For all you closet headbangers who thought classic thrash and punk died with Cobain, grab this album, as it will bring you back to those long-ago days.
With eighty percent of New Orleans submerged under up to twenty feet of water in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and thousands of casualties anticipated, the music world is dealing with the emotional impact and trying to imagine the future of one of America’s most influential cultural centers.
“I’ve had, like, an hour’s sleep,” says Dr. John, on tour in Minneapolis. “All my family is MIA — I mean, most everybody I know. They might be anywhere. I’m praying hard.” For the blues legend, a New Orleans native, “my heart’s always gonna be in New Orleans. It ain’t just the place, it’s the whole culture. The music will survive; the people will survive.”
Former Phish bassist Mike Gordon, who has played the city numerous times adds, “I’m very passionate about the city — I’ve had amazing experiences there. We used to go canoeing on the bayou, go to Mother’s Restaurant and see these hip brass bands that no one knows about. New Orleans is such a fuel for the entire country’s music. There is such a looseness to the city and the people, a happy-go-lucky quality, throwing caution to the wind. I don’t think the pure essence of the place can be wiped away by natural disaster.”
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With the Grateful Dead and his own side projects, Jerry Garcia frequently covered the songs of Bob Dylan. Fifteen of those interpretations have been collected for a two-disc set, “Ladder to the Stars: Garcia Plays Dylan,” due Oct. 11 via Rhino.
An American musical icon in his own right, the late guitarist/singer was a masterful interpreter, and within the poetry of Dylan, a longtime friend and compatriot, he found a wealth of material. The Jerry Garcia Band provides the bulk of the recordings in this collection, touching on such classics as “Positively 4th Street,” “I Shall Be Released” and “Tangled Up in Blue.”
The Dead is also present, with disc two boasting four selections from the group: “She Belongs to Me,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Mighty Quinn (Quinn, The Eskimo)” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” At deadline it was unknown if the latter pair of selections are the same versions that appeared on Arista’s 2002 compilation “Postcards of the Hanging: The Grateful Dead Perform the Songs of Bob Dylan.”
Also included on the first “Ladder” disc is a version of “The Wicked Messenger” by Garcia’s short-lived jazz-leaning side project Legion Of Mary. That group’s version of Dylan’s “Tough Mama” was part of the “”The Jerry Garcia Collection, Volume 1: Legion Of Mary,” released in August by Rhino.
In addition to the music, which has been remastered in HDCD, the set includes liner notes by Garcia biographer Blair Jackson, with input from the Dead’s Bob Weir.
Here is the “Ladder to the Stars: Garcia Plays Dylan” track list:
Disc one:
“It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry / Tough Mama,” Jerry Garcia
“Positively 4th Street,” Jerry Garcia Band
“The Wicked Messenger,” Legion Of Mary
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Jerry Garcia Band
“Simple Twist of Fate,” Jerry Garcia Band
“I Shall Be Released,” Jerry Garcia Band
Disc two:
“When I Paint My Masterpiece,” Jerry Garcia Band
“She Belongs to Me,” Grateful Dead
“Forever Young,” Jerry Garcia Band
“Tangled Up in Blue,” Jerry Garcia Band
“Senor (Tales of Yankee Power),” Jerry Garcia Band
“Visions of Johanna,” Grateful Dead
“Mighty Quinn (Quinn, the Eskimo),” Grateful Dead
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” Grateful Dead
Source billboard.com
An upstart five-some rustling up a serious fuss in their native Philadelphia, the Brakes draw you in with a deceptively laid-back funk-rock thing, probably reminiscent of Sublime, the easy name-check, but also less remembered and way more musical groups of kind like e:verything and the Getaway People.
Fats Domino, who had been unaccounted for in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, was plucked from the flooded city by a helicopter late Thursday. He was reported to be in good condition.
An APB went out for the musician and his family earlier in the day.
The musician’s niece, Checquoline Davis, posted a plea on Craigslist.com for information on her missing relatives, writing that Domino and his wife, Rosemary, and their children and grandchildren “didn’t get out” of their New Orleans home. Her plea was one of thousands seeking information on missing friends and family on the site.
The R&B legend had last been heard from on Sunday night, a day before the storm struck. During a phone call with longtime agent Al Embry, the 77-year-old performer insisted he would ride out the hurricane in his three-story home.
It is not immediately known if Domino’s family made it to safety.
Domino’s house was located in the city’s 9th Ward, an area that is heavily flooded and littered with dead bodies.
The singer and boogie-woogie pianist, born Antoine Domino, has sold over 110 million records in his nearly five-decade career highlighted by the jukebox staples “Blueberry Hill” and “Ain’t That a Shame.” The New Orleans music fixture’s 1949 recording of “The Fat Man” is considered by some to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record, and Domino was among the inaugural group of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
Another Hall of Famer, singer-songwriter Allen Toussaint, was listed among the missing, although Fox News reported that Toussaint may be among the 20,000-plus refugees seeking shelter in the Super Dome.
With New Orleans a hub of jazz, blues and even rap, several musicians were impacted by the storm. Rapper Juvenile’s home was destroyed and he says he has lost several friends. Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner, who was waiting out the storm in his native Minneapolis, told the Associated Press he still hadn’t heard anything about the condition of his home and recording studio in the Crescent City. Pirner moved there seven years ago.
