Music
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New York state of music
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“We single-handedly lowered the standards of an entire industry” — David Johannsen of the New York Dolls, in “Once Upon a Time in New York” on BBC4 During the 1970s, while New York City was in economic and cultural meltdown, the disaffected and disenfranchised minorities of the city spawned punk, disco and hip-hop. Within a…
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Let’s hit it and quit
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R.I.P. the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please: James Brown. (Listen via Alex Ross and WFMU.)
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Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll!
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Chuck Berry turns 80 next week! He invented rock ‘n’ roll and he understands the intimate relationship between electric guitars and capitalism as well as Colonel Tom Parker ever did — and much better than Elvis.
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Hole in the Ground
Last year, musician, artist, polymath and all-around sweet guy Jem Finer built a radio telescope in the Parks in Oxford. This year, funded by an award from the PRS Foundation for New Music, he’s looking in the opposite direction: he’s dug a well in the King’s Wood, in Kent (Southeast England) and made it into…
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Xgau
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As predicted a few months ago, American rock ‘n’ roll critic Robert Christgau has been fired from the rapidly-decaying Village Voice. The Voice was the first of the “Alternative Newsweeklies”, with a strong lefty political stance mixed with arts coverage from the Beats to the hippies and the punks. Nowadays, the Voice is owned by…
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Beatles-Stones-Who
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If you grew up suburban in the late 70s (after they had all left their best days behind), one of the most important questions was, of course: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or The Who? ITV4 is showing “The Kids Are Alright”, a documentary made about The Who just before Keith Moon died. Amped-up on…
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Sacred Music
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Last night I went to hear Alejandro Escovedo at St James Church in London. As an atheist/Jew, I’ve never really gotten used to churches (and this really is a church, not a performance space), can’t help but want to be respectful of the sanctity of the space. Escovedo brought along his string quintet, and the…
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Also…
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Wine: California beats the French (again). Meanwhile, wine seems to be taking over the net, with podcasts and a a spate of sites for reviewing, ranking and cataloguing your wine, some with all sorts of new Web 2.0 goodies. (More commentary when and if I get to around to actually using them.) Song: go read…
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