Tag Archives: rock and roll

Blind Faith’s Blind Faith (Deluxe Edition)

Craig Clarke penned this review. Blind Faith was arguably rock’s first “supergroup!” The conglomeration sprang from the breakups of Eric Clapton’s previous band, Cream, and one of the many breakups of Steve Winwood’s Traffic. Clapton and Winwood had planned to … Continue reading

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The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus DVD

In 1968, as the year was dying, Mick Jagger got to have what must have been seven kinds of fun, staging a response (or a bookend piece) to The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, released a year earlier: The Rolling Stones, … Continue reading

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Festival Express

It was a train full of insane people careening across the Canadian countryside playing music night and dayevery once in a while we’d stop and play a concert. — Phil Lesh (The Grateful Dead) It opens with a faded map … Continue reading

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Los Lobos’ Live at the Fillmore

Just what do you expect a live DVD to accomplish? I want great sound, and lots of images of the band (or soloist). I personally like lots of closeups of the guitarist’s fingers on the fretboards. Most directors and camera … Continue reading

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Banditos’ self-titled release

With a name like Banditos, you might expect this band to be from, say, Texas. But all six members are from Birmingham, Alabama, though now firmly ensconsed in Nashville. The alternative Nashville, that is, where you can still twang and … Continue reading

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Angel Olsen’s Half Way Home

It’s a cliché to say that such-and-such a singer is a “unique voice,” but I have to resort to it in the case of Angel Olsen. In a world full of cutesy and waif-like vocals from female singers in all … Continue reading

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Lost Bayou Ramblers’ Mammoth Waltz

After beginning as a traditional Cajun band in Lafayette, Louisiana, the Lost Bayou Ramblers began experimentally fusing elements of indie rock and other styles into their sound. With Mammoth Waltz they go full-on psychedelic in their arrangements of what remains … Continue reading

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Various artists’s No One Got Hurt: Bloodshot Records’ 15th Anniversary @ The Hideout, Chicago

During the summer and early fall of 2009, the folks at Bloodshot Records, Chicago’s “insurgent country” label, put on a series of concerts featuring a rotating cast of a bunch of the musicians currently or formerly on their roster. In … Continue reading

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Warren Zevon’s Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

Warren Zevon’s songs, like the man himself, alternated between sincere and heavily ironic, sometimes within the same song. Heck, within the same verse. My response to this 2007 New West release does the same thing. Ironic summary: Four years after … Continue reading

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Frank Zappa’s The Torture Never Stops (DVD)

If, like me, you never saw Frank Zappa live with one of his fabulous bands, this DVD release from Eagle Rock is a great way to see what you missed. Or even if you did witness the madness before Zappa … Continue reading

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