Joshua Redman Wish (Warner Bros.) By Bob Weinberg They teased us, man. Fantasma advertised they were bringing young tenor saxman Joshua Redman to the Knight Center to play along with guitarist Pat Metheny. Didn’t happen. Metheny and group played sans Redman. But it’s understandable that the Fantasma folks would make…
They made a record and it went in the chart The sky was the limit Their A&R man said, “I don’t hear a single” The future was wide open –Tom Petty/Jeff Lynne People who know me, or claim to, people in the “biz,” often hit me with an offhand comment…
Call it keyboard busting for four hands — the wild man and the cool cat, side by side, representing two generations of Latin jazz, alone together. The senior senor is madman Eddie Palmieri, making a rare appearance without his rhythm section, instead ivory dueling with the back-of-the-fridge cool Hilton Ruiz,…
Like most musicians, G.E. Smith has a tough time giving a simple answer when asked what kind of music his band plays. “Well, it’s kind of hard to describe,” he says not very helpfully. “The songs come from country roots, but the band definitely rocks. I guess you could call…
Champion Jack Dupree One Last Time Chuck Carbo Drawers Trouble Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas Follow Me Chicken (Rounder) By Bob Weinberg Although they’re headquartered in Massachusetts, Rounder Records knows a thing or two about New Orleans music. The Cambridge-based independent scores again with three Crescent City releases from…
Like the members of any decent self-made band, these four guys need to go out flyering soon. They do that a lot, flyering, spreading the good word about their live shows through the mass distribution of handbills. For a little while on this recent weeknight, though, they find time to…
Joey Gilmore Can’t Kill Nothin’ (Ichiban) By Bob Weinberg “I got a new way of wearin’ my hair/I got a smile on my face and you didn’t put it there.” When you hear those words from your lover, you pretty much got the blues. Not just the tears-in-your-beer blues, mind…
There probably was no musician more beloved than Louis Armstrong. Pops’s broadly smiling mug, trademark forehead-hanky-swipe, and most of all, inimitable honeyed grits and gravel vocals and higher- than-high-C cornet blasts were known anywhere in the world a phonograph could be cranked or a movie reel unfurled. Satchmo’s legacy is…
Well, well, well — it’s finally happening! Is that a huge conga I see in the horizon? The murmur of a Latin jazz scene? Perhaps it’s too soon to celebrate, but Miami is off to an auspicious beginning. In the past two months some of Latin jazz’s most gifted children…
Sometimes the years of practice and perseverance, the putting up with crap from club owners and slacker sidemen, all come down to one defining moment: being in the right place at the right time. And baby, when that time comes, you better have the goods. Guitarslinger Sue Foley did. In…
The economy, the environment, the guitar. Leaders are called to summit meetings to exchange ideas on the highest level. Of course the economy still sucks and the planet’s still dying rapidly. The Guitar Summit is the only one free from political flabberjabber, the only one that actually provides something worth…
Curve Cuckoo (Charisma/EMI) By J.C. Herz From the first howl of guitars screaming for mercy, this album is nothing less than industrial orgy music. Techno-guru/Nine Inch Nails producer Flood has whipped Curve’s lethal melodic hooks into a cavernous production and filled it with Toni Halliday’s murderously sexy ice-pick of a…
After graduating Killian High School in Southwest Dade, Marc Gay, like most college freshmen, was a bit nervous about what his future might hold. Four years later, the jitters have been replaced by a feeling captured in a rock song from a few years back A his future’s so bright…
Glee. Pure glee. That’s what shone in the eyes of legendary vibe man Lionel Hampton the other night at Sunrise Musical Theatre. Hamp played when he was supposed to. Hamp played when he wasn’t supposed to (notably, when host Thelonious Monk, Jr., was bullshitting between songs, and later when he…
The Top Ten By Greg Baker Not a sound is heard from the music industry that isn’t calculated. Artists are not signed, records are not released, videos are not made — unless the suits are certain a promising marketing strategy is in place and that much money can be made…
The Beat Poets Neon Fire (Beat Poets, Inc.) William Burroughs would be proud of Dennis Britt and company’s latest effort. The songs on Neon Fire are a crazy salad of eerie, apocalyptic visions, psychedelic dreams, and jaundiced commentary. Britt probably emerged from the cradle looking dissipated and sounding world-weary. Neon…
By now it’s hard to imagine that there are any American men, women, or children who don’t know what an orgasm sounds like. Long a staple of rock and roll (think Plant’s string of carnal diphthongs in “Whole Lotta Love”), the injection of sex into popular music climaxed in the…
For some bands, it’s just not enough any more to play the local scene in an effort to draw the attention of the record industry. A strategy for success often includes a road trip or two in order to gain exposure beyond the state line. Before Marilyn Manson got signed,…
The flyers were saying “Potato,” while we, of course, were saying “Patato” and wondering if there was more to this mistake than a typo. Do these people know who Patato is? Those who have had a dose of Latin jazz in the last 30 years know there is only one…
Roy Rogers Slide of Hand (Liberty) By Bob Weinberg When am I gonna learn? Roy Rogers puts out a new album and I get all excited. Maybe it’s because I remember how Roy scorched the earth at the Riverwalk Blues Fest, or parched the pavement on Flagler during Sunfest, slinging…
Kenny Millions is wailing. Rather, his tenor sax is wailing. Legs akimbo, rocking slightly as if on an invisible canoe, the straw-haired, bespectacled saxman blows some furious riffs, weaving in and out of the basslines Dave Wertman pulls from his upright acoustic. Abbey Rader’s hands blur over his drum kit…
When I left the dry comfort of my happy home and ventured into the rain for a special midnight sale of Prince’s The Hits, my intention was simple enough — to find, buy, and review the 56-track retrospective of pop’s premier chameleon. But fate has a funny way of kicking…
