// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: Wild Child, The Runaround

By Melissa Bratcher

Wild Child’s sophomore effort, The Runaround, is one of those pleasant surprises that make listening to a band I’d never heard of so exciting. It’s a quirky, clever slice of Americana, crisply produced by Ben Kweller, and so eminently listenable, it’s been on constant rotation for a week now.

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Goodbye, Lou: Reed Gone at 71

By Tim Murr

The Best of The Velvet Underground: The Words and Music of Lou Reed blew my mind freshman year of high school. It was already a bit of a watershed year, anyway, when I first heard a lot of punk and industrial music for the first time, not to mention Nirvana’s breakthrough. My friend had made a pilgrimage to Knoxville (our closest big city) to buy some Velvet Underground based on an older friend’s recommendation. He returned like Moses down from the mountain with the precious plastic cassette that would launch multiple garage bands.

“You’ve got to hear this,” he said pressing the tape into my hand.

Nevermind came out of my Sony Walkman and BAM! The Velvets had their hooks in me. “Waiting For The Man” and “Run, Run, Run” were so primitive and raw and not at all what I knew and/or assumed about ’60s music.

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Book Review: Gary Lucas, Touched By Grace: My Time With Jeff Buckley

By J Howell

Gary Lucas duly notes early on in Touched By Grace that the book is neither a biography of Jeff Buckley nor Lucas himself. It is, however, a remarkable peek from Lucas’s perspective of a brief, tumultuous period in the author’s life, a time of promise and disappointment on a scale that seems overwhelming in retrospect. While the gravitas of the situation may not be readily apparent to non- (or even casual) fans of Buckley or Lucas, considering the lasting impact Grace has made on so many lives, Touched By Grace is an inside look at, frankly, kind of a big deal. Or at least a really big part of a big deal.

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Music Review: Perry Como, Just Out Of Reach – Rarities From Nashville Produced By Chet Atkins

By Melissa Bratcher

Some days, Sundays in particular, all I really want is the musical equivalent of a fluffy blanket and a nice cup of tea. Real Gone Music’s new Perry Como release, Just Out Of Reach—Rarities From Nashville Produced By Chet Atkins is a CD full of fluffy blankets and cups of tea: soothing and warm and pleasant.

Perry Como had a musical career for over 50 years. His natural, easy singing style served him well as he performed in a variety of vocal genres. When the British Invasion hit the US shores, though, Como went through a two-year dry period in which he didn’t record. Heads of his label, RCA, concocted a plan to alleviate that and enlisted Chet Atkins to help “smooth the edges of country music” to make it more palatable in the pop world and for Como. The result was the successful The Scene Changes, providing Como with his biggest selling album in years. Not content to rest on their laurels, RCA again joined Atkins and Como together in Nashville for another stab at country/pop crossover glory, and the result of that is Just Out Of Reach.

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Five Amazing Horror Movie Soundtracks That Aren’t The Music From John Carpenter’s Halloween

By Jeffery X Martin

If Halloween has a theme song, it’s probably the familiar interval-switching chromatic scale from the seminal 1978 horror film, Halloween. Even people who haven’t seen the movie recognize that music as soon as they hear it. It ushers in autumn and signals the beginning of Trick-or-Treatery. But the Halloween soundtrack isn’t the only one you can use for your holiday mood setting. Give these other soundtracks a listen! They’ll either warm your cockles or raise your hackles.
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Waxing Nostalgic Connecting the Dots: Pat Benatar, “My Clone Sleeps Alone”

By Jeffery X Martin

Here it is. This is the first LP I ever bought. My first record!

Oh, I had gotten musical gifts before, sure. I got The Stranger by Billy Joel, and I still know all the words to “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” I had a copy of AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t remember asking for it. Regardless, there it was in my collection, “Big Balls” and all.

But, this! The first album I chose with my own amazing ten-year-old choosing powers! Empowering! Enlightening! Embiggening!

Women in rock and roll weren’t a new thing for me, even in such a male-dominated genre as Seventies rock. I was familiar with Janis Joplin, of course, and I knew that Blondie was the name of the band, not the lead singer.

But the first time I heard “Heartbreaker” on FM radio, it hit me hard. It was one of the rockingest things on the radio that year, when the airwaves were filled what fools believe and grown men asking if I liked piña coladas. “Heartbreaker” was a much-needed boot to the head.

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DVD Review: Bob And The Monster: The Story Of Bob Forrest

By Melissa Bratcher

How does a man go from being self-described as one of the “biggest assholes ever to live” to being credited with saving numerous lives as a drug counselor? How did he go from leading L.A.’s premier “drunk rock” band to being the subject of a moving, thoughtful documentary in which music’s luminaries eulogize him warmly without him even being dead?

First, Bob Forrest did a lot of drugs. Then, he hit rock bottom. Then, he did some more drugs and had to hit rock bottom again. Eventually, he rebuilt himself into a sometimes respected, sometimes controversial addiction specialist.

Director Keirda Bahruth spent six years making Bob And The Monster, a documentary of Bob Forrest’s journey of addiction and redemption. Told with archival footage, claymation, and animation, as well as new music from Bob Forrest, it’s a touching, sometimes infuriating, and illuminating movie.

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Music Review: Jace Everett, Terra Rosa

By Melissa Bratcher

Not content to be known solely for the theme to True Blood, Jace Everett has recorded a wildly ambitious, brave album based loosely on Biblical stories. Lest that turn you off, they’re opaquely Biblical, and not preachy. They’re personal examinations of sin and strength. And they’re quite good. I will admit, as a heathen, that I puzzled over what stories the songs were about, drawing on my childhood Sunday school attendance. I came up short on most of them. That didn’t affect my enjoyment of the record, but it did make me listen harder and write down snippets of lyrics to decipher later. Which I didn’t.

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Music Review: Mind & Matter, 1514 Oliver Avenue (Basement)

By Paul Casey

Jimmy Jam is half of one of the most important production teams of the last few decades. As discussed earlier this year, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were probably the most talented people to be connected to Prince. Although both were more than capable of writing, producing, and performing on their own albums, their input on The Time was largely restricted to live shows. Their ability to work outside of Prince’s insecure and restrictive system would lead to their exit from the band and push them to become the hit-making powerhouses of the 1980s and 1990s, leading Janet Jackson to nine number ones.

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Music Review: Patti Page, The Complete Columbia Singles 1962-1970

By Melissa Bratcher

The fine folks at Real Gone Music have released a definitive compendium of Patti Page records recently. The Complete Columbia Singles 1962-1970 does just what it says on the tin, and paints a portrait of an artist who was prolific and gifted, having a career that spanned seven decades. The photo of Patti Page on the front cover is strikingly beautiful and inside is a two-disc set with copious liner notes that mark the date of release of each song and their various chart positions.

While Page was ubiquitous on the Billboard charts in the 1950s, being the #2 artist of that decade, the liner notes caution us to not think of her in that way solely. In the ’60s and ’70s, she branched out, charting numerous times on the Easy Listening charts as well as the Country charts. The Complete Columbia Singles covers many of those hits.

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