No, no, no. With all due respect to a certain beer brewer who decided to spend jillions of advertising dollars in a futile effort to convince the American public that its suds don’t taste just like every other brand even though we all know that the only reason more than…
On the other side of the world water swirls counterclockwise down the drain, animals carry their offspring in pouches, and a left-handed slide guitarist plays a right-handed guitar from over top of the neck using his index finger. “The first guitar I was given,” says southpaw strummer Dave Hole in…
Michel Camilo’s voice is excited. Hoarse, but excited. The world-renowned pianist has just returned to his native Dominican Republic to perform and to pick up one of his government’s highest honors: the Heraldic Order of Christopher Columbus, akin to knighthood. And the media, who weren’t hipped to it until the…
How cold is it in Milwaukee? “Too cold,” says Inner Circle’s Ian Lewis, on the phone from a suburb of the Wisconsin city. Of course, it’s cold in Sweden, too. Inner Circle, on the other hand, couldn’t be hotter. And, for not the first time, the popular Miami-based reggae outfit…
This political correctness thing’s gotten so out of hand there aren’t too many words left that won’t offend someone somewhere. Americans don’t call themselves Americans any more, they come up with ethnic hyphenations. You better not call a woman anything more affectionate than “woman.” And people lacking certain senses or…
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…
