BeatKodak Center, Rochester NYOctober 19, 2024I saw King Crimson in 1981 on the Discipline tour and, to this day, it ranks as the best concert I have ever seen. (Followed by a close second place of Crimson in 2021.) So I was eager to see this version of that tour and snatched up tickets as fast as I could, when they became available. If you’re not familiar, Beat consists of Adrian Belew (guitar and lead vocals) and Tony Levin (bass)...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the JT LP by Steve Earle and The Dukes. The fact is that no parent ever assumes they’ll outlive their children. There’s a security in that knowledge; at a certain point, parents realize that it’s unlikely they’ll accomplish all the things that they hoped to do in their lifetimes (either for themselves or for their progeny – some things will simply be left undone), and so there’s a certain comfort which comes...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Ghosts of West Virginia LP by Steve Earle and The Dukes. I confess that – for a variety of reasons, many of which are not rooted in rational or critical thinking – I have never really given Steve Earle a whole lot of my time. Some of that has to do with the politics and soapboxes, but suffice it to say that it has just never happened; I’ve never walked up...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Water Records vinyl reissue of the Album – Generic Flipper LP. In music, as is the case in chemistry, the most important element is the one that ultimately provides the catalyst which sets everything else in motion. In chemistry, for example, the right combination of sulfer, charcoal and saltpeter can still remain perfectly inert but, when a spark gets added to that mix, the results are explosive; the aforementioned chemical compound...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of Naveed by Our Lad Peace. Now with the benefit of hindsight, it is genuinely incredible when one considers how many classic bands just seemed to materialize from nowhere on the streets of Toronto in the first half of the 1990s. That might sound like an overstatement to those who came along later, but it’s true; bands like The Tragically Hip, the Headstones, Gorp, 13 Engines, The Morganfields, Thrush...