The musical highlight of my last two weeks was seeing Mike Cooley from Drive-By Truckers do a solo show at City Winery in Boston. An unfortunately low-attendance show I should say, which reminds me th
I was unfamiliar with the Wabanaki bassist Mali Obomsawin but I saw she was playing with some of my favorite contemporary jazz musicians–the trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum and the drummer Tomas Fujiw
We lost the Killer yesterday. Jerry Lee Lewis was the last of a generation. All of the major early rock stars are now gone (I think anyway). Moreover, Jerry Lee is my favorite of that generation, by a
The last two weeks saw me mostly in Texas for a conference and extended visit. What that meant was exposure to the amazing shows one can see in that musically fertile place. Specifically, I got to see
This week’s big musical event was seeing Amyl and the Sniffers at Big Night in Boston on Sunday. This Aussie punk band really knows how to bring it. Amy Taylor likes to sing about how ugly and a
We lost Pharoah Sanders today. This is just terrible. One of the great saxophonists in jazz history and other than Coltrane, probably the single most important figure in the free jazz scene of the lat
This week’s musical highlight was seeing Neko Case at the astounding Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston. First, the theater. This is a really famous place. For many years, it was the place that
Having spent a week in Ireland, I was curious to figure something out. To what extent is traditional Irish music (or “trad,” which is a word I hate for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint