D'Angelo's Black Messiah: Politics & Nihilism
Reviewers have compared D’Angelo’s Black Messiah to Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On; to me, Sly’s project is way more groove-heavy, driving, direct, while D’Angelo seems to be working with what I’d call the anti-hook (a few tracks excepted)
Plainsong - Reinventing Richard: The Songs of Richard Farina
We are celebrating many 50th anniversaries this year, and rightly so as 1965 was a momentous year in popular and folk music. But I would be remiss if I did not write some kind words for one of the significant figures of that decade and one of my idols in
Gregg Allman - Live: Back to Macon GA
“Macon serves as the home of a great group of fellows that played and lived laughed and cried and created and worked out and arranged and adjusted things together for 45 years now,” Gregg Allman says, introducing his latest, Gregg Allman Live, Back to Macon, Ga. Macon's Grand
Roaring Down Thunder Road: Darlin', You Know Just What I'm Here For
I took a road trip with “Born to Run” yesterday. It’s the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen's groundbreaking album, and there’s no better way to experience it than by blasting it in your car, with the windows open and the wind blowing back your hair. Cars
The Lomax Blues
At his death in 2002, Alan Lomax’s mark on American popular culture was reviewed with justifiable awe. Folk music curator at the Library of Congress from 1936 to 1950 his recording expeditions, mainly across the Southern states, documented the idiomatic music of a rapidly vanishing rural America. Work songs,
Jimmy LaFave's Trail Two & Trail Three
My recent review of Jimmy LaFave’s reissued Trail One and new Trail Four made no mention of the volumes in between because I hadn’t heard them. I have now, and can attest that they are every bit as memorable as the collections that preceded and followed them.
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