Bloggerhythms

Whole Oats , the out of print, debut album from Hall & Oates is a complete anomaly in their catalog. The LP is more acoustic folk music than blue-eyed soul and more singer-songwriter based soft pop than rock. Here they sound nothing like the monster hitmaking machine of ten years later. Even so, it's obvious the duo was targeted for big things because Atlantic Records signed them to a contract and assigned the outstanding Arif Mardin to produce. His sterling track record includes Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis . According to Wikipedia, the famous Philadelphians were going to use Whole Oats as their band name, and Atlantic even released a 45 RPM with that moniker, but the album was released in their own names instead even though they kept the original play on words as the album title. The closest this platter sounds to anything else Hall and Oates ever recorded was their classic followup, Abandoned Luncheonette , from 1973 but even that record differed greatly from...

Hello! I've really enjoyed publishing this blog for the last seven years and I want to keep going. However, the time has come for me to reassess if it still has a place on the web. Both comments and readership have declined significantly over the last few months so I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just writing for myself. Have the quality of my posts deteriorated or is it just that blogs are too old school and are no longer relevant because everyone now spends most of their cyber-time on Facebook and Twitter? I really enjoy mixing the classic rock with the current stuff. Since the former still seems to draw a bigger audience than do posts about new artists I'm going to assume I have an older readership. On the other hand, Forgotten Music Thursdays, this blog's most popular feature, has also attracted a smaller audience recently. So, I just want to know. Do you have any suggestions to improve Bloggerhythms and is there still anyone out there?

We all know that Paul McCartney has a taste for music that was written not long after the fictional Lord Grantham and his family were walking the giant halls of Downton Abbey so it may have been inevitable that the rock veteran would release a CD of (to use his own lyrics of many years ago) "relics from a different age." While I'm aware that standards and songs from the Great American Songbook may not be everyone's cup of tea those of us who appreciate the sound of those bygone days know McCartney always possessed a flair for writing, playing, and singing this kind of stuff quite well. He started recording tunes like these all the way back in 1963 during his early days with The Beatles. They include The Music Man's "Til There Was You," "When I’m Sixty-Four," "Honey Pie," "You Gave Me the Answer" and more. However, the ex-Beatle's latest CD, Kisses on the Bottom , is a questionable venture and not because of the e...

It's often been said that Eric Clapton's greatest album is Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs . It's supposed to be one of the few double LPs that can justify its length but, while it's a nice set, to these ears it shouldn't be considered one of rock's most revered classics. Instead, Clapton's best work goes all the way back to 1966, between his gigs with The Yardbirds and Cream, to a time when he was a member of John Mayall's Blues Breakers. A hallmark of British blues, this is the album that began all of the "Clapton is God" pronouncements that were everywhere at the time. However, he isn't the only one to give an outstanding performance during these sessions. Mayall, who always owned a phenomenal reputation as a bandleader who discovered a boatload of talent more so than as a musician, put together his best band ever with this short-lived lineup. The soon-to-be-famous axeman was accompanied by Mayall on keyboards, harmonica, and le...

I'm always reluctant to write about artists who are strictly part of the local music scene because reader interest is usually minimal. However, all artists start out with nothing more than small, local followings. There was a time when Elvis Presley was an unknown singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, when nobody knew The Beatles outside of Liverpool, and REM was just another band from Athens, GA. In today's almost totally connected world it's easier than ever for artists to spread their wings beyond home. A young band's music is no longer confined to just low wattage radio stations and seedy bars that are within a short car ride from their day jobs. So, keeping all of that in mind I bring you Charlie Phillips who I've had the pleasure of seeing twice at a local suburban Philadelphia coffee house, Burlap and Bean in Newtown Square. Phillips currently plays there for free on the first Friday of every month and in January he hosted a CD release party for What It I...