In the Mix

Bonnaroo Lineup Announced

2009-02-03T14:02:55Z

The line up for this year's Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, to take place from June 11-14 in Manchester, Tennessee, has been announced. And as the headliner heavy artist list indicates, this year the organizers are taking no chances that ducats will go unsold for the 80,000 a day capacity camping festival. Reunited jam band Phish - whose full tour went on sale this past Friday, with demand crippling Live Nation's new ticketing system - will play two shows. Like Phish, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band will make their only U.S. festival appearance of the year there. And the other marquee names who will play the four day Tennessee fete make it clear that more than ever Bonnarroo, which last year hosted Metallica and Kanye West, is stretching beyond its jam nation roots. Also on the schedule: Erykah Badu, Nine Inch Nails, Merle Haggard, Bon Iver, Bela Fleck & Toumani Diabate, Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costello, Animal Collective, Lucinda Wiliams and Neko Case. The full list of bold faced names is here Last week, the lineup was annouced for Coachella, which goes off in the California desert from April 17-19 and whose acts include Paul McCartney, Amy Winehouse and Philadelphia's Dr. Dog. That list is here.

Dance, Dance, Dance

2009-01-30T20:48:51Z

Swedish siren Lykke Li, whose Youth Novels, produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John, was one of the more enticing, and understated, indie pop platters of the year, plays the First Unitarian Church on Friday night. When she played Johnny Brenda's last year with countrywomen Anna Ternheim and El Perro del Mar, Inquirer review David Stampone likened the 22 year old singer , whose full name is Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson, to "a young Liv Ullman channeling Madonna." Last you might have heard, the show was sold out, but now it's been moved upstairs to the FU Sanctuary, so more tickets are available. Check the R5 Productions web site for details. The "Breaking It Up" video is below, and a clip of "Dance, Dance, Dance" with Bon Iver underneath that.

Bowling Skinheads

2009-01-05T16:23:36Z

Back in the 1980s, before there was "indie-rock," there was Camper Van Beethoven, the California band of mischievous pranksters led by David Lowery (second from the right), who would go on to form Cracker and make a major contribution to Western civilization with "Eurotrash Girl." With Camper Van, Lowery and his cohorts, including guitarist Victor Krummenacher and violin player Jonathan Segel, stuck a pin in the ballon of post-punk orthodoxy and high seriousness on albums like Telephone Free Landslide Victory and Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. Camper Van has reunited from time to time this decade, and they play the World Cafe Live on Wednesday. Below, they "Take The Skinheads Bowling."

Christmas List

2008-12-18T13:12:31Z

Here's a Christmas playlist to go with the one in Thursday's Inquirer. It's not an exact replica: There are a few different selections, and additional cuts from Rosie Thomas, Brian McKnight, Rahsaan Patterson, and B.B. King, plus that Fountains of Wayne song that's in a L.L. Bean commercial.

xmas2008

Mixtape 2008

2008-12-13T18:28:37Z

Here's a player to go with my 2008 playlist. An explanation is here. That's Estelle in a funny dress, with Kanye West, and M.I.A., below them.

2008

Wayne's World

2008-12-13T18:18:31Z

Here are ten videos to go with my Top Ten list, in Sunday's Inquirer A & E section. It all begins with Lil Wayne... 1. Lil Wayne, "A Milli." 2. TV On The Radio, "Golden Age" 3. Santogold, "L.E.S. Artistes" 4. My Morning Jacket, "I'm Amazed." 5. Girl Talk, from Feed The Animals 6. Hayes Carll, "She Left Me For Jesus" 7. Erykah Badu, "Honey." 8. Vampire Weekend, "A Punk." 9. She & Him, "Why Don't You Let Me Stay Here" 10. Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis, "Caldonia."

Old Man Takes A Look At His Life

2008-12-12T16:00:44Z

Neil Young never stops moving forward musically, but lately the 63 year old force of nature has been on a journey through his past as well. The first volume of the long time coming Archives set is allegedly due out early in 2009, and the latest live set to be pulled from the vaults is the new Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968, which was recorded when he was 22, and is a stoner-era acoustic marvel. He'll be at the old Spectrum tonight, with Wilco and Everest. Here's a Harvest-era "Old Man" video clip, and the entire Canterbury album can be heard at npr.com. Update: Here's the set list from last night's show. And the review is here. Love And Only Love Hey Hey, My My Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere Powderfinger Spirit Road Cortez The Killer Cinnamon Girl Oh, Lonesome Me Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) The Needle And The Damage Done Light A Candle Unknown Legend Heart Of Gold Old Man Get Back To The Country Just Singing A Song Sea Change When Worlds Collide Cowgirl In The Sand Rockin' In The Free World Encore: A Day In The Life

