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; […]
Category: Music
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Serkin and Solti
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Orchestra Hall September 28 and October 1 The word “legendary” is thrown around so often in the arts that one hesitates to use it even when it seems deserved. Yet two of the figures who opened the Chicago Symphony’s 98th season in a special nonsubscription fund-raiser on September 28 are legendary. […]
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New Works by Local Composers
CHICAGO PRO MUSICA Ramsey Auditorium, Batavia It is always a rare and welcome occasion when works by area composers are heard locally. But it is a rarer and even more welcome occasion when such works are given a first-rate performance–as when the Chicago Pro Musica, the Grammy Award-winning chamber ensemble made up of virtuoso musicians […]
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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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The Bach Way
THE CITY MUSICK at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall September 18 One of the main problems that has plagued the City Music, Chicago’s 18th-century period-instrument orchestra, has been finding a hall where the subtleties of the group can be clearly heard. But solving that problem, at least for the new Evanston series at the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, […]
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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 […]
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The world’s most advanced rock star
Who could have predicted that black stars would so dominate the 80s pop firmament? Any accounting of the decade’s most important acts would have to include at least three black acts in the top, oh, four or so, by my reckoning–Prince edging out Bruce for number one, the two of them followed closely by Run-D.M.C. […]
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Rock’s early raunch: Joe Houston saves the wails
The heart of rock and roll is not the beat, but the iconoclasm. Those early, rude sounds in the 1950s shattered a lot more than white middle-class illusions of security; despite the music’s obvious debt to traditional black blues and R and B, some of its harshest criticism came from the jazz community. Suddenly adherents […]
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Stuff enough: Raful Neal and the bluesman’s dilemma
Even the most accomplished blues musicians often face a great challenge: to put together a show that will remain unique and interesting through an entire evening, especially if the musician’s own body of work is small. The usual standards by Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Junior Parker, Z.Z. Hill, et al have been covered by so […]
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Lower Standards
GRANT PARK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Petrillo Music Shell August 24 and 28 At times the unbearably hot weather this summer made it seem that outdoor summer music might become a thing of the past. But a merciful cool spell arrived just in time for the Grant Park Symphony’s last week of concerts. Conducted, as they […]
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Terms of interment: retrospecting the Ramones and the Clash
One of the most durable achievements of punk was the way it undermined pop music’s traditional notions of its audience. In the 60s there were the hippie-dippie presumptions of commonality between artist and fan, and the expectation that the two would forge a united front against all sorts of barricades and threats; rock ‘n’ roll […]
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Strong Leadership
ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA at Ravinia Festival August 20 and 21 Seldom have concerts at Ravinia or at Grant Park been as poorly attended as they have been in recent weeks; it has simply been too hot for people to sit and listen comfortably to a concert. Last weekend’s cooling spell brought not only heat relief, […]
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Young the restless
Years ago, I sat in a small club in San Francisco and watched Gary U.S. Bonds mark 20 years in show business with yet another night in a half-filled room. The crowd was desultory–too many had come on the off chance that a big Bonds fan named Bruce Springsteen might show up–but Bonds was a […]
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Barbie Army
It’s a little surprising to me how good these women are, because, in some ways, the promo tape they sent me is no different from all those tapes I’ve heard by local, run-of-the-mill underground bar bands who do little else than go through the motions. For one thing, their musical wardrobe contains some pretty standard […]
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The blues and Moore
Even among the most successful blues artists, versatility has never been especially common. Some in the 50s, like harmonica player Little Walter and the still-active guitarist Louis Myers, honed a style that allowed them to play a classic Delta-influenced Chicago blues and swinging, jazzy styles with equal facility. In a similar fashion certain contemporary artists, […]