Posts by Shawn Donohue

Friday night The Family Band crammed the Roseland Ballroom with all kinds of fans as they say on their new album Colorblind, “Red Yellow Black or White/We all getting down tonight” and get down they did, as the New Jersey natives had a “Homecoming”.

ar from a sellout of the huge arena (complete sections were empty) those in attendance caught a master still on top of his game and with the encore of two of the greatest modern songs ever written – Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower -few left unsatisfied.

One needs to know before listening that Wolf Eyes' Human Animal isn’t remotely close to your leather clad teased hair metal from days of lore, this is the psychopathic soundscape that hides in the heads of serial killers spilled out onto CD. A director could take this disk, and literally use the whole thing in order as a musical score to create a cringe inducing fright fest.

When Primus played, they were tight, if not as powerful or spacious as in past outings, but with the ambivalence or possible anger being displayed from one of the quirkiest front men in the business, I think it is safe too say that it was an off night for the group who ironically usually just Sucks!

CMJ (NYC’s annual music fest) came in like a lion, roared like a lion and left like – yup, you got it – a lion. The whirlwind of fantastic jams set the foundation for the Wednesday night show at Bowery Ballroom. Chock Full O’ Bands that are in various stages of their journey on a streetcar named fame, there was a bevy of talent packing the house for seven hours of music. While tag wearing hipsters skedaddled about the city, your faithful narrator got a spot on the ballroom floor and has a review of each of these acts presented here, because all are worthy of praise and your attention:

He is a legend, he is Scratch and he is The Upsetter. But he's also self-indulgent to a fault on his latest offering.

These Raconteurs have a story to tell; they are one of the most exciting, tightest bands playing today, and put on one of the best shows of the year.

If Golem! would have let their raven hair down and stomped around the studio a bit more, Fresh Off Boat could have risen above kitsch.

While some in the audience soaked it up as simple giddy fun, others were clearly annoyed by Jet's lack of showmanship and overall mediocre playing. All classic rock clichés came out, as did a few lighters during “Look What You’ve Done.”

New and old (well, except for the crowd who were just old), the two Who’s rocked the worlds most famous arena with a collection of “oldies,” but primarily relied on the rather younger songs. After putting out a “mini-opera” back in July, Townshend and Daltrey have begun to march forward, with plans to release a new album in the next month, offering the bands first serious output since 1982.

Welcome to Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, which sounds about as “modern” as a Model T Ford. The legend's new album has become his first #1 record since 1976’s Desire, to which Modern Times is a kindred spirit; both follow career defining albums which critics hailed as “The Re-birth of Dylan.”

Any night is a good night to dig into Dinosaur Jr. but the Warsaw show may have been a really special one, because it turns out the group got a bunch of their equipment stolen after the show. Here’s hoping though that they get it back and their signature sound returns with them for many more bingo hall concerts to come.

It is amazing that a band playing together since 1981 can still manage to play with such grace and fire, fresh songs alongside classics, with everything working out so seamlessly. Hopefully the Yeah Yeah Yeahs can reach that point someday. But if they needed any guidance, all they had to do was open their ears to one of the best bands of the last quarter century playing beside them.

Mad props need to be given to the good people at JellyNYC for providing free Sunday concerts in a quintessentially Brooklyn atmosphere, an old abandoned swimming pool.

Isolation is the central theme here, from the band’s name to the sound found on Fear Is On Our Side; it seeps through the casket cracks like rain water. A remote gasping vocal delivery of lines like “Reaching/For the end/Never make a sound.” place you squarely back in 1986 at a Cure/Depeche Mode double bill, while the music behind those lines manages to raise the stakes.

These Alaskan country-fried players sure have some depressing Ten Day Benders; they also have enough good ‘ole boy in them to pump a shotgun and pick a fiddle simultaneously.

Less than two weeks after Kobayashi downed 53 and 3/4 hotdogs on the boardwalk of Coney Island, crowds once again crammed the shore ready to check out the sights and sounds of the 2006 Village Voice Siren Fest.

Under the blazing sun, Phil Lesh and Friends (Larry Campbell guitar, Barry Sless pedal steel, Joan Osborne vocals, John Molo drums, Greg Osby sax, and Rob Barraco keys) began stretching it out from the first note, with a patient jam that eventually fell into “Truckin’.”

Well-Matched showcases classic numbers such as the Phillips/ Parker rumbling “Mystery Train,” Dylan’s piercing "Positively 4th Street” and Jimmy Cliff’s reggae gem “The Harder They Come,” in a fashion that any music lover can get behind.

For the two Northeast shows on back-to-back nights, there was certainly a focus on the new album as well as a look-back to the beginning of the band