Most of the 60s could
be termed tumultuous, especially the latter half of
the decade. These were the confluent years of
radical hippies smashing head-on into Madison
Avenue. This was when the music started most
disturbingly to transmogrify into "the music
business."
After a 40 year run as the
master of Mellow, not much has changed on Planet
Donovan. The wisdom is still as abundant as the
weed; poets in berets still blow saxes in the
coffeehouse at night, and flowers still don heads
of bushy hair in the audience.
Taken together, these films are an eye-opening
look at all the reasons there ever was a zeitgeist
that surrounded John Travolta. And they're a time
capsule of a when the most important thing was
figuring out who we were...and not wondering if
we'd actually make it back from vacation alive.
That's Big, the latest release by Little
Charlie and the Nightcats, is their finest work
yet. The band covers a wide range of styles, from
swing jazz, jump blues and rockabilly, to the
familiar sound of Chicago blues.
On Any Time, Leon Redbone's
throaty, mumble-mouthed delivery become a testament
to his great love for a time when melody was king
and electric instruments weren't yet a thought.
If one were to look only at the cd shelves in
their local music store, it would seem that the
Grateful Dead are more active now than when they
were actually an actively performing band. Writer
Robert Wiersema looks at what's available.
Soundtracks/Retro The
Magic Show
DVD & Original Broadway cast
CD
A breathtaking original cast recording and a
marginal video recreation commemorate the mid-1970s
Broadway classic with varying degrees of
success.
When the Jitterbug Bites is a happy and
self-assured album that's as easy to listen to as
it is difficult to categorize. Joe Turley's debut
album is worth the difficult hunt it will take to
find.
Rock/Retro Flammable:
Tribute to the Red Hot Chili
Peppers
The thing about reinterpreting someone else's
music is not to merely imitate the original, or
bend lyrics to suit your style. It's about finding
a theme in the original, drawing it out and
building your own voice on top of the
framework.
Elvis Word for Word is a somewhat
esoteric book. It doesn't really shed any new light
on the life of the doomed King, but -- really -- is
there any new light to be shed?
Kozelek's approach to de-kitsching Denver is to
have an assortment of indie artists swathe select
tunes in oppressive gloom, slow the tempos to
dirge-time and package the mopey results in vaguely
portentous artwork a la Kozelek's sometime label,
4AD.
