December 19, 2011 – 4:33 pm
An article in the current New Yorker begins: On the night of October 16, 1590, a palace apartment near Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, was the scene of a double murder so extravagantly vicious that people are still sifting through the evidence, more than four centuries later. The most reliable account of the crime […]
November 27, 2011 – 4:36 pm
Here’s one that I missed on Tuesday (and thanks to our friend Peter for mentioning it) — Paul Motian, a jazz drummer of sublime artistry and one of the most versatile and influential players of all time, died last week at the age of 80. (The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, the same affliction that took […]
November 16, 2011 – 8:10 pm
I don’t usually go in much for “tappers”, but this is pretty cool. HT: Devin Townsend.
October 24, 2011 – 1:20 pm
OK, folks, I have what you’ve all been waiting for: the new Bohemian Rhapsody video from William Shatner — featuring John Wetton, no less. Enjoy.
October 15, 2011 – 11:30 pm
Here’s a real treat: the great Gary Brooker at the peak of his powers, in this live performance of A Salty Dog from 1977.
October 13, 2011 – 9:23 pm
We note, belatedly, the death of the great Scottish fingerstyle guitarist Bert Jansch, who exerted a formative influence on a great many better-known musicians. One in particular was Jimmy Page; I think you’ll hear the connection in this video clip. Another was Paul Simon; readers of a certain age may recognize this Jansch song from […]
October 10, 2011 – 10:36 pm
Just ran across this clip, and enjoyed it too much not to post it here: Richard Thompson playing his classic 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. What a voice. What a song. Enjoy.
September 17, 2011 – 11:26 pm
I just watched this clip again: Gavin Harrison playing Porcupine Tree’s Futile. As one of YouTube’s commenters said: “this is like porn for drummers”.
September 15, 2011 – 10:42 am
Here’s an encouraging item from Science Daily: Older Musicians Experience Less Age-Related Decline in Hearing Abilities Than Non-Musicians ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2011) ”” A study led by Canadian researchers has found the first evidence that lifelong musicians experience less age-related hearing problems than non-musicians. While hearing studies have already shown that trained musicians have highly […]
August 14, 2011 – 9:07 pm
Here’s the great voice-over artist Bob Kaliban in some recently discovered studio footage. Have a glimpse behind the scenes in the ad biz of old.
August 13, 2011 – 10:40 pm
Ah, the Casuals at the Beachcomber. What could be better? Here’s a live feed, if you read this in the next little while. They’ve been playing this joint for 31 years.
August 1, 2011 – 10:19 pm
As advertised in this space a few weeks ago, Dr. John played at the Prospect Park Bandshell this past Saturday night (with go-go legend Chuck Brown and another very funky band called Red Baraat as openers). It was a fabulous show. Sorry you missed it. Dr. John is a walking encyclopedia of the American musical […]
A week or so ago we posted a little poll, asking readers what they thought was the best album ever. Given the number of people who pass by here every day, I thought we’d see a lot more responses — it’s something that everyone has an opinion about, and unlike most topics, you won’t get […]
If you’ve ever wondered what the Recording Industry looks like from the inside, you’re in luck. Have a peek here.
OK, everybody, setting aside our usual topics, here’s a question for you all: What’s the greatest album of all time? (I originally wrote “rock album”, but let’s just make it “album”.) You only get to pick one. All readers, even the most casual visitors, and all of you who usually stay on the sidelines, are […]
If you’re going to be in Gotham on Saturday, July 30th, you should get yourself over to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Bandshell (conveniently located just 250 yards from waka waka waka‘s New York command center) for what bids fair to be an outstanding evening’s entertainment. The headliner, Malcolm Rebennack Jr. (A.K.A “Dr. John“), is a national […]
We note with sorrow the death of Clarence Clemons, soul of the E Street Band for forty years, who died Saturday after suffering a devastating stroke. His death will leave an awfully big hole in a great many hearts. I got to know Clarence more than thirty years ago, when the E Street Band moved […]
Here’s the great Luther Allison, performing Living in the House of the Blues just a few months before his untimely death in 1997. What’s that? Did you say you want some more? Well OK, here’s some more.
