Barry’s Maine is one of sun-scorched blueberry barrens, just enough gas to get through the evening (providing the pickup doesn’t end up in the puckerbrush), cheap beer (none of that microbrew stuff), and, yes, drugs. And the thing is, Barry’s Maine is just as real as that postcard version – but you’d have to know about it to write about it.
Rather than an “I was there and you weren’t” account of hanging out with ’70s rock gods, LZ-’75 manages to make all concerned seem rather mortal in their own way. The impetus for Davis to write the book after all these years was the recent discovery of a box of long-lost treasures from the tour. Call it a time capsule if you will; a happy accident seems more apropos.
Soul Mining is Daniel Lanois’ story, but it’s chock full of the people he’s shared his life with. Yes, there are chapters about his studio experiences with folks such as the Neville Brothers, Emmylou Harris, U2, and Bob Dylan, but he also acknowledges the people he feels shaped him into who he is.
Ladies & Gentlemen … The Rolling Stones is a document of the Mick Taylor-era Stones at their gritty and sweat-soaked finest. If you needed a time capsule item to best explain to future civilizations what rock ‘n’ roll was all about, this movie is it.
You have to hand it to Nick Kent on a couple of levels: first, anyone who can write a memoir that includes folks like David Bowie, Chrissie Hynde, Lou Reed, and Keith Richards and never comes off as a name-dropper must be telling a pretty good story, wouldn’t you say?
Yep – Psychedelphia knows how to shape-shift and genre-morph, fo’ sure. At times, you might come close to accusing them of musical ADD, but if you put an ear to what’s happening, you can usually find the common thread that connects the various passages. And they’re versatile: they can do the spacey/loopy/how-are-they-ever-going-to-land-this-thing stuff (“Nano”) as well as breathe underwater courtesy of the air trapped inside big ol’ bass bubbles (“Submerged”).
73 years into this life, Charles Lloyd is truly the master of soul-fired saxophone – and the ability to infuse an ensemble with that same vibe. With Mirror, the first studio effort from Lloyd’s present band (their recorded debut was 2008’s live Rabo de Nube), the music is rich and full; both easily digestible and as deep as you want it to be at the same time.
When the title track of the new Michael Franti & Spearhead album The Sound Of Sunshine takes off, you might catch yourself thinking that our favorite soldier of peace has gotten a little formulaic. The chukka-chukka-strummed acoustic guitar and walloping backbeat combined with a gotcha-singing-along-the-first-time-through chorus can’t help but remind you of “Say Hey (I Love You)” off 2008's All Rebel Rockers.
Discovering The Trio of OZ via their debut album has been one of those unexpected pleasures that happens every once in a while. I didn’t see this one coming, boys and girls – but I’m glad it did. Pianist Rachel Z, drummer Omar Hakim, and bassist Maeve Royce have laid down a jam-laden jazz album chock full of emotion and life. Some of the jams captured here take you through more twists and turns than the average feature-length movie: tension that gives way to wistful sweetness or jump-in-the-air joy, with enough peaks and dips and drifts and glides to hook you in and make you want to find out just where the thing is going next.
Rubber Soulive is an album full of tunes done for the exactly right reason: total love for the subject at hand. Add in the groove factor and you have one great piece of work.