Meanwhile, several high-powered denizens are rallying support. Master P, whose home was swamped and who hasn’t been able to track down his uncle, father-in-law or sister-in-law, has announced the formation of a charity, Team Rescue, and is organizing a “Save Our Hood” concert and benefit album. Wynton Marsalis will play both NBC and BET’s telethons in the coming days. Louisiana natives Tim McGraw and Harry Connick Jr. will also perform at the NBC event and have made public appeals for help.
“I haven’t slept in days,” Connick says in a statement. “Although I now finally know that my immediate family in New Orleans is safe, I have not heard from many, many friends and other family members.
“New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse, and I can only dream that one day she will recapture her glory. I will do everything within my power to make that happen and to help in any way I can to ease the suffering of my city, my people!”
Source yahoo.com.
Already battling an injured knee, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme collapsed after a Monday show in Hamburg, forcing the cancellation of the next evening’s concert in Stuttgart. According to QOTSA’s Web site, Homme “was diagnosed with exhaustion and ordered to bed by a local doctor.”
The statement adds that Homme “has been performing every night on this tour despite his physical condition (due to a knee operation less than a week before he left for tour), and it finally caught up with him. He is resting now and in a stable condition.”
The remaining dates on the group’s European tour are scheduled to resume tomorrow (Sept. 3) at Spain’s Azkena Rock Festival. Homme is also expected to be healthy enough to begin QOTSA’s North American tour with Nine Inch Nails, which begins Sept. 16 in San Diego.
It’s been a rough few months for the California-based rock act, which have found Homme battling the aforementioned knee injury as well as a lung infection that required the cancellation of a February European tour.
But QOTSA fans do have a lot to look forward to. An Aug. 23 show at London’s Brixton Academy was taped for an as-yet-untitled CD/DVD due Nov. 22 via Interscope, and the group has also recorded a cover of Joe Walsh’s “In the City” for the soundtrack to the upcoming video game “The Warriors.” In addition, Homme has remixed two songs from Death From Above 1979, which will join QOTSA and NIN on the road this fall.
Source billboard.com.
Having sung with Canadian indie-popsters Broken Social Scene to female rapper Peaches to the Kings, Leslie Feist has paid her dues. But it
Try as it might, Blue Eyed in the Red Room ends up as a collection of near-miss electro instrumentals which could have advanced past golf-cart-cruise-music status with just a little improvement on the arrangements. It
As several hundred enthusiastic supporters rallied to keep CBGB’s open, the landlord of the venerable punk club announced Wednesday that the lease on the 32-year-old landmark will not be renewed.
The Bowery Residents’ Committee, landlord of the building on the Bowery, “believes it is in the best interest of our clients
Blues veteran R.L. Burnside, who experienced a late career renaissance after being rediscovered by Fat Possum Records in the 1990s, died today in a Memphis hospital. He was 78. Fans wishing to make a donation can write the Freeland & Freeland Trust Account at P.O. Box 269, Oxford, MS 38655. All proceeds will benefit Burnside’s widow, Alice Mae. Burnside is also survived by 12 children and numerous grandchildren.
“His health was declining,” Fat Possum founder Matthew Johnson tells Billboard.com. “I’m trying to get an official cause of death, but the hospital can’t get it out. He was our man. He was the first artist we signed, and our biggest. We were lucky to have a relationship.”
Born in Harmontown, Miss., on Nov. 21, 1926, Burnside worked as a farmer in nearby Coldwater, Miss. As a youth, he was exposed to the blues of such local masters as Fred McDowell and Joe Callicott and began playing in his late teens.
“I watched him,” Burnside said of McDowell in a 1996 interview with Billboard. “We lived pretty close to him at one time. I watched him and picked up a lot of stuff from him (and guitarist) Ranie Barnett. They was guys that was all around, close. I watched them play, and I kinda put my style with it.’
In 1967, fife-and-drum bandleader Othar Turner led folklorist George Mitchell to Burnside, who recorded several performances released by Arhoolie Records in 1968. For many years thereafter, he performed regularly in local juke joints, including one run by bluesman (and future labelmate) Junior Kimbrough.
By the ’70s, his notoriety had spread to the point that he toured in Europe and recorded for Swing Master in the Netherlands and Arion in France.
It wasn’t until the ’90s that Burnside gained fame in the U.S. He appeared in director Robert Mugge’s 1991 documentary “Deep Blues” and on the 1992 Atlantic soundtrack album. He cut two acclaimed albums for Fat Possum; the records, “Bad Luck City” (1993) and “Too Bad Jim” (1994), were produced by writer Robert Palmer, whose 1981 book was the basis for Mugge’s film. In 1996, he also recorded an album with underground rock act Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, “Ass Pocket of Whiskey” (Matador).
After 1999 heart surgery, Burnside kept his appearance schedule to a minimum, but continued to release music for Fat Possum, including last year’s “A Bothered Mind,” which debuted at No. 6 on Billboard’s Top Blues Albums chart.
Source billboard.com.
