The beginning of the year is traditionally slow for new music, but over the last few weeks things have been picking up with a number of quality releases giving us
When jam titans Widespread Panic opened last night’s hometown show in Athens with For What It’s Worth, fans immediately started speculating about what would follow as the group opened its
Is John Oates of the the iconic pop-soul band Hall and Oates a closet jam fan? Considering Oates sat in with moe. at the Belly Up in Aspen last Thursday
As we first reported last Saturday, Mike Gordon and the Mike Gordon Band will perform on tonight’s episode of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. MGB guitarist Scott Murawski recently blogged
Say what you will about the prince of darkness, but the man knows how to put on a show, to get and most importantly KEEP the crowd involved. It is an experience. Yes, it may primarily be the same show he did last year but for the approximately two hours that Ozzy is on the stage, you sweat, you wave your hands, you clap, you sing, you hear the f-bomb a million times and you scream.
Starting her brief northeast tour on a snowy winter night in Vermont, Neko Case brought her “country noir” sound in it’s full glory to Higher Ground’s Ballroom. It was a night with a lot of hype, as the last time Case was scheduled to perform on this same stage with her band The New Pornographers back in August, she was a no show.
Birds of Avalon must be one of the few touring bands that sports a dueling, husband and wife guitar attack. Paul Siler and Cheetie Jumar’s churning, melodic and quirky axe work propels the LP forward alongside a vibe that mixes melodically rhythmic bass patterns, Merseybeat’s steady, thunder pop drumming and pleasantly spacey vocals.
If you don’t want a secret to come out in the open, you best not tell legendary musician David Crosby. Crosby spilled the beans about Buffalo Springfield’s plans to tour
Now that’s it’s been just about a month since Jam Cruise 9 returned to land, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on all the music I witnessed. While I was familiar with most of the bands aboard the MSC Poesia, there were a number of acts who were new to me. For this week’s B List, I made a list of the 10 bands I hadn’t seen live before the trip who impressed me the most.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that I hadn’t seen a few of these bands, but now that I have, I won’t miss them again the next time they come around.
10. Big Gigantic
[All photos by Chad Smith]
Colorado’s Big Gigantic features drummer Jeremy Salken and producer/saxophonist Dominic Lalli coming together to forge an inventive sound that’s equal parts electronic and rock. You can’t help but dance to the ridiculously high-energy beats and grooves the pair provides. BG’s Zebra Bar set was otherworldly, not only for the work of Salken and Lalli, but also for sit-ins by the likes of Brock Butler, Eric Krasno and Joel Cummins.
READ ON for more of this week’s B List…
February has been a month of heartache for music fans as breakups and rumors of breakups abound. First, the White Stripes amicably quit their courtship, then LCD Soundsystem announced they’d play their last show in April and there was even a rumor about the Gorillaz calling it quits at the top of their game. All of the tragedy aside, 3GM found it strange that these breakups, whether rumored or true, were uncharacteristically harmonious.
Conor Kelley on LCD Soundsystem:
It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
What could be more rock and roll than following through with that line? Although Neil Young is way past the age where he can burn out, and his new work shows absolutely no signs of fading into insignificance, his lyric is still a tried and true adage of the musician lifestyle. Going out while on top almost ensures a legendary reputation in the rock and roll record books. It’s the George Costanza theory about leaving on a high note, and it works like a charm.
In the ’60s and 70s people would rarely leave the game by choice. It was mostly at the hand of drug overdoses (Hendrix), alcoholism (Joplin), french hookers and baguettes (Morrison) or the occasional peach truck (Allman). These days people are hanging up their guitars for a different reason entirely: they see a project’s creative end in sight and walk away before it becomes stale. READ ON for more of this week’s Three Grown Men column…
