by Nick DeRiso Several of Muddy Waters‘ great sidemen — Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and Otis Spann — appear on the loose and funky “Southside Blues Jam,” originally issued by Chicago’s Delmark Records. Funny, for all their marquee value, Wells and Guy — Buddy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana —Read More
by Nick DeRiso Led Zeppelin wasn’t always this thundering, then nimble, amalgamation. The band’s first album had, on its surface, only a copycat kind of appeal. Recorded over just 30 hours, these songs were presented in the same way Zeppelin would have done them on stage at the time —Read More
“Come Down in Time” works as a perfect metaphor, and a sad rebuke, for what later happened to Elton John and his songs.
Tonight’s “Paul McCartney: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in Performance at the White House” — premiering at 8 p.m., and then repeating all week on PBS stations — had us digging through the stacks, looking for favorites from throughout his career. (Click through the titles forRead More
News that the Beach Boys were contemplating a reunion to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary (or not?), got us to thinking … Think Beach Boys, and many remember a group perhaps irrevocably reduced by its tragicomic storyline. Admittedly distracting plot points, beyond the 36 Top 40 hits (most of anyRead More
Even decades later, ‘Africa/Brass’ still casts John Coltrane – and this is saying something – in a new, insistently inventive light.
By Nick DeRiso One of three jazz-legend siblings, Hank Jones was perhaps as unassuming as his brother Elvin (nine years younger, famously of the John Coltrane group) was the outsized extrovert. Feathery light, then concisely powerful at the piano, Hank concluded an intellectual, often overlooked eight-decade career on Sunday whenRead More
by Nick DeRiso All apologies to Roger Waters, who’s dragging it back on the road for a series of 30th anniversary concert performances, but I was never all that into Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Too much talking, not enough — you know — music. While working out issues in dealingRead More
by Nick DeRiso Bassist Charles Mingus, an enlightening yet stormy presence, clearly felt he had unfinished business with some of his earlier work. So, he used “Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus” and a move to the more creatively open Impulse! label to take another pass at them. That turned intoRead More
by Nick DeRiso Luis Bonilla’s “I Talking Now” (NJCO/Planet Arts), from the first bristling blast of trombone on the title track, is dashing down a busy city street. It’s difficult to tell, at first, if he’s running away from or toward something. Whatever the apprehensions, you are quickly surrounded byRead More
