I’ve got that itch again. It’s an itch that manifests itself whenever I listen to music with form, predictability and harmony for too long. Yes, folks, it’s time to cleanse the soul with some good, gut punching whack jazz, and Solar Forge by Totem> is the elixir. Totem> (yes, theRead More

The music of Norah Jones is the elephant in the living room here at Something Else! that we probably can’t ignore forever. Her brand of country-flavored jazz had given millions of people in our age demographic a reason to buy their first CD in years. Still, we’ve resisted chatting herRead More

The story of Art Pepper’s remarkable emergence from the abyss of drug addiction and incarceration is one of the most uplifting stories among jazz greats, amongst stories that have more often ended tragically. His comeback was not only complete, but had even exceeded his earlier peak. For the last fiveRead More

Scrapomatic’s third album ‘Sidewalk Caesars’ once again brought the spirit to mid-20th century folk blues to the early 21st century.

For this episode of Quickies, we stick mainly with the jazz genre with a couple of diversions to other styles found here and there. These new releases all start with traditional jazz, but our protagonists each put their own little twist on it. Our first entrant is a well-known quantityRead More

Here’s a case of “old school meets new school.” Saxophonist Rob Dixon, who we earlier introduced as a key player in Derrick Gardner’s Jazz Prophets, is another Indianapolis-based jazz talent who’s been getting notice since the mid-nineties as an up and comer for both his playing and composing. Hammond B3Read More

From the God Of Hellfire to an Angel Of Love? That’s the one-hit wonder from 1968 who brought us that singularly psychedelic, bombastic classic “Fire.” Brown had been mostly out of the public focus since then, but one of rock’s most flashy and colorful characters never faded. Nah, he wasRead More

For this installment of Quickies, the inaugural releases of a new label dedicated to presenting the music of talented up and coming jazz musicians are highlighted. These musicians are all members of an artist collective, the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, and this spring saw the launching of the collective’s Brooklyn JazzRead More

by S. Victor Aaron With the tragic, unexpected death of Sean Costello, the blues world lost a guy I and others thought was the Next Big Thing in that idiom. The good news is that there are still others out there working hard to put their own stamp on theRead More

by Pico One in a while, you come across a musician who so effectively cobbles together a wide range of styles so effortlessly you swear you’ve heard it somewhere before…but you can’t quite put a finger on it. New York City born and bred troubadour K.J. Denhert is one ofRead More