Celebrating Community
When everyone is making it up on the spot, who’s the composer? This is a question every time an album track has a composer credit, or when a musician on the bandstand announces that “this was written/composed by” so-and-so. If you listen to jazz at all, you’ve heard one or more musicians play a tune (usually a song form of […]
OK, sure, you can find “worst” music countdown clips on YouTube, but they’re full of all the obvious choices, with none of the deep cosmic thoughts you’ll find here in the Star-Revue. And I can pretty much guarantee no bandwidth problems with this page. Also, this countdown is all about the record, recognizing not only the song, but the artist, […]
I know this has happened to most of us who are big city dwellers – in saloons, clubs and airport bars, on train platforms, on the high street, in greasy spoons, a few times in likely places, but more often than not in the most outlandish and unexpected of circumstances. I’m talking about what the paparazzi refer to as celebrity […]
John Zorn has been more than just a staple on New York’s creative musical landscape: he’s been a defining factor. Like an institution, flowing from one decade to the next, unchanging, yet always updating, he has been here. Flowing seamlessly between genres, linking half a dozen scenes together in a musical cauldron, he is also an artist defined by his […]
I’m at Vox Pop, an artist lounge and cafe-bar on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. It’s Sunday night, open mic. It’s 2009. Many of the performers are good. Some, like me, are playing solo and singing for the first time in front of an audience. I’ve been playing guitar for a long time, but never carrying the load by myself with […]
Buzzy Linhart passed away February, 13, 2020. He was 76. Buzzy was a musician and songwriter revered among the Greenwich Village scene of the ‘60s. He was also a muse of the hit-making singer-songwriter era. Mr. Linhart once sang “Get Together” at an open mic; it blew away Jesse Colin Young who was in attendance. Linhart taught the song to […]
Since the late 1950s, the Grammys have represented the summit of success in the music industry. Musicians all over the world have dreamed of holding a golden gramophone. The Grammy is considered one of the big four entertainment awards, alongside the Emmy (TV), the Oscar (film), and the Tony (theater). As a child in the early 2000s, I sat in […]
As all eyes, ears, and hearts prepare for the wild months ahead leading up to November, everyone everywhere is keenly aware of the political climate (hurricane?) that we’re living through. It’s often hard to know how to act, what to do, or how best to be helpful. Gone is the 24-7 in-the-streets mobilization from 2017, as everyone has been forced […]
Greg Fox sipped his own mix of green tea, honey and nettles as he spoke from his shared loft in Gowanus in what he describes as being “as professional a situation as a bedroom studio could be.” The large, sunny room is filled with drums and other instruments, recording equipment and the ephemera of the working musician and percussion instructor. […]
Habibi is an all-female psychedelic Iranian-American rock band originally from Detroit, Michigan, now based in Brooklyn, New York. They’ve been featured on NPR, have previously released an EP and a full-length album, and will be playing a show with Ice Balloons at Market Hotel in Brooklyn on Saturday, February 15, at 9 pm to celebrate their second full-length release, titled […]