Tag Archives: Amy Winehouse

3x3x3: Amy Winehouse joins rock & roll’s celebrated 27 Club

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If there’s a rock and roll heaven, you know they’ve got a hell of a band. – Alan O’Day and Johnny Stevenson

British neo-soul superstar Amy Winehouse joined The 27 Club yesterday. If you haven’t heard of this select group, the term refers to all the musicians who have died at the age of 27. It’s a pretty famous crowd.

  • Janis Joplin, dead of a heroin overdose in 1970, was regarded as perhaps the preeminent female rock vocalist of her generation.
  • Jimi Hendrix, still regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in history, had died less than a month earlier.
  • Brian Jones, the brilliant and multi-talented co-founder of the Rolling Stones, died under suspicious circumstances in 1969. Read more

TunesDay: Name those bands – and the winner is….

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bandssamlovesThe results of last week’s Name Those Bands contest are in. In first place we have … a disqualification, sorta. Our friend Ubertramp logged in with an impressive 47 of 53. Seriously, that’s pretty damned good. But he has disqualified himself because I’m the one who turned him onto most of these outstanding artists and he felt like he might as well be cheating under the circumstances.

Wow – sportsmanship. What a concept.

So our next highest scorer, and the official winner, is … Read more

TunesDay: The best CDs of 2008, pt. 2 – the Platinum LPs

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Our Best CDs of 2008 continues today with a review of the super-premium Platinum Award winners for Excellence in rocking and rolling. As with last week’s Gold Awards, these are in alphabetical order. Band Web sites link to the band name, and if the CD is available via eMusic, that links to the CD title. (Mike Smith of Fiction 8, in last week’s comments, recommended that you buy from the band’s Web site or Amazon, if possible, because the artists get a better cut of the proceeds that way. Duly noted.)

Speaking of Fiction 8, let’s get this out of the way first

Fiction 8 – Project Phoenix
I have a rule – I never include in my official ratings CDs that I had something to do with, no matter how great I think they are. And since I co-wrote “Hegemony,” the track that closes this disc, that means that Fiction 8 is officially disqualified. This doesn’t mean I can’t tell you what I think I’d think about the record if I weren’t laboring with a conflict of interest, though. Read more

TunesDay: S&Recommends Lucky Soul (and a few others)

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A guy on one of my music lists posted a question this morning: what’s everybody digging from eMusic these days? Wow – it’s like he knew it was TunesDay and wanted to set me up for another round of S&Recommends, huh?

Well, I don’t need a lot of prodding, so here you go. I’ve mentioned a couple of these before, I know, but great music is the sort of thing it’s okay to harp on…

TunesDay: What once was old shall be new again

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There is nothing new under the sun, or so they say.

I’m not a big fan of groups that slavishly imitate their influences, but I do love bands with a sense of history and a desire to explore older styles in search of new angles. This obviously establishes a tricky standard – be true to the masters, but not … too true. It’s equally tricky for me as a listener and armchair critic, as well – I might like a contemporary band for the same reasons I liked the bands they’re riffing on, but is there enough in the way of originality going on? As I’ve noted before, the CDs I like and those I think are great aren’t always the same ones. Read more

The best CDs of 2007, pt. 2: Platinum LPs

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Welcome back to part two of our annual music wrap-up. Today we award the Platinum LPs, given for superior achievement. (If you missed part one, click here to review the Gold LP winners, updated to include three inadvertent omissions.) These appear in no particular order.

Platinum LP

The Birthday Massacre: Walking with Strangers
Toronto’s The Birthday Massacre is a study in contradictions. Read more

The inaugural Scholars and Rogues Interview (and our newest Scrogue): Graham Parker

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The mid-1970s were a wonderful time for music lovers. For starters, exciting and innovative new music was popping up all over the place. And when it did, it actually got played on the radio.

The UK was especially fertile ground during this period, as scores of punk and New Wave acts emerged (many from the “pub rock” scene) in the most dynamic explosion of music since the British Invasion. One of the most outstanding of these was Graham Parker, who in 1976 released not one, but two instant five-star classics – Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment.

While some of his contemporaries (most notably Elvis Costello) became wildly famous, arguably nobody in rock history has posted a more enduring legacy of critical success. Read more