Muddied Waters

2008-12-08T13:55:33Z

Do Hollywood biopics owe anything at all to their subjects, and their audiences, when it comes to accurately depicting the events that inspire them? I hate to play the persnickety blues purist card, and I understand that dramatization requires taking liberties with everyday lives to tell a story that will hold people's attention for two hours. Still, Cadillac Records gave me agita. Where to start? Leonard Chess, who's played by Adrien Brody, had a brother named Phil who was a full partner in the Chicago blues label brought to the world such monumental artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. But like Williamson, the harmonica virtuoso and sly songwriter who was the third great W on the Chess roster, Phil Chess is nowhere to be found in Daniel Martin's movie. Streamlining, they call it. Cadillac's got a lot going for it. A real appreciation for music, for one thing, and a willingness to allow performances play out from beginning to end, both rarer than they should be in music biopics. There's excellent acting, from a deeply empathetic Jeffrey Wright as Waters, a fierce Eamonn Walker (from Oz, and a BBC adaptation of Othello a few years back) as Wolf, and Columbus Short as Little Walter. Mos Def makes a goofy Chuck Berry, and Beyonce comes closer to emboying Etta James that you might expect. The clothes are real nice, too. (But where's Bo Diddley, I wonder? I guess the late great rock pioneer didn't give permission for his music to be used in the movie. Presumably, he's a focal point in Who Do You Love, the other Chess Records movie, starring Alessandro Nivola that screened in Toronto in the fall and promises to make Leonard Chess the Truman Capote of 2008-09.) Among other troubles, however - see Carrie Rickey's review here - Cadillac Records has a chronology problem. The movie means to make a point about white artists getting paid - and not giving credit - to innovations made by Chess men like Walter and Berry. As well it should. The argument is botched, however, by its jumbled execution. The issue first comes up in connection to the Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A.," which Mos Def as Chuck Berry correctly notes is a total ripoff of his own "Sweet Little 16." "Surfin'" came out in 1963. Next, the Rolling Stones show up at the Chess headquarters and tell Waters that they named themselves after one of his songs. That happened, in 1964, and the results are on the Stones second album, 12 X 5, including the instrumental "2120 Michigan Avenue," which was the address of the Chess studio. Then, at a later point in the movie, it turns out another white boy is going to the bank on the blues, specifically by covering Little Walter's 1955 Willie Dixon-penned hit "My Babe." Trouble is, that white boy is Elvis Presley, who's shown in a mid-'50s film clip on TV. From watching Cadillac Records, you'd think the Beach Boys were the original Kings of rock and roll, the Stones followed in their footsteps, and then some pompadoured fellow from Tupelo, Miss. joined the party. One more gripe and I'll stop. Waters first traveled to England, with pianist Otis Spann, in 1958. That visit had something to do with the British discovery of American blues, and the Stones adoration of the blues giant born McKinley Morganfield. In Cadillac Records, though, he doesn't go until 1967, with Cedric the Entertainer as Willie Dixon, at the behest of the Stones. His landing in London, with photographers waiting for the famous "Mr. Waters" makes for a happy ending after all the troubles Muddy has seen. But it gets the story wrong, and calls into the question the veracity of much else that goes on. For instance: Little Walter was an undeniably brilliant trailblazer (rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year). But in Cadillac, he's portrayed as irreplaceable in Waters' band, when in fact he was replaced by a number of superb players, from Junior Wells to the Walter "Shakey" Horton (also known as Big Walter) to James Cotton. In the movie, Little Walter encounters a identity thieving musician on the side of the road, so he stops the car, goes up the pretender - and blows his brains out. Did that really happen? Somehow, I'm not buying it. The movie's most positive contribution will be to bring attention a time period when the post-World War II migration of Southern blacks to Northern cities resulted in some of the most electrifying and emotionally powerful pop music ever made. That music is not on the Cadillac Records soundtrack album, but the newly recorded versions are better than you might expect. Wright and Mos Def unembarassingly sing their songs in character, and Beyonce takes hold of "At Last" and "I'd Rather Go Blind," without successfully wrestling either out of James' hands. Beyonce also throws her executive producer weight around and gets her sister Solange an undeserved spot on the soundtrack, singing her own out-of-place Mark Ronson-produced "Six O'Clock Blues." Little Walter is the only original artist included, but there are some other interesting throw-ins that have little for nothing to do with the movie, like Raphael Saadiq's R & B strut "Let's Talk A Walk," and more intriguingly, a Nas track called "Bridging The Gap," in which he teams up with his jazz-blues troubadour father, Olu Dara. It was was originally on the rapper's 2004 Street's Disciple double CD. Needless to say, the companion volume, The Best Of Chess Records: Original Artist Recordings of Songs in the Film "Cadillac Records" is superior. It's 16 songs offer but a soupcon of of the big, brawling Chess sound, but it's a tantalizing taste - Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied," Wolf's "Smokestack Lightnin'," Berry's "Nadine," Walter's "Juke," James "I'd Rather Go Blind." Other recommendations: Pick up some Sonny Boy (holding the harp), whose real name was Rice Miller and is often known as Sonny Boy Williamson II. (It's a long story.) The Real Folk Blues and More Real Folk Blues are available as one budget priced package, and include well knowns cut like "Checking On My Baby" and "One Way Out," which was covered by the Allman Brothers. Hopefully, Cadillac Records will kick off a Muddy Waters renaissance. The 50 song Anthology, 1947-1972 is a good place to start, and Robert Gordon's 2002 biography, Can't Be Satisfied: The Life And Times Of Muddy Waters gets the story straight. Fianlly, there's also a new Howlin' Wolf live album, called Rockin' The Blues: Live In Germany 1964, that captures the life force born Chester Arthur Burnett (pictured above) in his onstage glory. Pianist Sunnyland Slim, bassist Willie Dixon and still-touring guitarist Hubert Sumlin are in the band. Get that, and watch the 2003 DVD The Howlin' Wolf Story: The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll. Here's a Chess sampler, with a few tracks from the soundtrack thrown in. And below that, videos of Waters, Wolf and Williamson. chess

