Stories and blogs about music and the musicians who make it
Biyi Adepegba, the festival’s creator, said performing bands have gotten significantly smaller over the years, because of the high cost of touring — where the festival used to host bands with 15 or 20 members, most bands now rarely exceed 10. However, Adepegba thinks having smaller rosters actually helps bands appeal to a larger...
The crowd at “I ♥ the ’90s” may surprise. Expecting folks in their mid-30s, hoping to relive their glory days from college and high school? Not exactly. At a late-August occasion, the Academy was full of 20-somethings who must have heard a lot of this music when they were in elementary school or junior...
Since the Talking Heads disbanded, David Byrne has taken quite a circuitous route. Along the way there have been film scores, dance and opera projects, visual art, and more recently a memoir about riding his bike through the world’s cities. His latest project: hooking up an old organ to the guts of an old...
I recently returned from a five-week tour with Damon & the Heathens, a six-piece punk-soul band from Oakland, California. It was a chaotic, disorganized, wonderful, amazing trip. I didn’t find the time to write much of anything during the tour, except for pages of messy, scribbled notes in a notebook I carried around in...
At a recent jam, the steamy room was packed with more than 40 people of all ages, huddled around a large wood table covered in beer glasses and books of sheet music. They belted out ukulele-led versions of Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” and Rod Stewart’s “Maggie” on red, blue, pink, white, and brown ukuleles,...
In contrast to the propaganda posters of Shepard Fairey or the subversive stencils of Banksy, Slinkachu’s approach to street art is more subtle, more sensitive. You could easily walk right past one of Slinkachu’s installations and not know it’s there. His photographs are key: the close-ups make you feel like a participant, while the...
The CD came with extensive liner notes that read like an enthusiastic travelogue. Someone hadn’t merely thrown these songs together. They had done their homework to find out why this music sounded the way it did: a collage of funky island rhythms from all over: North and South America, Colombia, the Caribbean and Africa....
A series of recent live music performances at London’s Southbank Centre by–or inspired by–Ornette Coleman, a free jazz legend, was equal parts amazing, exhausting and surprising. Never dull. Having never seen Coleman perform live before, two things became clear to me by the end of the week: his playing oozes with the blues, and...
It’s one thing to listen to scratchy old recordings of your favorite jazz artist, but seeing filmed live footage of greats like Ella Fitzgerald or Clifford Brown ripping it is a completely different kind of treat for the real fan. For the devotee, it’s all in the details: Until I saw late ’50s television...
Hours before a recent “The Circus: Starring Britney Spears” performance at London’s enormous O2 Arena, a friend called to say he had an extra ticket to the show; mine if I wanted it. “Yes” bounded from my mouth before he had finished his sentence. Two hours later, we found ourselves 20 feet away from...