saleski This is the amazing, hilarious and true story of Sue Carpenter, a woman who gave corporate radio and the FCC the big ‘ef U’ by starting her own pirate radio station — right out of her apartment atop a hill in San Francisco. A career opportunity (writingRead More

Here’s another one that was in the family household record rotation forty years ago. It began as a ditty for a local bank seeking to attract newlywed customers and within a year turned into a big hit for soft rock titans The Carpenters. Released as a single in August 1970Read More

The bitter end of the Beatles? The flip side of the “Let It Be” single begs to differ.

by Nick DeRiso A group of cross-country friends with day jobs got together to produce Rochester Express, this chummy, Woody Herman-style amalgam of galloping jazz joys. By day, the members of Rochester, Minnesota-based TakeTwo work as a cardiovascular surgeon, a respiratory therapist, and an IBM engineer. In this two dayRead More

by Pico So a couple of years ago we saluted the national shopping holiday called Black Friday with some musings about a 1975 Steely Dan song of the same name. This time, we’re going to mark the occasion with another ditty by the Boys From Bard (Walter Becker and DonaldRead More