From www.billboard.com
"In tribute to the 35th anniversary of singer/songwriter Jim Croce's death, the artist's three studio albums will be reissued on CD in September via Rhino." READ THE FULL STORY HERE
It’s really a chore to be a dedicated David Bowie fan. There’s something to be said for predictability in pop music. Actually, isn’t the predictability of pop music one of its most appealing features? You always know what you’re gonna get with the Stones. Same thing with The Beatles: even once they started to expand their musical palette, the aesthetic of the newer material wasn’t that different from their earlier records. The only thing that’s ever been predictable about Bowie is how unpredictable he is. For decades he underwent regular transformations, constantly swapping one persona for the other. It was this bizarre – and derivative – obsession with pop theatrics that would make Bowie a target for regular criticism from rock purists; he relied too heavily on smoke and mirrors. Bowie’s spaced-out, cocaine-enriched bullshit degraded the music and reduced it to spectacle. In the early ‘70s, you didn’t buy tickets to see David Bowie in concert; you bought tickets to see David Bowie’s Traveling Pop Circus. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
Prog-rock has come a long way, man.
There was a time when people—rock purists—were really pissed about
prog. And why not? To go from listening to perfect, soulful rock music (The Stones, the Who, Dylan, etc.) to pure, self-indulgent musical masturbation (King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes,
etc.) is a pretty angering turn of events. Prog-rockers were the guys
who weren’t really good enough to be jazz musicians but also weren’t
cool or hip enough to be rock icons, so they met somewhere in the
middle. Yuck. If I want to listen to elaborate and epic music, I’ll put
on some Bach or Rachmaninoff. The prog aesthetic sort of exemplifies
the need for the pop-snob cliché “Don’t bore us, get the chorus!”
Is Elbow a prog-rock band? READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
I wasn’t around to see David Bowie at the height of his career. For most of my childhood I only knew Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King in Jim Henson’s classic “Labyrinth.” There have been worse abuses of Spandex, I suppose. But that film, its music, and Bowie’s performance made me want to know more about him. I remember thinking, “God, who the hell is David Bowie?” I’d find out later that everyone else had been asking themselves the same question for decades. It wasn’t until I was given the 1990 compact disc reissue of the classic Bowie compilation Changes Bowie that I really began to understand how incredible—and varied—his work truly was. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
“Mother, you had me, but I never had you” is the first line of the first track off of John Lennon’s groundbreaking first post-Beatles record. The lyric would set the tone for what was arguably Lennon’s most potent and powerful artistic statement: 1970’s Plastic Ono Band. An album loaded to the brim with personal and expressive content, this was the record Lennon had been longing to make for over a decade. Having felt artistically constrained by the Beatles, Lennon used this release as the vehicle to deliver some of the most meaningful and personal music of his career. It was back to basics for Plastic Ono Band: just vocal, guitar, piano, bass and drums – no more Beatles studio wizardry, no more spending months and months to record songs. Lennon wanted this record to be as naked, sparse and spacious as possible; the only thing that mattered was the message. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
From www.eltonjohn.com:
"On June 9,2008, Mercury/Universal Records are to re-release two utterly essential Elton albums. The 1970 classic Elton John and 1971's equally magical Tumbleweed Connection have been remastered and are to be released separately as 2-CD sets. Each set contains the original album, plus a bonus CD of previously unreleased tracks including demos from the vaults and live BBC sessions. Each set also contains a sumptuous booklet with extensive new sleeve notes, period photos and lyrics." READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
From www.coldplay.com
Coldplay has announced the dates for their upcoming US tour in support of their new album Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends, due out June 17th. CLICK HERE to view venues and dates.
It seems like the further away from disco we get, the better the music from that era sounds. Granted, I wasn’t there for it, so I didn’t experience it firsthand. Perhaps I’d feel differently about the genre had I been forced to listen to it daily on Top 40 radio. But I’ve never especially hated disco music. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was released in 1977 – the same year as Hotel California and Rumours – and it would become the record that legitimized disco as a commercially viable style of music. Hell, given a choice between Saturday Night Fever and Boston’s self-titled debut, I’d take the damn disco any day. For me, the further I get from music that was shitty to begin with (“More Than A Feeling,” “Peace Of Mind”), the shittier it sounds, the more bland and dated. But disco, although dated, wasn’t trash; people just thought it was at the time. We know retrospectively that the Bee Gees were geniuses and we also know that disco laid the foundation for modern dance music and culture. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
