Music is like politics in that it is too important to be left to professionals. –Michelle Shocked Why did she have to ruin a great concert with all that political-forum crap? I came here to be entertained. –a dissatisfied concertgoer Those who would allow no forum for fools to spread inane ideas are themselves the […]
Category: Music Review
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Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead—Dylan & the Dead
Bill Wyman reviews the 1989 live album.
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A celebration of sex
The lounge at the East of the Ryan Motel on 79th Street is not what you’d expect from a nightclub with a reputation for elegance and sophistication. The ceiling is low, the wooden walls mostly unadorned. Customers sit at long, cafeteria-style tables. Despite a few sparkling chandeliers, which add a touch of class to the […]
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Robert Covington–The Golden Voice of Robert Covington
THE GOLDEN VOICE OF ROBERT COVINGTON Robert Covington Red Beans/RB-012 Most Chicago blues fans know Robert Covington as the energetic shuffle drummer who lays down the foundation for the Sunnyland Slim Blues Band. As Sunnyland’s percussionist, Covington gets the chance to sing two or three songs a set. His affable nature and resonant voice have […]
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Year of the void: 1988’s greatest hits
Nineteen eighty-eight was devoid of any overarching theme, trend, or happening, rockwise; the vacuum itself has to be seen as the year’s big news. We did have a sales winner: George Michael, whose solo debut, Faith, and its five singles gave him the biggest blanket on the Billboard year-end charts to be seen in nearly […]
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Traveling Wilburys–Volume One
TRAVELING WILBURYS VOLUME ONE Traveling Wilburys Wilbury Records 25796-1 There was a time when the rock ‘n’ roll super session seemed almost meaningful. Clapton and Winwood–together! Beck and Stewart and Truth! Crosby and Stills and Nash and Young! It was thought that opposites–John and Paul-style–could somehow attract, calm each other’s excesses, and produce good music. […]
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Ho and Hum: Is success spoiling U2?
To every garage band, basement jammer, and Stratocaster-copy basher in America, U2 must be the Dream personified. With scant, almost minimal musical resources, vocalist “Bono,” bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullen, and guitarist “The Edge” have carved out a solid and distinct artistic identity, a huge international audience, and a critical reputation as the band […]
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Keith Richards–Talk Is Cheap
TALK IS CHEAP Keith Richards Virgin Records America 790973-2 There is no freedom without constraint, no innocence without guilt; paradise exists only as paradise lost. If we lived in paradise, there would be no need to define these things: in paradise, freedom and innocence are the status quo. In music, syncopation–the lifeblood of rock ‘n’ […]
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Midnight Oil: rock around the apocalypse
Australian popular art–or at least the Australian popular art that becomes popular in the Western world these days–relies heavily on images of the apocalypse. This appears to come naturally to many Australian rock bands and movie directors, but it also tends to be what we expect them to deliver us. The most popular Australian band […]
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Leonard Cohen: gifts of light from the warrior of love
Irony flows like a bittersweet river through the poetry and music of Leonard Cohen. The self-styled “patron saint of envy and grocer of despair,” so often satirized as a gloomy merchant of suicidal visions and apocalyptic self-pity, on closer analysis reveals himself as the harbinger of a strange but vibrant optimism. At the heart of […]
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The well-trained pianist
From the early days in the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans, blues and jazz have always provided both entertainment and an opportunity for personal expression. A kind of ecstatic longing that informs both the most joyful and the most mournful blues–as it did the spirituals that were the blues’ immediate precursor–brings the two poles together. […]
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More Songs About Politics and Sex
Halfway through his show at the Riviera, Billy Bragg, as is his wont, digressed into a short monologue before his new song “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.” This song is the standout track on Bragg’s new record, Workers Playtime; it’s a luminous, transcontinental fantasy that begins in Cuba, rockets out to a nuclear test […]
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Fear of rocking: Camper Van Beethoven and the limits of absurdism
On the basis of fairly extensive experience with Santa Cruz, California, I report that the students of the University of California there can be divided cleanly into four distinct groups. In steeply descending order of group size, they are: those who like it there and take drugs; those who don’t like it and take drugs; […]
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Billy Branch’s blues: a foot in the past, an eye on the future
It’s getting to be more difficult for blues musicians to carry on a legacy and remain contemporary. Master-apprentice relationships and clear lines of musical descent connected earlier southern traditions with the blues of the mid-50s Chicago heyday, and reflected a time when musical changes occurred slowly, over years and generations. An artist like Muddy Waters, […]
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James Cotton–Recorded Live at Antone’s Night Club
JAMES COTTON RECORDED LIVE AT ANTONE’S NIGHT CLUB Antone’s Records and Tapes ANT0007 Harmonica player James Cotton has a reputation as an exhilarating live performer whose high-energy, boogie-laden blues has never been accurately captured on record. During the mid-70s, he carried what was arguably the tightest working blues band of its day–featuring Matt “Guitar” Murphy […]