We note with sadness the death of singer Phoebe Snow, whom those of us of a “certain age” will best remember for her beautiful 1974 song Poetry Man. I did not know Ms. Snow well, but I did know her slightly, having done a few recording sessions with her back in the 1990s. She was […]
OK, enough politics. Time for a little Kumbaya, and maybe a reason to go on living. Here’s a young Scotsman by the name of Brendan MacFarlane. And here, and here.
April 18, 2011 – 10:57 am
We note with sorrow the death, at 66, of the great recording engineer Roger Nichols — best known for the immaculate recordings and mixes he made with Steely Dan. His artistic brilliance and superb technical craftsmanship were an inspiration to me and to countless other engineers. His New York Times obituary is here.
Who’s Doyle Dykes? Just one of the best finger-pickers alive. If you’ve never heard him play, you’re in for a treat. Here’s his version of that country classic, Wabash Cannonball.
My old friend Peter Kranzler, known to readers as the One-Eyed Man, tipped me off to an article in the WSJ about Bob Clearmountain, who is in my opinion the most gifted mixer ever to raise a fader. I was lucky enough to be Clearmountain’s regular assistant for a couple of years, back when I […]
I’ve been reading Here, There, and Everywhere, a memoir by the Beatles’ recording engineer Geoff Emerick, and enjoying it no end. Though Mr. Emerick’s name may not be familiar to the public at large, it’s a very different matter for those of us in the recording studio’s hermetic brotherhood; in our little pantheon, he is […]
December 22, 2010 – 12:26 am
The gifted writer Verlyn Klinkenborg offered a remembrance of Don Van Vliet on today’s New York Times editorial page. I liked it so much I’m reproducing it here (I don’t suppose he’ll mind). Summer of 1969. Parents away. A 50-foot audio cable runs from the stereo through a window across the porch to the lawn, […]
December 17, 2010 – 10:02 pm
Here’s some very sad news, just in from our California correspondent: the unique, the incomparable Captain Beefheart has succumbed to multiple sclerosis at the age of 69. Don Van Vliet was sui generis, and though he never rose to the dizzy pinnacle of fame, he was one of the most influential, most visionary, most jaggedly […]
December 6, 2010 – 12:36 am
In the old days of recording, we did our work in magnificent studios, lavishly equipped with the finest consoles, microphones and signal-processing equipment, and we preserved our work on magnetic tape. But now that the digital revolution has battered the record business to its knees and ground most of the old recording studios into dust […]
November 6, 2010 – 8:52 pm
Here’s Leon Russell, in a clip from the old TV show Shindig! I was eight years old.
September 21, 2010 – 10:18 am
Here’s a sad item that I missed while I was disconnected last month: drummer Richie Hayward, who since 1969 was the rhythmic anchor of the incomparable rock/blues/funk band Little Feat, died on August 14th of liver cancer and pneumonia. I was a huge fan of both Hayward and the band, and I am very sorry […]
Through a process unimaginatively named “sonification”, engineers at CERN have converted the vibrations of the long-sought Higgs boson into audio. It’s not bad, actually; too bad Richard Wright isn’t around to hear it. Here.
One of my oldest and closest music-biz pals is the great jazz guitarist Steve Khan. Here’s an interview he did recently for the new Inside Musicast website.
I note with heartfelt sorrow the death of the great recording engineer Walter Sear, who died on April 29th from complications of a fall. (Somehow I missed his obituary notices at the time, and have only just heard the news.) Walter occupied a very special place in the New York recording community. Having never joined […]
I realize that the recent flooding in Nashville has imposed a frightful toll of hardship in all the many ways that such disasters always do, but as a musician and recording engineer I find this particularly poignant.
April 27, 2010 – 10:38 pm
When I was a young man I played the drums, and was pretty sure that one day I would be a Great Big Rock Star. To advance this project, I went looking for a job at a New York City recording studio, on the theory that I’d then be right in the thick of things, […]
Last night, unable to decide what I wanted to listen to, I stuck my hand into the CD cabinet and pulled a record out at random. It turned out to be one I hadn’t listened to in a while, and one that brought back quite a few memories — some very sad, and one that […]
October 5, 2009 – 10:18 pm
With thanks to my colleague Eugene Dushlin for sending this my way, here’s a delightful video clip featuring some very nimble guitar-playing.
