April, 2010

So Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is touring Australia.  Well, I hope he has a lovely time.  Ticket prices are not atypical, but certainly pretty steep: For those sorts of prices, you could buy nearly all of Salman Rushdie’s novels. Or this many copies of The Satanic Verses:

I took my son to see Regina Spektor in concert, or I probably should say, he took me. He’s the fan. He’s the one who knows her work inside out and loves it. The fact that I recognised nearly every song she did is testament to his listening habits rather than mine, but I can [...]

Got a spare hundred bucks (US)?  You could do much worse than invest in the CD set Goodbye, Babylon.  I’ll let them explain what it is: In February 1999 a college radio disc jockey named Lance Ledbetter set out on a mission to compile rare and essential recordings of vintage religious music. Four and a half [...]

Just a passing observation.  I happened to be listening to T-Bone Burnett’s 2006 solo album, The True False Identity, and a thought occurred to me again, something I wondered about when I first heard the album. Burnett doesn’t put out a lot of solo albums and is better known — nay, revered – for his work as a [...]

CD Review John Butler Trio April Uprising (Jarrah) The John Butler Trio might be the perfect example of a successful, ambitious independent Australian artist. I know I talk about this a lot, the way so many independent artists fail to put their best foot forward, so it something of pleasure to make note of a [...]

Ever wondered how much money a musician can make through the various traditional and “new media” outlets?  Information Is Beautiful have put together this revealing chart that shows how many units from a given source it takes for a musician to earn the average wage (US figures).  Makes for interesting comparison.

Nice little site collecting together some horror album covers from years past.  I remember a bunch of these very well from record retailing days, particularly the Heino.  Anyway, I’ve popped up a couple below, but click through to see the rest.  And feel free to contribute any others you know of.

CD Review Johnny Cash Ain’t No Grave (distrib Universal Music) I hope this really is the last of the Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash collaborations to get a posthumous release. Not that there is too much wrong with the album; just that it really does feel like the last roll of the dice and that maybe the [...]

CD Review Patty Griffin Downtown Church (thru EMI) This is an album of gospelish songs performed by Patty Griffin and a stellar band that has one of my guitar heroes, Buddy Miller, at its head. It was recorded in a church in Nashville and it is pretty hard to find fault with. But I’ll do [...]

Ever since rock music began, there have been those out to destroy it.  The history of rock n’ roll is littered with examples of so-called concerned parents, scared authorities, fire-breathing preachers and other self-appointed guardians of what the hell you can do with your life lining up to tell us that this is the devil’s [...]