Celebrating Community
Back in July, Magik Markers quietly released a four-song digital EP, the first new music they’ve put out in a half dozen years. It was subdued, a little psychedelic, with a title suggesting they’ve been out of our ugly loop for a while. (Magik Markers has always been good at naming). In October, the band followed Isolation From Exterior Time: […]
There is something disorienting and unsettling about experiencing an artist talking about the end of their career in real time. They narrate the end of something that, until uttered, still existed. Imagine reading a book where every word disappears as your eyes move along the line, the only trace the one left in your memory. That is what it was […]
Jorma Kaukonen has played Monterey Pop, Woodstock and festivals all around the world for the past half century plus. On this chilly October, New England night amidst the pandemic, it’s time for him to head towards the stage solo, wearing a mask, under a tent of socially distanced fans eagerly awaiting what is likely several music lover’s first concert experience […]
Deerhoof’s set at last year’s Time:Spans festival was a surprise in even in the midst of 11 days of unpredictableness. The festival has all the earmarks of experimentalism; it’s organized by the The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust, named for a contemporary of John Cage and Morton Feldman, and held primarily at the Dimenna Center for Classical Music. Deerhoof […]
54-46 was Toots Hibbert’s prison number. He sang it out loud on the electrifying track 54-46 That’s My Number (1969), one of a crop of tunes that made Toots and the Maytals a household name on the island of Jamaica and soon thereafter in a lot of other places too. Toots Hibbert, the reggae singer, passed away on September 11 […]
Recently, I won tickets from a Hudson Valley radio station to see Margo Price perform live at Brooklyn Bowl via a streaming platform called Fans. It was great to see a concert again and the band was excellent, but the experience was odd as there was no audience, aside from a few flashes of fellow spectators “Zooming” in. While I […]
David Lynch is a problem. A big one. David Lynch is a problem because he doesn’t punish his villains. He’s a problem because he doesn’t explain the motivations of his villains or even so much as resolve his stories. David Lynch is a problem because he won’t tell us what to think of him. Storytellers runs the risk of being […]
The biggest surprise about Patrick Higgins’ 2015 record Bachanalia was how straight he played it. Maybe best known as a guitarist for the experimental trance group Zs, Higgins approached a variety of Bach’s works for solo strings and keyboard on their own terms, adapting them to his instrument without trying to repurpose or contextualize. It’s that part of Higgins’ head […]
Otis Gibb’s album, “Hoosier National” released officially on Sept 18th, 2020 and he has some thoughts on his timing here “I think it’s safe to say, this is the absolute worst possible time to release a record. Most people would give up at this point, but I’m not most people. “ Well, to hell with the pandemic, I’m glad this […]
Beethoven was born 250 years ago this year. What this fact has to do with jazz, in the musical sense, is very little. But it does have to do with the formation of a body of work that represents the aesthetic virtues and values of an art—in other words, what the academies and institutions call a canon. Classical music did […]