Music for the Masses

November 20, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I've been enjoying the music-related DVDs that indie imprint Factory 25 released last month. It's an excellent slate of diverse material....

You Weren't There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984
This is easily the crown jewel among the releases, up there with essential punk documentaries like Ramones: End of a Century, We Jam Econo, and American Hardcore. Punk in America was a much more geographically and sonically diffuse affair than in little London town. You Weren't There follows the growth of a small, tight-knight scene nestled in the hard-rockin' Midwest that gave us influential acts like Naked Raygun, BIG BLACK, Articles of Faith, and the Effigies. Chicago's "punk" bands were an aesthetically and ideologically d...Read More
Industries: Video/DVD Reviews

November 18, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Girls
Album
True Panther Sounds

Rarely does music this full-throated and joyous cross my desk and not immediately turn my stomach. It's in the way that the second verse of "Lust for Life" (NOT the Iggy Pop song) explodes to full technicolor life with humming organ, handclaps, harmonica, and doo-do-do-doos like the Jam's cover of "Heatwave." 

All the while, Christopher Owens expresses the simplest, sweetest lyrics wanting all the little things that the obliviously happy take for granted ("I wish I had a pizza/I wish I had a bottle of wine") over a chiming one-chord guitar riff. (Owens's lyrical sensibility and...Read More

Industries: Audio Reviews

November 12, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Bored of traditional archiving or reference work? Ready to loosen that tie/scarf and take a long, strange trip (professionally speaking, of course)? The University of California at Santa Cruz is advertising for an Archivist for its Grateful Dead Archive. Try not to get caught in the avalanche of applications:

Archivist for the Grateful Dead Archive


Industries: Audio Reviews, Education/Training, News & Features

September 8, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I just happened upon MOJO magazine's review of Island Records' new reggae retrospective, War Ina Babylon (101 Distribution, May 2009). It seems the savvy compilers of this three-disc set decided to omit Bob Marley and the Wailers entirely, on the basis that this would allow lesser-known but more influential acts to shine on their own merits without being steamrolled over by the Marley hit machine. Per MOJO:

"Leaving Bob Marley off an anthology of Island reggae was a bold decision, and one that immediately proves its creative worth by allowing the likes of Derrick Morgan, The Paragons, Ernest Ranglin, Max Romeo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jimmy Cliff, Aswad, an...Read More

Industries: Audio Reviews

August 28, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Earlier this summer, the unexpected new single "Holy Are You" by legendary MC Rakim (of Eric B & Rakim fame) made the rounds on the Internet, dramatically spiking interest in the veteran MC and his long-promised (and still unreleased) album, The Seventh Seal. Putting aside from the obvious, and frankly tiresome, online bickering, does Rakim still has "it?" "It" being a liquid-smooth and dexterous delivery that influenced rappers from Big Daddy Kane&n...Read More
Industries: Audio Reviews