S. Victor Aaron I haven’t heard this band prior to this album, but was curious about them after reading they were some sort of a jam band, like Phish, Dave Matthews or Humphrey’s McGee. Man of The World doesn’t really conjure up memories of those bands at all except toRead More

Drumming ace Allison Miller might not be a household name yet but, boy, she sure is linked to a whole host of them.

by S. Victor Aaron This one’s not dropping until April 13 and I’ve listened to it only a few times, but I think it’s a pretty easy album to peg. This is one Jeff Beck long player where there’s a lot more emotion happening than commotion. The stomping blues-rock fusionRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Here’s a trio of African-Americans playing bluegrass, vintage country, jug and other hillbilly styled music, played the old-fashioned way. But just listen to the music and you’ll realize the appeal isn’t at all in the novelty of this setup. No, it’s because they play it soRead More

The hottest band in the land just might be the Drive-By Truckers by S. Victor Aaron Funny how it seems I have plenty of time to listen to new music and precious little to write about. There’s about 9GBs of albums in my iPod rotation and I’m familiar with aRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Not long ago we lauded the old school approach of saxophonist Eric Alexander, but even Alexander sounds rather leading edge compared to another tenorman just two years his senior, Harry Allen. The son of a big band drummer, Allen was exposed to jazz literally from theRead More

Bursting forth as rock teetered between too-big prog pyrotechnics and mawkishly symphonic concept records, it comes as little surprise that Big Star seemed to disappear with barely a ripple. That, and the fact that Alex Chilton, who died yesterday at 59 after a heart attack, always seemed to be disappearing,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Did Columbia Records just pull a forgotten Miles Davis Second Great Quintet record out of the vault and dropped it unsuspectingly on the public? Because when I listen to Jeremy Pelt’s new CD Men Of Honor (released January 26), it often feels like a set ofRead More

by Nick DeRiso You hear Beatles songs remade by jazz musicians with notable frequency, some more successful (Jaco Pastorius‘ glorious reading of the oft-covered “Blackbird” from “Word of Mouth”; a just-right “All My Loving” on “Basie’s Beatles Bag”; Ramsey Lewis‘ underrated “Hard Day’s Night” from “Finest Hour”) than others (almostRead More

photo: Urve Kuusik by Pico The other day I revisited that beautiful mess by Sly Stone called There’s A Riot Goin’ On (1971), where in the midst of some herion-induced haze were some of the most forward-looking funk and r&b music ever. Even the one radio hit from it “FamilyRead More