Nogging Your Egg

2008-12-04T17:36:36Z

John Legend is town at the Tower Theater on Friday, with Raphael Saadiq. Here's the interview from today's Inquirer. Half of Legend's new Evolver is on his MySpace page. Below, he's singing explaining the importance of "Nutmeg" to Stephen Colbert. (In other Colbert music news, the Comedy Central hosts' "Operation Humble Kanye," out to prove that he, and not Kanye West, is "the voice of this generation of this decade," has been partially successful. The Colbert Christmas CD is now #3, on iTunes, ahead of West's 808s & Heartbreak, at #4. But both Britney Spears' Circus and Akon's Freedom are now above it, which means there are two new targets of Colbert's wrath.)

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: John Legend

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Odetta, R.I.P.

2008-12-03T13:48:57Z

Odetta, the folk singer who was an essential part of the soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, died of heart failure yesterday in Manhattan. She was only 77, which is remarkable considering she seemed such a monumental, grown-up presence in contrast to youngsters like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez who knelt at her feet during the '60s folk revival. Here she is in a clip from the Newport Folk Festival, and below that, from Tavis Smiley's show in January. Odetta played her last Philadelphia-area show in January at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, when she took part in a benefit to raise money to buy a gravestone for Sister Rosetta Tharpe's resting place in Northwood Cemetery. Inquirer reviewer David Stampone had this to say: The regal Odetta, 77, followed, seated in a wheelchair but in full vocal command, accompanied by Seth Farber on piano (taking time off from his musical duties in Broadway's Hairspray). Odetta got the house singing along on "This Little Light of Mine" and charmed the crowd with earthy observations about the less dangerous sex back in the day, before doing her stately medley "Careless Love/St. Louis Blues. "

His Lucky Day

2008-12-01T17:14:48Z

There's another new Springsteen song, "My Lucky Day," out there from the forthcoming Workin' On A Dream, due January 27th. You can get it on Amazon.com or at MySpace.

From Barcelona to the Barbary

2008-11-30T17:27:05Z

Spanish beat maker Pablo Díaz-Reixa - a.k.a. El Guincho - brings his pan global mix all the way to Fishtown on Sunday night. Diaz-Reixa is based in Barcelona, though he originally hails from the Canary Islands. His pan-global kitchen-sink indie-dance debut, Alegranza! - the name translates as "joy" - is one of the year's best. It's an early, all-ages show, with San Francisco's equally trippy, though not quite so joyous, Lemonade.

