Wilson Pickett liked to tell his audiences about the time a white journalist asked him: “What is ‘soul’?” “You know what I told him?” Pickett would preach. “I said, ‘So-oh-oh-ul. Soul! Ain’t nothin’…but a feelin’!” No need to dispute such […]
Chuck Brown didn’t exactly invent the club-crazy offshoot of funk and soul known as go-go. But he did more than anyone else to nurture its birth and codify a sound. It was Brown and his Soul Survivors who, in Washington, […]
This box not only shares its title with a 2003 Ace Records import, it includes exactly the same music and liner notes, albeit in snazzier packaging. Further, both that earlier Ace import and this new domestic reissue are missing thirteen […]
It’s been a decade since Hanson hit with “MMMBop”, the chart-topper they will forever associated with, and dismissed by. Yet the bubblegum trio’s slight image was belied from the jump by its forthright, well, seriousness. Fans know not only that […]
Johnny Rivers had his first hit in 1964 with a live version of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” and the subsequent album Live At The Whisky A Go-Go. Over the next few years, Rivers and a streamlined rhythm section chugged smoothly through […]
On which Bruce Robison provides a primer for budding singer-songwriters. First lesson: If you don’t have ten or twelve really strong songs, then just go with, say, seven perfect ones as Robison does here. People want good discs before they […]
In art, the surest route to the universal is by way of the particular. Bettye LaVette understands this. She knows the best way she can examine what it’s like to be human — what it can mean to be in […]
CLOSE UP: Blood-red cowboy boots stride confidently down a tiled hall. CAMERA PANS: A sage green Nudie suit is revealed. Bejeweled cacti and wagon wheels glitter up and down its legs and sleeves; a Conestoga shimmers on the jacket back. […]
Unlike his former employer Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks has never found fame beyond the bluegrass faithful, and he doesn’t have the limited name recognition of a Del McCoury, or even of a J.D. Crowe. He should. The Last Suit You […]
One of Tommy Womack’s favorite subjects is the absurd and glorious power of rock ‘n’ roll. The title track of his 1998 solo debut Positively Na Na nails the bittersweet gut punch of watching the music scene pass you by: […]
