By Brian Arsenault So Kath and I had to go all the way to St. Martin and back in time to find a New York band of distinction, GLADSHOT. We were walking into the hotel and Debbie Andrews and Mike Blaxill, the band’s two principals, were walking out of their room. In that friendlier way… Read More Brian Arsenault Takes On GLADSHOT’s CD, “Maxwell’s Cool Demon”
By Brian Arsenault The memories are so intact. The Grease Band singing crappy falsetto behind him at Woodstock. The kickass chorus on the best damn live album ever, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Belushi coming out to do Joe Cocker with Joe Cocker on SNL. I know it’s that time of life when that generation, my… Read More An Appreciation: Remembering Joe Cocker
For Last Minute Shoppers Only (We Need All the Help We Can Get) By Brian Arsenault Peggy Duquesnel All I Ask For Christmas (CD Baby) There’s a real neat Christmas music album that for whatever reason I didn’t get around to reviewing. Peggy Duquesnel’s All I Ask For Christmas is the complete package. You get… Read More Brian Arsenault’s Short Takes: CDs and DVDs from Peggy Duquesnel, Roy Orbison, Julie Cain and Favorites from 2013
By Mike Finkelstein ModRock had its official opening Sunday evening at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. It’s an entertaining, feel good, romp through some very important times in popular culture. In the mid ‘60s London was ground zero for popular culture. Long lasting fashion trends like the miniskirt came out of the London… Read More Live Music: “ModRock” at the El Portal Theater
Not Fade Away After Half a Century By Brian Arsenault Vinylphiles rejoice. If you still have a vinyl player that turns at 45 revolutions per minute, ABKCO has a very special treat indeed for you in honor of Record Store Day this Saturday (April 20). Remarkably, there are 700 independent record stores still around in… Read More Record Rack: The Rolling Stones and the Animals (Reissues)
By Brian Arsenault I really don’t feel comfortable calling a column like this “The Best of 2012.” It’s not that I’m not opinionated enough to do so, it’s that integrity would require me to have listened to a whole lot more during the year. Wouldn’t one have to hear just about everything to do an… Read More Short Takes: Of My Favorites in Twenty-Twelve
Patti Smith Live at Montreaux 2005 (Eagle Rock) By Brian Arsenault “She is a benediction.” I was gonna do a combo review, you know, with one or two other DVDs. But Patti Smith deserves rather more than that, don’t you think? I mean, the first half dozen plus songs from this live concert DVD, ‘cept… Read More DVD Review: “Patti Smith Live at Montreaux 2005”
By Mike Finkelstein On Friday night at the Egyptian Theatre, the American Cinematheque screened what could possibly have been the only showing of Midnight to Six, a truly entertaining and satisfying tutorial on the career of the legendary Pretty Things. This is one of five (so far) projects focusing on influential bands of the British… Read More Film: “Midnight to Six” at the Egyptian Theatre
by Brian Arsenault The guitar work on “Fantastica,” the first cut on Vladivostok, impressed. But it wasn’t until the middle cuts — “Not Tomorrow” and “Lucky Bride” — that I began to think this band is really good. But next up was “Sorry Tiger” and all my concerns about European rock bands bubbled to the… Read More CD Review: Mumiy Troll’s “Vladivostok”
EG Kight Lip Service (Vizzitone) By Brian Arsenault When this album started my first reaction was, “If Bonnie Raitt was Southern, this is what she’d sound like.” But that may just be my Yankee self talking, because what you really feel when you’re moving through Lip Service, E G Kight’s latest CD, is that you… Read More CD Review: EG Kight’s “Lip Service”
The International Review of Music 