Recorded during Dylan’s songwriting rehab, after the 1966 motorcycle wreck, and not released until a decade later. These classic home recordings — done with The Band in the legendary old house known as Big Pink — showed even Bob Dylan throwaways were table scraps worth fighting over. Nick’s Pick: ARead More

Parts of Bob Dylan’s soon-to-be-released record “Modern Times,” his first in five years, were “leaked” by Sony last Friday – and while I get my mind around those tracks, I’ve begun my own never-ending tour of his old stuff. “TRAVELING WILBURYS, Vol. 1,” 1988 Recording a song a day, DylanRead More

Filled with outtakes, rarities and in-studio goof-offs, this is more revealing, even, than the sprawling 50-something track “Biograph” set. And, in fact, loaded with more songs. “The Bootleg Series” proves to be an intimate, strangely personal statement — seeing as how Bob Dylan didn’t put it together. It’s also aRead More

As I continue digesting downloaded snippets from the soon-to-be-released Bob Dylan record Modern Times (which was “leaked” by Sony on Friday), I got to digging through the old stuff. Thought I’d pass along the occasional thought until Dylan’s first CD in five years is officially distributed on Aug. 29 …Read More

by Nick DeRiso Throat cancer got Sam Myers today, all the sadder since he was nothing if not this throaty, memorable blues singer and harpist. A towering, nearly blind seer, Myers (almost always with Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets as his accompaniment) used to practically burn down the stage atRead More

by Nick DeRiso Was grooving to a 2002 reissue of the titanic groovefest ‘Power of Soul’ tonight, and got to thinking about Idris Muhammad – a funk and jazz drummer of the first order, born in New Orleans as Leo Morris. He started out, of course, playing in soul bands,Read More

It’s hard to put a label on Aaron Neville’s music. Even, as we saw in this interview, for Aaron Neville himself.

by Nick DeRiso A pair of early 1990s Rhino compilations, all punky guts and art-rock pretention – without being pretentious – showed how the Do It Yourself aesthetic was given great depth by the almighty hook. Taken together, they’re a nice overview of the British punk explosion and the lastRead More

by Nick DeRiso While the performances on “Johnny Shines and Robert Lockwood,” from Shreveport, Louisiana’s Paula Records, are first-rate, unfortunately the sound quality early on is spotty. Some of the source material was slightly damaged on the Shines sides, resulting in a couple of gurgly spots where the sound fallsRead More

Cannonball Adderley’s ‘Somethin’ Else’ is the lesser-known, but very worthy, companion piece to ‘Kind of Blue’ that every jazz fan should have.