Tom Fine: Finding The Way Home
Rabbits figure frequently in chats with Tom Finenot the little creatures per se but the holes they burrow into. Because when you question Fine about matters present and past, his encyclopedic memory and fascination with all things great and small take you down what he calls "rabbit holes."
Tom Waits's Island Records Reissues
In 2022, Tom Waits decided it was time to remaster the albums he made during his stint at Island Records. The Waits classics Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), Franks Wild Years (1987), Bone Machine (1992), and the Waits (with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs) musical fable The Black Rider (1993) are the first new remasters to be released.
Remastered from the original tapes (except one, for which a digital source was used), all five are available on LP and CD as well as streaming and download.
Trip and Jitter: the Electronic World of Dan Deacon
Violet- and orchid-colored LED banks shimmer across the room. Green and pink spots radiate out and back. A steady stream of beats and keyboards from other electronica luminaries rumbles out of the speakers. Let's dance! Or maybe just listen?
Onstage, Dan Deacon is busy tweaking his gear. Out on the floor, the audience is oddly antsy. To fight the waiting, one woman hangs on her boyfriend. Clumps of hipsters conviviate. Very strong drinks (a sponsorship deal?) flow for seven bucks a pop. Anticipation thickens. Impatience turns to pacing. Young men make solo air grooves.
Van the Man
The dingy green-and-ochre poster on the subway-station wall, advertising events at Queens's Forest Hills Stadium, didn't draw attention to itself. But what else is there to do on a subway platform but look at posters? I looked at it. There, near the bottom of the left column, I read: "SEPT 12: VAN MORRISON AND WILLIE NELSON & FAMILY."
Van Morrison. In concert. In Queens.
Verve Gets Vital
Back when the vinyl resurgence was only a gleam in Michael Fremer's eye, most major record labels just couldn't be bothered with the LP. Fans of such masterpieces as Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane's Blue Train, and Charles Mingus's Blues & Roots had to make do with poor-quality vinyl reissues from small EU-based labels. Sure, there wereand continue to beaudiophile-quality reissues from such companies as Analogue Productions and Speakers Corner, but they often came at a premium price, and a great many classic jazz titles remained unavailable as new, high-quality LPs.
Visiting Glimmerglass Opera
I'm a great fan of the musical theater: musicals, operetta, and opera, more-or-less in that order. A typical summer vacation for my wife and me involves driving from Toronto to the East Coast, stopping off to see musicals (and some plays) at places like the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, MA, the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT, the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ, , and the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, ME. The Glimmerglass summer opera festival, near Cooperstown, NY, is not far from the route we usually take, but I never thought of visiting it because my impression has been that they specialize in performances of modern and obscure operas, which are not quite our cup of tea.
My discovery of the fact that Glimmerglass has greatly expanded the range of its offerings came about through sheer serendipity. . .
Wayne Shorter: How the Future Would Be
Wayne Shorter is 85. His mind moves at warp speed, a million miles from Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, who rescued him from Newark, New Jerseyor the Miles Davis's second great quintet, for which the saxophonist wrote the compositions that would establish his genius. Shorter's constellation of classic Blue Note recordings from 196467Night Dreamer, JuJu, The All Seeing Eye, ETC, The Soothsayer, Adam's Apple, Speak No Evil, Schizophreniais now but a dim cluster of stars in his ever-expanding musical galaxy.
Welcome to the EDM Jungle
In the mid-1990s, record labels were cash-flush and music magazines plentiful. Warner Bros., Capitol, Universal, Mercury, RCA, Arista, Mute, and Astralwerks shuttled US-based music journalists across the Atlantic to cover England's burgeoning Britpop, trip hop, drum and bass, and techno music scenes. The latter three genres were hailed by the press as the "electronic dance music revolution."
What Kind of Music Do You Listen To? (Survey)
[The survey is now closed - thanks to all who participated!]
In order to better fulfill our readers' musical desires, we'd like to know what music you prefer to listen to. Please take our survey.
When Britain Went Postal: a Post-Punk Survey
Few would have predicted that the Sex Pistols' first gigin November 1975, at the Saint Martin's School of Art in central Londonwould be the start of an explosion of music. Not many even knew it was happening. That soon changed. Punk would create a space that other bands rushed to fill. Inspired by the DIY ethos and the rejection of the notion that pop music had to be a 30-minute conceptual track on the lives of elves, punk was just grab an instrument and form a band.