Kirsty MacColl Galore (I.R.S.) Kirsty MacColl’s clear, breathy voice; knack for effortless hooks; and (occasional) biting wordplay have made her a star in her English homeland since the early Eighties, when she recorded her bouncy, rollicking “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis.” Here, however, she…
About seven and a half minutes into the ten-minute “Mother,” the final piece on the Balanescu Quartet’s 1994 CD Luminitza, violinist Alexander Balanescu almost inaudibly murmurs the word mother several times under the sound of the quartet’s gently cradling strings. His voice provides a peaceful catharsis, both child and man…
Twelve years ago, during the all-star ARMS Concert (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, et al.), a benefit for Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and others stricken with multiple sclerosis, a lone figure marched solemnly through the aisles of Madison Square Garden holding aloft a handmade sign. It read: “Plant and…
“The Bee Gees were possibly the greatest pop songwriters of all time.” If Dennis Davison intends ironic effect, he doesn’t betray it in his voice. Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, the singer-songwriter-guitarist for that city’s pop-psychedelic band the Jigsaw Seen sounds serious. No, earnest. “I obviously prefer their…
“Third Stone From the Sun,” the mostly instrumental, effects-laden, just-under-seven-minute meditation-from-the-outer-limits miniepic that appears on the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s brilliant 1967 debut, Are You Experienced? Jimi comes up for air after some swirly cosmic fuzz-box tripping to deliver a brief monologue in the voice of a merely-visiting-your-planet alien, capping it…
The wiggy, wiggy world of Sixties surfer celluloid Not long into American International Pictures’ (AIP) 1965 Beach Blanket Bingo, aging silent-film comedian Buster Keaton and an ultrabuxom, bikini-clad beach babe take turns chasing each other back and forth over the sand, Keystone Kops-style, prompting a tanned, blandly handsome surfer boy…
Amid all the manufactured mainstream media malarkey about 1) the 25th anniversary of Woodstock and 1A) its merchandising-gone-ballistic deadly spawn, Woodstock ’94 and 2) the Rolling Stones’s toothless and soulless new album, Voodoo Lounge, and 2A) the band’s “Till Death Do Us Part” kabillion-dollar U.S. tour in support of that…
Two songs into the Eagles’s Orange Bowl concert Sunday, guitarist-singer Glenn Frey stepped up to the mike, grinned boyishly, and said, “We’re baaaaaaacccck.” Depending on how you feel about stadium shows in general and the Eagles in particular — and somewhat incidentally, depending on whether you saw Poltergeist II, on…