September 17, 2009 – 11:54 am
We note with sadness the death of singer Mary Travers, of complication from leukemia. She was 72. I spent some time with Ms. Travers many years ago, in the course of mixing two albums for Peter, Paul, and Mary, and it was a pleasure getting to know her. She was cheery and affable, with a […]
September 16, 2009 – 11:59 pm
In a recent post we celebrated the healing power of music. But often, when a song touches our very plimsoul, the real baraka is in the lyrics. Here, with a hat tip to Ellisson by way of Kevin Kim, is a splendid example.
August 23, 2009 – 10:24 pm
Regular visitors to these pages will know that, in sharp contrast to the shallowness and frivolity of most weblogs, we concern ourselves here only with serious matters of the utmost philosophical import and urgency. In particular, we know that many of you turn, sometimes in bleak existential despair, to waka waka waka as place where […]
August 10, 2009 – 7:27 pm
Back in 1994 or thereabouts, it was my pleasure to spend a few weeks recording and mixing the Bobby McFerrin album Bang! Zoom!. The album, a collaboration with the band the Yellowjackets, has remained one of my favorites — not only because of the high quality of the music, and the fun I had recording […]
August 3, 2009 – 12:48 pm
There’s an item at CNN today about a mechanical music-maker called Cybraphon. It’s the product of a few months of work by a Scottish artist’s collective, and I think it’s rather a nifty bit of work. Automated music-making is obviously nothing new — music boxes, band organs, and hurdy-gurdys have been around for ages, and […]
With a hat tip to bassist Alex Wan, here’s something enjoyable and instructive: Queen’s Bohemian Rahpsody, arranged for the classical guitar by one Edgar Cruz. Most impressive.
According to an item over at CNN, former Procol Harum keyboardist Matthew Fisher has won a lawsuit seeking a portion of the royalties for the band’s classic tune “A Whiter Shade of Pale”. This certainly seems fair, though I wasn’t present as the song was being written: Fisher’s plangent organ-playing is the soul of the […]
So distracted am I, and so out of touch with the world of music just at the moment, that I didn’t know it until I read it in today’s Times: the incomparable Manny’s, midtown Manhattan’s Mecca of musical merchandise, has closed its doors. This lavish emporium, set in “Music Row” on West 48th Street amongst […]
From our friend Sarah Zimmerman comes a link to an article by Steven Van Zandt about just what it is that ails the music business. Readers will know Steve as Bruce Springsteen’s long-time associate in the E Street Band, and as consigliere Silvio Dante from The Sopranos. I got to know Steven myself during the […]
Our friend G. Orcalimbo Jones, during the course of his radio show last Friday, tipped off his listeners to a marvelous Internet resource: a compendious archive of live recordings from the glory days of the old Fillmore and the King Biscuit Flower Hour. It’s called Wolfgang’s Vault, and you can find it here.
A little while back I confessed my infatuation with Porcupine Tree‘s extraordinary drummer Gavin Harrison, who is, I still think, pretty much the bee’s knees when it comes to tapping the tubs. In that recent post I encouraged readers to go have a look for themselves, and linked to a YouTube clip of one of […]
I’ve mentioned that I have sort of a drummer’s crush lately on Porcupine Tree / King Crimson batteur Gavin Harrison — who, I have decided, may not be human (I’m well acquainted with others of his alien species: Dennis Chambers, Keith Carlock, Peter Erskine, etc.). Here he is again.
February 16, 2009 – 11:39 pm
One of the enjoyable quirks of the Outer Cape is Provincetown’s own radio station, WOMR (“Outermost Radio”). The station is everything you might expect from a place as full of artists, writers, musicians, eccentrics, oddballs, and misfits as the far end of Cape Cod is, and the playlist is eclectic, and seldom boring. A particular […]