Music

20 Years Ago Today I Started a Spectacular Voyage with Hootie and the Blowfish

People might tell you something is impossible, unfeasible, and ridiculous; but you do it anyway, because you think it’s…

Shall we name the world’s most underrated rock band?

Since we are in the midst of the quadrennial potpourri of bonhomie known as the World Cup, it seems…

Ken Radnofsky and Damien Francouer-Krzyzek play the third movement, "Christopher Street," of David Amram’s Greenwich Village Portraits.

I’ve been fortunate to know David Amram since my Bells of Hell and Lion’s Head days. Last month he presented a performance of his recent works at Le Poisson Rouge, a performance venue that occupies the space once belonging to Art d’Lugoff’s Village Gat…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

The Impressions Rock Plymouth

The Impressions’ gospel-rooted rhythm ‘n’ blues, prominent on the pop charts during the struggle to end Jim Crow’s dominion, has been called the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. They have a rich history. Founded in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1958–Sam Gooden, at left in the photo above, was a founding member–they later moved to Chicago […]
(via Brooklyn Heights Blog)

The Impressions Head the Bill for Free the Slaves Concert at Plymouth

Plymouth Church is known for its pre-eminent role, under the leadership of Henry Ward Beecher, in the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War. While the Emancipation Proclamation declared the slaves free, and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished the “peculiar institution,” slavery still exists in the United States, and, on a larger scale, elsewhere in the world. […]
(via Brooklyn Heights Blog)

Yusef Lateef, 1920-2013.

My introduction to the music of Yusef Lateef, who died Monday at 93, came in 1967, when I was a first year law student. My dorm neighbor, Bob Bell, was a jazz aficionado. I knew next to nothing about jazz. I’m not sure how it came about: I may have bee…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Brooklyn Born Lou Reed, Rock Legend Dies at 71

This past June I posted the good news
that Lou Reed had undergone what appeared to be a successful liver transplant. Today the news turned bad; he died at 71.

Lou was a terrific guitarist, but it was his vocal performances that for me are most memorab…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Karaoke with Live Band Backup at Transit Museum October 16

The Transit Museum is hosting a karaoke evening with The Golden Boyz of New Brunswick – the band will…

Goodbye, Black 47

I got to know Larry Kirwan back in 1978, when he and Pierce Turner, as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band at the Bells of Hell, one of the two greatest bars (can you guess the other one?) that ever were in New York. The Bells closed i…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Watch Common Perform “The Light” Feat. Tess Live At Galapagos In DUMBO

Watch Common perform at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO after the jump.