“You haven’t seen nothing yet Until you see me do…the JAMES BROWN!” — James Brown, “There Was A Time” James Brown was a great artist. I don’t mean only that he was a great pop artist, or that he was […]
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On an oppressively sweaty summer night back in 1987, I saw Dwight Yoakam and his Babylon Cowboys perform at a club in Kansas City, Missouri. Yoakam was already a “star” at this point, with four or five top-10 country hits […]
Again and again on this intimate concert recording, Maria McKee creates a mood, haunted or longing or joyous as the song calls for — and then, again and again, she shatters that mood. She does this mainly by announcing “Thank […]
Buddy Killen, who passed away November 1 at age 73, belongs on the short list of those who most transformed country music from an amalgam of regional styles into a nationally recognized and Nashville-centered genre. Killen got very, very rich […]
The writer and teacher Ellen Willis often described herself as a democratic, libertarian radical. Only 64 when she died of lung cancer November 9, she leaves behind a slim but essential body of cultural criticism. Willis was a fierce feminist […]
For those of us raised on rock, Johnny Mathis is supposed to be the enemy. Mathis was, we have been instructed to conclude, an archaic singer of affected prettiness and saccharine sentiment, and he’s never been embraced as a symbol […]
People reach for adjectives like “weird” and “otherworldly,” “eerie” and “haunting” when describing Roy Orbison and his music. These word choices mean to underscore the ways in which Orbison stood apart from his rock-and-pop contemporaries. But such descriptions have the […]
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been unfair to Ronnie Milsap. I’ve dismissed him as just a second-rate country-pop singer, and a cheesy one at that — and this from someone who’s been known to like quite a lot […]
“You begin by leaving” is how this current New Yorker and former Virginian begins his follow-up to last year’s debut EP, Undone. “I must have understood wrong,” he drawls, rubbing his eyes and coming to. “Morning comes, the difference is […]
IV Thieves previously called themselves Nick Armstrong & the Thieves. Under the old name, they perfected a retro-groovy rock ‘n’ roll vibe, the finest example of which, “Down Home Girl”, showed up in a recent Honda truck ad — the […]
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