Antibalas will be the house band and twenty artists will perform the songs of Aretha Franklin on Monday, March 6th at Carnegie Hall in the 14th annual tribute concert to benefit music education programs. Here’s the lineup: Melissa Etheridge, Kenny Loggins, Ann Wilson, Todd Rundgren, Sarah Dash, Glen Hansard, Rhiannon Giddens, […]
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As anyone vaguely aware of Talib Kweli knows, the man can spit with the best of ’em and arguably offers more thought-provoking words per song than anyone in the game. The lyrics of Palookas from 2011’s Gutter Rainbows – “You ain’t gotta verse better than my worse one” – would […]
Annette St. John At Smoke’s Sunday Brunch – Weekly gig; footage from Super Sunday 2/5/17 Heading over to Smoke, the Upper West Side venue, to hear some wonderful music from Annette St. John and her trio is a very clever move on any given Sunday especially now that football season […]
Elliot Moss Unveils New Music At The Penthouse At The Standard – January 30, 2017 Elliot Moss made it clear he is a young artist worth keeping an ear on with an engaging performance on Monday at The Penthouse at the Standard. A lot of people, specifically 4.2 million of them […]
New Documentary Film & Book On H.R. Of Bad Brains – Event at Saint Vitus Bar on January 24, 2017 One of the Bad Brains CDs in my collection has a sticker on it with two well chosen quotes about the band: “If you want to hear real excitement, real […]
The latest album by Andrew Bird represents, as the artist phrased it in an interview conducted last month at Carnegie Hall, an attempt to go top shelf all the way. That is, he didn’t start recording until he had explored myriad permutations of each song. He turned them upside down and […]
Anything Could Happen: Tommy Stinson Talks Bash & Pop 2.0 – Anything Could Happen by Bash & Pop released 1/20/17 Nothing not to like about the new Bash & Pop record. Tommy Stinson, now safely nestled upstate in Hudson, got some pals together in his home studio with the intention […]
Alejandro Escovedo Hits City Winery, Talks Triumph Over PTSD – January 19th, 2017 (Also 20th & 21st at City Winery NYC) Alejandro Escovedo celebrated his 66th birthday earlier this month and no one is more deserving than him of the late career success he is currently enjoying. The guy is […]
London Haydn Quartet Share Music Of Composer They Love – At The Morgan Library and Museum 1-12-17 It was a great opportunity to hear beautiful music under ideal conditions when The London Haydn Quartet took the stage in the concert hall at The Morgan Library and Museum on Thursday. The […]
Jake Clemons Steps Off E Street To Deliver Solo Debut – Fear & Love released 1-13-17 Jake Clemons has performed more than admirably since stepping into the oversized shoes of his Uncle Clarence in 2012 as sax player in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. The Boss’s crew draws heavily on the personality […]
Donny McCaslin Goes Beyond Now At Birdland – January 9, 2017 It was one year ago, last January, when we got the amazing Blackstar album from David Bowie and then learned of his death two days later. I had been fortunate enough to speak to Tony Visconti shortly before the […]
Pharoah Sanders Recalls Homelessness At Winter Jazzfest – January 5, 2017 2017 Winter Jazzfest NYC got underway on Thursday with an appearance by Pharoah Sanders at Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village. The 6 day event is now in its 13th year of delivering a well-curated mix of heavy […]
Lee Fields & The Expressions’ Special Night – Album Out Now, Irving Plaza Show this Saturday 1/7/17 Lee Fields released his first single in 1969. The North Carolina native followed his voice to New York City as a young man and settled in New Jersey to raise a family. He […]
Dr. Lonnie Smith Leads Octet Into 2017 At Jazz Standard – 12/28/16 through 1/1/17…video shot on Thursday, 12/29 Ah, Dr. Lonnie! I could see him perform every night. He’s that engaging, that thrilling when he sits down at his beloved Hammond B-3 organ. Noticing heavy guys like Jason Marshall on […]
Return Of The Lox – New Album Filthy America…It’s Beautiful Out Now 12-28-16 Jadakiss, Sheek Louch, and Jadakiss have been flirting with the possibility of a full-on reformation of The Lox for a few years and the release of Filthy America…It’s Beautiful this month closes the deal. The tracks deliver tough street reporting […]
The Bad Plus Talk Covers Ahead Of Village Vanguard Run – Tonight (12/27/16) through Sunday (1-1-17) The first track on the self-titled debut album by The Bad Plus from 2001 was Abba’s Knowing Me Knowing You. Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson, and David King also included a dynamite version of Nirvana’s […]
Bob Margolin & The Nighthawks Salute Muddy Waters – December 11, 2016 A treat to get one of the world’s toughest blues bands at Iridium in Times Square earlier this month. The Nighthawks are led by Mark Wenner on vocals and harmonica who formed the original group in 1972 in Washington DC. […]
Tom Rush Talks Songwriting & Performing – Schimmel Center at Pace University December 9, 2016 When Tom Rush was a student at Harvard University in the early sixties, he hosted a Tuesday evening radio program on the college station WHRB called Balladeers that featured his own performances on the air as […]
Busy December For Kenny Barron In NYC – In Action Beginning this Friday (December 9, 2016) through Christmas Day It’s no secret that Kenny Barron is a wonderful piano player. He was honored by The National Endowment for the Arts in 2010 as a jazz master and he has earned […]
Masta Killa Talks Future Of Wu Tang Clan It was this month in 1993 that the Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) album was released catapulting the Staten Island based collective to the forefront of the hip hop world. This month, November 2016, sees a reissue of the disc on […]
The Hold Steady Bringing Anniversary Reissues & Residence; Brooklyn via Minneapolis Band Marks Ten Years On Boys And Girls In America with Deluxe Version Plus Sexy Reissues of Almost Killed Me & Separation Sunday – The Hold Steady have become an essential New York band since coming together in Brooklyn about thirteen […]
Martha Wainwright CD Release Party At Le Poisson Rouge – November 18, 2016 Martha Wainwright is the daughter of two accomplished singer songwriters: American Loudon Wainwright III and Canadian Kate McGarrigle who died almost seven years ago. She inherited great expectations along with royal musical blood. Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole is the […]
Helmet Kicks Ass At Highline Ballroom In Return To NYC; November 12, 2016 Regarding the first album by his group in six years, according to Page Hamilton: “People who hate Helmet are not going to like the record…and the people that love Helmet; some of them may take a minute […]
Chick Corea 75th Birthday Residence At The Blue Note – November 12th, 2016 Chick Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts – (same as me!) – and was too young to remember the day the piano came. However, according to the story that he got from his folks and relayed to […]
Danish String Quartet Makes Carnegie Hall Debut; At Zankel Hall on 10-26-16 Almost twenty years ago, three thirteen (or maybe fourteen) year old musicians became friends and began to play together. A professor (who is still a mentor) Tim Frederiksen at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen took interest […]