Jun 062016
 

day of the deadWhen I was five, my brother and I were digging in the yard and we dug up some jelly beans. Being jelly beans, we ate them. As you would expect, as they weren’t really food and since they didn’t really decay, they were pretty much intact. And they were delicious. Our Mom apparently didn’t seem to think this was a very smart thing to do, so we were punished. But it  seemed oh-so-worth-it in the end.

Listening to the Red Hot Organization’s 25th release, the sprawling 5-CD Day of the Dead, I kinda feel the same way. There’s a lot more digging though, and way fewer jelly beans.
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Apr 282016
 
national-feature

The Grateful Dead – the iconic (nay, legendary) Palo Alto ensemble whose longevity, sheer number of live performances, eclectic and improvisational musical styles, as well as religious fanbase cemented them as one of the most influential and groundbreaking groups of rock and roll history – will be honored this May in an upcoming epic homage titled Day of the Dead.

As one of our own feature writers, Jordan Becker, so elegantly put in his In the Spotlight segment: “The Dead were not only a band; they typified a lifestyle that extended the hippie culture of the 1960s decades after most of the world turned it into a punchline.” Dubbed the “pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world,” their legacy lingers on, and with contributions from an overwhelming number of some of the music industry’s most respected names today, their music will be celebrated. Continue reading »

Mar 272013
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

Mike Scott has found his second wind. 30 years after starting the Waterboys, he and violinist Steve Wickham have just finished playing South by Southwest, and plan a tour at the end of the year to support the 25th anniversary of the album Fisherman’s Blues (Wickham is probably best known to the casual listener as the guy whose violin created the haunting feedback-like tone at the beginning of U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”). Fisherman’s Blues found Scott merging the anthemic post-punk pop songs of Waterboys’ first two albums (what Scott called “The Big Music”) with traditional Celtic music, recreating the band’s sound as he has throughout their existence.

The band lost steam around the time of the Room to Roam album, when Scott and Wickham disagreed about which direction the album should go. Cycling through various musicians through the years, the Waterboys’ varietal output caused them to lose some of their audience, and the band dissolved for ten years before rebooting at the beginning of the millennium. It should be said some critics were never on board with their sound — Trouser Press editor Ira Robbins called them “insufferable,” “superficial,” and “unoriginal.” But some of their fans would start other bands, and the Waterboys are often credited with opening the door for multi-instrumentalist groups like the Decemberists and Arcade Fire to gain a wider public following. Let’s take a look behind that door right now… Continue reading »