Robert Baird

Sousa, Fiedler, and the Fourth

Robert Baird Jul 04, 2017

I tend to gravitate towards Stephen Foster and Scott Joplin.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

George Winston Climbs Aboard his Carousel

Robert Baird Jun 27, 2017

New Age. Most of it was acoustic. While there were vocals here and there, much of it featured instrumentalists playing solo or in groups. Some of it was meant to alleviate stress. Some of it was marginally connected to a similarly named movement in spirituality. Environmentalism and respect for nature were constant themes. Some New Age artists created moody, ambient sounds that were intended as background music, to promote healing and relaxation.

Robert Baird

Buffalo Tom's Let Me Come Over Celebrates 25th Anniversary

Robert Baird Jun 25, 2017

. . . with a second LP containing an never-released 1992 live show from the University of London.

Robert Baird

Luther and Cody

Robert Baird Jun 16, 2017

The Dickinson brothers are traditionalists and modern proponents of the kind of music that was celebrated in American Epic.

Recording of the Month

Recording of July 2017: TajMo

Robert Baird Jun 13, 2017

Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo': TajMo
Concord CRE00432 (LP). 2017. Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo', prods.; Zach Allen, John Caldwell, Alex Jarvis, Jesse Nichols, Casey Wasner, engs.; Ross Hogarth, mix; Richard Dodd, mastering; Bernie Grundman, vinyl mastering. AAA? TT: 45:20
Performance ****
Sonics ****

The blues, that wonderful basis of so much American popular music, has for many listeners grown a bit stale and old-fashioned. It's not much of a draw outside bar bands, and other than Alligator Records, most of the biggest blues labels have folded or gone dormant. Losing many of the music's first- and second-generation practitioners hasn't helped.

Robert Baird

American Epic

Robert Baird Jun 12, 2017

"They are simultaneously high-fidelity in ways that are less easy to quantify . . . [and] many of the most expensive pieces of [modern] audiophile gear follow the structures of this early equipment."

Music and Recording Features

Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Again!)

Robert Baird May 30, 2017

For fans, of course, he's never been gone, not even for a minute. A jazz pianist who played from the heart and spent a tumultuous life fighting his demons while searching, as singer Tony Bennett has often said, "for truth and beauty," Bill Evans is now the subject of four previously unheard, recently released titles, on LPs, CDs, and downloads, of live recordings of his music. There's also, from Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, a new and superlative One-Step Process vinyl reissue of his classic Sunday at the Village Vanguard. Finally, there's a wonderful new documentary, Bill Evans: Time Remembered, a labor of love by a fan and titled for one of Evans's best-loved tunes. And, unlikely as it sounds, the demand for Evans's music is still strong enough to inspire a controversy over rights and clearances, 37 years after his death, in 1980, at the age of 51.

Robert Baird