So, you live in smalltown nowhere and the only live jazz you have access to is either none, or a Utah basketball team on ESPN. Don’t worry, because Smalls Jazz Club in New York City has been recording their live sets for a few years now and you can listen to them in the club’s online Artist+Audio Archive.

Opened in 1993 by Mitch Borden, Smalls Jazz Club became a Greenwich Village institution and mainstay for such then up-and-coming jazz talent as drummer Brian Blade, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, pianist Sam Yahel and others. Sadly, Borden was forced to close the club during the city’s financial woes after 9/11. Then in February of 2007, Borden and his newfound partners musicians Spike Wilner and Lee Kostrinsky re-opened Smalls.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the All Music Guide library’s most valued possessions is a complete set of The Big Takeover, the fanzine published twice a year by New Yorker Jack Rabid. (Yes, that Jack Rabid — the one who has played drums in Even Worse, Springhouse, and Last Burning Embers.) From its Xeroxed one-page beginning to its present state — issue 62 is 224 pages in length, including interviews with Stephen Malkmus, Ray Davies, Josef K’s Paul Haig, and Band of Horses — Rabid and his staff have been covering independent and otherwise non-mainstream rock music since 1980, stuffing each issue with album and concert reviews, reader feedback with lengthy responses, and editorials. Rabid led several of our writers to bands like Savage Republic, the Comsat Angels, For Against, the House of Love, and Ride. Even now, with an endless supply of information at the fingertips, The Big Takeover is as necessary as ever, as vital and reliable a gatekeeping resource for music discovery as any other. (If Rabid would only replace that very old quote on the subscription form…)

The next best thing to flipping through a fresh issue’s Top 40 rundown? Listening to Rabid spin records. (Actually, it might be just a little better.) Each Monday at noon, a new installment of Rabid’s hour-long Big Takeover program becomes available for listening or download on Breakthru Radio. He is limited to playing independent releases, but that isn’t much of a hindrance; this is a man who, almost 20 years ago, devised a list of his top 750 albums released from 1975 through 1989, and his appetite for music since then has not diminished. There is an emphasis on newer releases, but older favorites are also incorporated. A new edition went up just now, with Billy Bragg, British Sea Power, the Sharp Things, the Bags, Wipers, and several others in the mix.

The New York Times has been running a music blog called Measure for Measure, written by musicians about the songwriting process. Featured are pieces by country singer Roseanne Cash, contemporary singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega, pop songwriter/producer Darrell Brown (LeAnn Rimes’ Family) and eclectic Chicago-based artist Andrew Bird. Generally, these are quite thoughtful and intimate posts that find the artists opening up about personal and professional views they hold on writing and recording music. Bird’s latest post is about recording his upcoming album at Wilco’s Loft studio. He writes, “Sometimes, as I’ve noted before, the object itself gets assigned a mystical value and must be on a song, though I know most listeners could not care less whether we use a Telefunken mic or a 30-year-old calf skin drum head.”

Check the blog here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Going by the many lists and polls floating across the Internet, the average music critic believes R&B died with the rise of disco, or shortly after the so-called death of disco, or maybe at some random point during the first half of the ’80s. These people are either crazy in the head or, to be less harsh, allow their musical preferences (and almost always age) to bleed into a flawed belief system. A quick, informal poll of one anonymous critic claims the slow death of R&B just happens to run parallel with the time line of a session maverick who “spiraled downward” from uncredited Motown and Invictus sessions and work with giants (Stevie, Herbie, Chaka, Barry, Marvin) to a “flagrantly pop-oriented” funk band (”when the soul was first squeezed out of the music”), then “money-grabbing soundtrack hackery” (”the point at which soul truly died”) and Saturday morning TV themes (”when soul’s headstone was spat upon and bowled over”). (Watch this space for a detailed defense of the artist in question.)

The sharp staff at SoulBounce is kicking against this type of mindset with an R&B countdown of their own. They are going by their favorites, so the odds are pretty strong that the Top Ten will not be filled out with ’60s classics like “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and “Respect.” Even if it does turn out that way, you can bet the entries will not toss around adjectives like “authentic” and “worthy” as a way to disregard almost everything produced during the following decades. The entries thus far are from the ’80s and ’90s, and you can bet the picks from the past few years won’t be limited to big crossover hits like “Say My Name,” “Fallin’,” “Yeah!,” and “Crazy in Love.” Only six songs in, it is shaping up to what could be the greatest music list in the history of the Internet. If Loose Ends’ “Hangin’ on a String (Contemplating)” (YouTube) places somewhere in the Top 20, its stature will be indisputable.

Say you’re a huge fan of Canadian indie rock and and you don’t have the good fortune to live in Canada. Gee whiz, think of all the excellent CBC Radio 3 sessions you’re missing out on. Why, maybe A.C. Newman, Destroyer, You Say Party! We Say Die!, Tokyo Police Club or even the New Pornographers hit the studio recently to record sessions and you’ll never hear them. Think again, hoser! Thanks to their seriously sweet website you can access boatloads of archived sessions and concerts recorded for the station by some of Canada’s top indie rockers. Go to CBC3’s main website http://radio3.cbc.ca/, then click on Concerts & Sessions and you’re in. You can see the five most recently added shows or browse through the archive and find some gems.

Read the rest of this entry »

While its great grandson YouTube may have stolen the thunder, local access cable television is still out there. Thanks to people like artist/jazz musician Mark Kostabi, it’s still going strong. Produced for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Kostabi’s show Title This “is a game show where celebrities compete to title Kostabi paintings for cash awards”. A panel of three contestants – like film director Michel Gondry or maybe Spin magazine founder Bob Guccione Jr. — are shown a Kostabi painting, then they try to name it and throw out ideas like “Sourpuss Tantrum” or “Condoleezza Rides”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Backstage riders are often the stuff of legend and speculation — just ask any rock music fan about Van Halen’s aversion to brown M&Ms. (Granted, they did have a sound reason behind the demand that had nothing to do with color preference.) For those who are curious to know the behind-the-scenes quirks of the Killers, Foo Fighters, John Mayer, or Amy Winehouse, The Smoking Gun has compiled an online archive of tour riders from 220 acts and counting. There’s a little something for everyone (the list categorizes acts by genre) and each document makes for fascinating reading — point five on page three of the Beatles’ 1965 rider, for example, states that “artists will not be required to perform before a segregated audience.” And for sheer comedy, the rider for Iggy & the Stooges is not to be missed. Pity the poor soul who reads through its 18 pages to find this addendum waiting for them.

If you haven’t seen it already, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen has written a nice obituary of Ike Turner.

Fagen explains his importance to music and opines on what the native of the Clarksdale, Mississippi area (also home to Robert Johnson) may have asked the devil for down at the crossroads. Fagen’s guess?: “Organization!”

“His employers included the Bihari brothers at Modern Records, the Chess brothers in Chicago, and a host of tough club owners. They didn’t like to fool around with their money. Ike had to be at that session on time, he had to book those gigs, make sure the band’s suits were pressed, and that they rolled in to the next town ready to play.”