5 Essential Female Jazz Vocal CDs
Collectors and aficionados often overlook jazz vocal recordings in their quests to enhance their collections. In my observation, while the great jazz singers are admired, their seminal recordings are not valued as highly as recordings by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk and other great instrumentalists. I’ve never understood the disproportionate fascination with instrumental over […]
After Napster: The Revolution that Wasn’t
It’s been about 20 years since Shawn & Sean – Fanning & Parker – casually unleashed Napster and pretty much defined the tech term “disruptor.” Shawn Fanning’s peer-to-peer file-sharing software platform was like a tsunami slamming into the sleepy tropical beach that was the music industry in 1999. But now what seemed like an unstoppable […]
In Memory of Ric Ocasek
Richard Theodore Otcasek turned what we now call classic rock on its ringing ear. Known popularly as Ric Ocasek, his band The Cars blended guitar-based rock with keyboards and angular rhythms and defined much of the New Wave sound. Led by Ric, The Cars towed the 70s into the 80s with their geek-chic, retro-futuristic style. […]
The Music’s Not Over: We Rank the Classic Doors Tunes
The music of The Doors beats in the heart of the mythology of the American counter-culture. Jim Morrison in particular is a mythological figure on a par with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Jackson Pollack and Charlie Manson. You could say Jim is the counter-culture Elvis. Just like the King of Rock & Roll, […]
Format Wars: The End of the MP3 Era
In 2002, I saw a photo of Shaquille O’Neal walking through LAX wearing some bright white ear pieces and carrying what I learned was an iPod. It was a sports story and didn’t have anything to do with music or tech, but the device fascinated me. I was similarly fascinated in 1980 when Sony unleashed […]
Bob at the Knob: Seger’s Final Tour
I was conflicted about attending one of Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band’s farewell tour shows in Detroit. I pretty much wrote Bob off around the time of Against the Wind (to which we always added the prefix “Don’t Pee”). I didn’t care for his hard turn into Kenny Rogers’s territory after he achieved […]
R&Beatles : A Soulful Top Ten of Beatles Covers
Everyone loves The Beatles, right? Well, for many years, I was an exception; I didn’t immediately fall in love with the Fab Four. All the obsessed fans and fetishists turned me off, even though The Beatles influenced much of the music I was listening to as a teen. Eventually I became one of those annoying […]
Mott the Hoople Live at Fillmore Detroit
Mott the Hoople The Fillmore Detroit, Michigan 5 April 2019 I recently took my dinosaurs of rock experience to a new level. Mott the Hoople made Detroit one of the eight US dates on their “Mott the Hoople ’74” tour. When a friend called with tickets to see 79-year old Ian Hunter and his old […]
Rocktology – Top American Bands Tournament
I’ve got to admit that The Cars winning our top American bands tourney was kinda unexpected. They completely dominated the F4, backing over Van Halen’s feet and then getting CCR with the door. Cheers to The Cars’ social media community, which came out in force when it counted most to support their boys. That’s right, […]
CanJam NYC 2019
You know what CanJam and the personal audio community needs? Other than a weekend in NYC in the middle of winter, we need a fixed-disc front end for our systems. A CD player, my friends! That’s right, step right up, it’s just down there in the “Things You Didn’t Know You Wanted” aisle. You know […]