Broad Street

2008-11-22T16:29:37Z

Christine Weiser has created excellently-named bands both actual and fictional. In real life, she played bass in Mae Pang, the '90s all-girl garage trio fronted by her partner in crime, Lynette Byrnes, with whom she still plays bass around town in The Tights. And with Mae Pang - misspelled after John Lennon's '70s "lost weekend" girlfriend - as her template, Weiser's now given birth to Broad Street, the terrific Philadelphia rock roman a clef that she'll read from this weekend at the Atlantic Bookshop on South Street on Saturday and at the Big Blue Marble bookshop in Mt. Airy on Sunday. Broad Street is the name of the book and the name of the band that Weiser's bass playing protagonist, Kit, forms with her cool friend Margo. Kit works for a medical publisher in Center City, and though she used to spin Chrissie Hynde and L7 records on her college radio station, she's a passive member of the Khyber Pass and Trocadero-centric Philly rock scene until she meets Margo, a charismatic presence with hidden vulnerabilities who turns her on to Wanda Jackson's "Fujiyama Mama." And the rest is herstory, or at least a female friendship tale of growing self-esteem that gets all the grimy details right - from the deceitful rock boys in Stooges T-shirts to the shout-outs to long lost local bands of the era like Electric Love Muffin. Kit and her sister Nikki have enough boyfriend trouble to satisfy readers seeking a chick-lit fix. But the core of the book is Kit's relationship with Margo, and the compelling and convincingly rendered scenes of them learning to make music together. The best part about Broad Street, though, is that Weiser, who lives in Elkins Park and is cofounder of the literary journal Philadelphia Stories (and has already completed a sequel to Broad Street), is a real writer who gets Kit's interior voice down in clean, concise prose. "I felt like a frog pinned down to a board, a scalpel dangling above me," is how the self-conscious protagonist describes being dissected by Margo's gaze when they first meet a Center City hipster party with a Nirvana soundtrack. And she's funny, too: She captures the perils of being in an all girl band when a pervert approaches the stage, "gray tongue slithered out between thin chapped lips" and "brown teeth emerged in a reptilian smile," Kit realizes the mic stand was "my only bodyguard against his drunken hormones." (There's also a cool part where a Broad Street show at the Troc gets reviewed in the Inquirer by some hack music critic with alliterative initials, but you'll have to read the book to find out about that.) Weiser reads from Broad Street at Atlantic Books at 5 on Saturday and at Big Blue Marble at 3 on Sunday.

All About Jazmine

2008-11-20T14:31:36Z

My interview with Philadelphia's own Jazmine Sullivan, who plays the indoor Susqeuhanna Bank Center with Maxwell on Friday, is here. The "Need U Bad" video is below. Beneath that is a clip of the 11 year old Sullivan on Showtime At The Apollo. Talking backstage at Constitution Hall in D.C. this week, Sullivan spoke a bit about her favorite singers. Here's her top five. 1. "Kim Burrell. I'm attracted to people with wonderful tones. I have a tone similar to hers. It's very raspy, almost hoarse to ears who don’t understand it. She has a great range, actually. Her range is pretty high, and she can do a lot of vocal tricks with it. But it was the tone. ...She has a voice that has inspired a lot of singers. People who know music, know Kim Burrell. She’s a singer’s singer." 2. "Stevie Wonder. Stevie is the artist of all artists. He's so creative. His music brought so many people together: Young, old, black, white, purple, gray. His career is one to emulate. I went to his concert at the Wachovia Center. I tell you, he had 3 hours of hit after hit after hit. I almost cried. He had people of all different nationalities ... just happy. They didn't know each other, they were just singing the songs. He just brought them all together because his music is just so wonderful. When he's on stage you can tell he has such a great spirit." 3. "Donny Hathaway. His voice - He had a tone that was so beauftiful and so simple. He could sing one note, and it would mean more to you than somebody else singing a full song. I can't even explain it. That's a God given gift. The tone of his voice is just so beautiful. You felt everything he said. Just amazing." 4. "Aretha. She’s the Queen of Soul. Nobody had soul like Aretha. She sat down and played that piano....." 5 "Who would be my fifth? I’m naming all older people.... I'll say, and a lot of people will be surprised, but I’ll say Brandy…I love Brandy. I do, I do. She’s another one of the young artists who has such a different voice. Her voice is along the lines of mine. it's low, it's raspy. It’s different than most singers."

The Man With The Lightbulb Head

2008-11-19T16:40:00Z

Melodic British eccentric Robyn Hitchock plays the World Cafe Live tonight, focusing on his much loved 1984 album I Often Dream Of Trains, which was re-issued last year. The video for the album's title cut is below. Underneath that is the stop motion animation clip for "The Man With The Lightbulb Head," which is not on that album, but worth hoping he'll do. Sometimes Hitchock's Lewis Caroll-Syd Barrett whimsical psychedelia can be forced, but at his best his music is not just clever, but haunting. He's also the skinny gray haired guy in the wedding band in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, and you can hear "Up To Our Nex," from that soundtrack here.