Posts by Doug Collette

The Rolling Stones' 1978 release Some Girls is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the iconic British band’s career. It followed Black and Blue and It’s Only Rock and Roll that sounded like mere holding patterns even if they had not come out subsequent to the alternately raucous and haunting Goats Head Soup recalling  "Silver Train,” "Star Star" along with "Coming Down Again.” Some Girls Live in Texas reaffirms the strength of The Stones as a performing unit

Whether Boris Garcia’s band name is an albatross is officially a moot point with Today We Sail. This recording is the work of a band well grounded in their roots and fully into the process of transcending them.

Given the names involved, it stands to reason this is a hard-hitting session

Gov’t Mule concerts are always rife with surprises so why think the tenth anniversary of New Year’s celebrations at New York’s Beacon Theatre would be any different? Well, for one thing because the quartet had made only few select appearances in 2011–ABB’s Wanee festival and their own Mountain/Christmas Jams–as titular leader Warren Haynes spent the better part of his time touring with his own band in support of his Stax solo album Man in Motion.

It’s not quite accurate to call Frankie Miller the unsung hero of British rock n’ soul because he had more than just a taste of mainstream recognition, while the crafts-manlike songwriter in him garnered comparable commercial success via movies and television. Yet the emotional undercurrent in the music included in …That’s Who! makes the case he was worthy of more widespread acknowledgement than the compilation’s title wryly references.

The Felice Brothers had a right to look perfectly bedraggled under the stage lights at Higher Ground. As Ian Felicde related early in the set, their bus had broken down enroute to Vermont while sibling James had been in the hospital earlier in the day with pink eye (hence his intro of a tune later in the set as “the conjunctivitis version).

Known less as a musician and more for his role as producer (Dawes among other collaborations) as well as avatar for the (re-) burgeoning Laurel Canyon music scene in California, Jonathan Wilson aims to equalize the balance with Gentle Spirit, his second full length (and first widely-distributed) solo album. The beauty of the work is that it captures rather than contrives the tranquility implied in its title, not surprisingly with most of the musicianship supplied by Wilson himself

Based on the range of material included in Songs From the South Vol. 1&2, not to mention the uniformly brilliant production throughout the two discs, it’s deeply confounding to consider that Paul Kelly remains sadly unknown outside his homeland of Australia. “”Before Too Long” and “”Look So Fine, Feel So Low” suggest how fully-formed he was as a writer and performer when he began recording. Then as now, he and his work transcend easy categorization or comparisons.

The entire audio discography of Rory Gallagher has been re-released during the course of 2011 under the aegis of the late guitarist’s family, rightfully acknowledging the work of iconoclastic musician whose work is growing in importance with each passing year.

In an ingenious marriage of media in the Burlington Performing Arts Center’s cabaret, The Marco Benevento Trio played a set of original music in accompaniment to a screening of cult horror director Roger Corman’s House of Usher.

The second volume of Los Lobos’ Live Recordings series supplies multiple reminders why this is not just another band from East LA. The scholar/academician might look for more background content on the locale of such a recording as One Night One /Time Vol.2, and perhaps some rationale from the band (especially archivist/producer of this title, Lobos’ Cesar Roas), as to why this particular show deserves preservation for posterity.

The visceral impact of Matthew Sweet’s rock and roll has placed him somewhat erroneously in the power pop genre when in fact, instead of grabbing the listener as do the hook-laden likes of his peer Tommy Keene, Sweet’s guitar-rock insinuates itself as you hear it.

It was an especially pleasant interlude in a performance that would satisfy any fan of Jackie Greene and sufficiently surprise anyone else they’d be convinced to see him again.

Carefully selected by archivist David Lemieux from various tour stops on the Grateful Dead’s first trip abroad, this package is deliberately conceived as a companion piece to the original Europe ’72. As such, Volume 2 functions brilliantly as a complement to that seminal inclusion in the Grateful Dead discography.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Winterland single CD, just released by Legacy Recordings through its affiliation with Experience Hendrix, is not the same music as originally put out through RykoDisc in 1987. It is, instead, a distillation of the four CD deluxe package available the same day as this new release, which is, in turn, a condensed representation of recordings made over three nights in October of 1968 at the now defunct San Francisco venue once overseen by the late impresario extraordinaire Bill Graham.

How rare it is for a seasoned band to revisit its past and re-generate the chemistry of days gone by, while simultaneously progressing into contemporary realms?  Yet that’s exactly what Bela Fleck and The Original Flecktones have done since Howard Levy rejoined the band in 2009.

With tunes from The Beatles (McCartney’s “I Will”) residing comfortably next to standards of a different era ("I Loves You Porgy"), the array of songs matches the versatility of the musicians involved. Deserving an audience beyond that of the genre itself A Moment’s Peace is a seamless piece of contemporary jazz that that never betrays an unnecessary compromise to broaden its appeal.

With first estimates of one million plus dollars raised from Phish’s Benefit for Vermont Flood Recovery on September 14, it’s going to be hard to quell calls for another such affair, especially in light of the flawless execution of the occasion (from announcement to ticket sales to actual show operations) plus the absence of any negative affects on the surrounding community the day of the concert.  After all there’s no shortage of worthwhile causes and the fanbase would certainly welcome a sequel given what they witnessed this full-moonlit night.

Recording with The Combo makes all the difference in the world in the presentation of John Hiatt’s songs. A craftsmanlike composer schooled in Nashville, Hiatt may forever skirt a pro-forma approach to songwriting, but the unified punch of this band brings realism to his material and his performance on Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns.

he effervescent enthusiasm that pervades Tommy Keene’s new album, Behind the Parade, belies the artist’s nearly thirty-year career as a cult figure. Sample the previous high points of his discography– Places that Are Gone or Based on Happy Times– and listen for a discernible difference in energy.