All music borrows from something else (even though I wonder if that’s really true when I listen to some of the whack jazz I encounter). The difference between a visionary artist and a hack is how creatively the borrowing occurs. No-Man is a band that borrows more creatively than most.Read More

by Nick DeRiso Coming as this debut rock release did, amidst the mid-1990s’ copy-cat grungery, it’s still a wonder “Weave” is any good at all. Chalk that up to Queen Sarah’s ceaseless woodshedding, said then to take place from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day in the basement ofRead More

by Nick Deriso There was no reason to believe that the Rolling Stones, 30 years into their dangerously debauched rock career, would make anything worth a damn out of the 1990s. In fact, the preceding decade — one in which, by far, the Stones’ best new thing was actually aRead More

The finest of the tracks here point to a musical sensibility that’s a touch too ribald for Crowded House. Tim Finn, who had recently left after a short association with brother Neil’s band, experiments with a number of far-out sounds: A processed background vocal on “Can’t Do Both”; the fuzzyRead More

NICK DERISO: “The Ultimate Session” might not completely live up to the billing. Forgive us, however, if we cherish its sense of hip-shaking fun, anyway. Assembled are a who’s-who group of New Orleans musicians who played nearly five decades before with the likes of Little Richard, Fats Domino and ProfessorRead More

by Nick DeRiso Herbie Hancock almost didn’t pull off “The New Standard.” This High Concept offering from 1996 found Hancock, with varying degrees of success, adapting songs by popular artists like Peter Gabriel, The Eagles’ Don Henley, Paul Simon, The Beatles and Prince. You had to give him credit —Read More

NICK DERISO: Funny thing about that modern-day romantic Harry Connick Jr.: Before this decade-old release, he hadn’t ever explored a song cycle about, and only about, love. Oh, Connick would take his shots, now and then. But always with a dash of popcraft crooning, light New Orleans funk or swash-bucklingRead More

Marc Ribot is near the front of a phalanx of whack jazz axe slingers that includes Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, and of course, good ol’ Bill Frisell. As way out his anything-goes approach goes on his solo records, he’s plenty versatile enough to play for guys as diverse as JohnRead More

NICK DERISO: While Rubalcaba was making troubling (if not downright boneheaded) political decisions, he was also proving to be an inspiring (and sometimes downright thrilling) young pianist. Not long after Rubalcaba said the crippling Communist regime in his native Cuba wasn’t all that bad, after all — much to theRead More

NICK DERISO: With reggae, the song’s meaning isn’t always the point. More often, it’s the grooving from side to side. That was largely the case with Jamaican-born Leroy Shakespeare, whose Metroplex-based band made a bar-band legend by incessantly crisscrossing the South from 1988-2001. This recently reformed group was notably votedRead More