Photo from Jos Knaepen/ amsterdamjazzagency.com by S. Victor Aaron When I first started the Stacks series last year, I had two formatting rules about it: each artist was to be allotted one paragraph each and there must be at least six albums examined. I’m bending both rules this time, as only five new releases will get a look, and the [...]
by Nick DeRiso Was thinking about the aptly titled Buffalo Springfield Again, and this brilliant grungy mess, after hearing news that the band would reform for a tour later in the year. Recorded in 1967 for the second of what would be a brief three-album tenure for Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young‘s “Mr. Soul” builds off the career-defining riff from “(I [...]
by Nick DeRiso Howlin’ Wolf, posthumously inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1980 and then the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, had no right to rock it like this. Not after what he had been through. By the time of his 1972 date at Chicago’s Alice’s Revisited, he had suffered numerous heart attacks. Two [...]
by Nick DeRiso Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues” remains one of the most terrifying, wonder-filled songs, even if you don’t know the oft-told tale of how the doomed Mississippi bluesman became so proficient so quickly at playing his guitar. It’s one of the reasons that, despite the brevity of his time on this earth — born about 1910 and dead by [...]
by Nick DeRiso Equal parts Summer of Love songcraft and heartland soul, the Shamus Twins’ Garden of Weeds is as apt to jangle as it is to twang. That’s reflective of the Los Angeles-based band’s founders, guitarist Jerry Juden and bassist Tim Morrow, two halves of the same genre-busting whole. They take turns with songwriting duties, recalling the long-ago heyday [...]
by Nick DeRiso Emory Quinn doesn’t quibble about genre. Heck, this happy-go-lucky San Antonio, Texas-based band can’t even stick to one instrument, with its principal members merrily switching from one to another. That makes for a nice metaphor on See You At The Next Light, an album of restless musical ambition and jangly, country-fried delights. The group’s sound is principally [...]
by Nick DeRiso I wasn’t sure what to make of this album when it came out earlier this summer. Was Brothers a smart pivot back to the Black Keys’ creative strengths, after some time spent noodling around with only partially successful side projects? Or was it a calculated, and maybe unsatisfying, cash-in retrenchment? I’ve decided it’s the first. Singer/guitarist Dan [...]
By Nick DeRiso “The Guitar Hero” moves away from the tabloid side of the Jimi Hendrix myth, instead delving into the American guitarist’s sweeping impact on rock music and the instrument. That makes director Jon Brewer’s film not so much a biography, per se, as it is tone-poem love letter to Hendrix’s muse, and how it finally ignited. I think, [...]
by Mark Saleski If you have a few hours to spare, and are looking for some cheap entertainment, search for one of those “Best Guitarists” lists on the Internet. Oh dear, the comments will absolutely slay you with their hilarity. Just about everybody can find a way to be offended that their “Best” has been slighted in one way or [...]
by Pico One of the most enduring singing piano players isn’t Billy Joel or even Elton John. Mose Allison has been at it since Nat King Cole was dominating the charts and although he’s slowed down a lot lately, the eighty-two year old was recently enticed back into the studio for the first time in a dozen years, the product [...]
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