Bloggerhythms

The Chieftains attempted to widen their audience with the release of Long Black Veil in 1995. This very cool CD featured many classic rock and pop musicians (all except for Ry Cooder come from the British Isles) singing lead vocals on mostly traditional songs. The arrangements makes you feel as if the guest stars lived with these folk songs on a daily basis because, to their credit, the Chieftains don't try to sound like a modern rock band. They play these songs with their traditional Irish folk instruments using their own natural style and special gifts. The Rolling Stones assist on "The Rocky Road to Dublin" while Mick Jagger alone tackles the title track. Mark Knopfler lends both his singing and producing skills to "The Lily of the West" while Welshman Tom Jones' version of "Tennessee Waltz" is so heartfelt that you momentarily forget his Vegas lounge-lizard image. (There's obviously a lot more to Jones than what meets the eye.) Sting a...

Some artists never lose their god-given gifts and those whose talents include a deeply embedded soul tradition seldom lose theirs if they continue to make music from the heart. Such is the case with William Royce "Boz" Scaggs who proves on his new CD, Memphis , that his music is as fresh and vital as it's ever been. Scaggs' new musical love letter to the Tennessee town's grand musical tradition includes a host of ten well chosen classic soul covers sandwiched in between two new originals that open and close the set. While the veteran's own tunes on Memphis are nice enough the San Francisco native uses the album to prove without a doubt that he is one of the great interpreters of other people's work. In fact one might even say this is a more satisfying effort than his slightly slick, more mainstream, 1976 classic, Silk Degrees . What's interesting about Memphis is that it's both smooth and gritty at the same time. Scaggs is one of the f...

Even though I grew up with the generation that let their "freak flag fly" (thank you for that, David Crosby) the musicians of that era seldom used language that was considered inappropriate in polite society on their recordings. Steppenwolf's "The Pusher" used a word similar to "darn" along with the deity's name and John Lennon used the English language's most infamous four letter word on "Working Class Hero" from his LP, Plastic Ono Band . Nils Lofgren employed the same word in "I Had Too Much" from Grin's first album. Billy Joel dropped it in one of his attempts to win over critics on "Laura" from The Nylon Curtain . There may have been a couple more examples but not many. Call me old, stodgy, out of touch, narrow-minded, or whatever insult suits you, but the current generation of musicians seems to have no qualms about using this word that begins with the sixth letter of the alphabet quite routinely i...

Jon Anderson's mystical lyrics aside, Close to the Edge (#4 UK and #3 in the USA) ranks with The Yes Album as one of the enduring prog-rock quintet's two very best works. It's a masterpiece from start to finish. Everyone in the band was in top form on the more than eighteen minute long title track. Anderson's tenor vocals were brilliant even if the meaning of his lyrics remained indecipherable. The songwriter's voice never quite reached those soaring, spectacular heights again. The interplay between Chris Squire's bass, which is front and center, Bill Bruford's drums, and Steve Howe's guitar is astounding, but the star of the show was the phenomenal keyboard genius, Rick Wakeman. His perfect, hard rocking solo three quarters of the way through the track is clean, unpretentious, and menacing all at the same time and it came not long after the virtuoso gave us some majestic church organ sounds that grew out of the quiet mid-section of the piece. Side...

Front cover of CD On their fourth release, Tommy's Place , Doug Cowen & The Basics have shunned their own songwriting and recorded an album full of songs by a musician they admire, the late Tommy Thompson. Thompson, who was apparently a revered local legend in South Bend, Indiana came awfully close to hitting the big time but never quite made it. (Having never heard him play I'll just have to take Cowen's word for it). The rocker, who was a close friend of The Basics' leader and briefly a member of the trio, died way too young of a heart attack at age 49. It may seem odd to you that a band hardly anyone has heard play outside of their hometown recorded a tribute to someone who only earned a bit more traction than The Basics have because, on the surface, the album's initial appeal to someone who lives, say, in British Columbia, would be zero. However, I've been impressed with this throwback garage band for a decade now and regardless of the circumstan...