Chris Duarte Group - Romp
With guitars and their wielding very much on my mind, I tossed the new Chris Duarte Group (Duarte, John Jordan - bass, Ed Miles - drums) CD on the player and let it rip, er romp. Romp is the hairy,...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 18, 2003 11:34 AM
Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland blessed our collective turntable in September of 1968, marking the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s third U.S. album release in a year.
Posted in Blogcritics on September 18, 2003 10:07 AM
Muddy Waters - Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live Legacy Edition
As part of its ongoing "Legacy Edition" reissue series, Sony has rereleased the classic Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live, recorded in the middle of Waters' sensational comeback period in the late-'70s (with the loving help of Johnny Winter), and augmented that...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 10, 2003 02:31 PM
Otis Taylor - Truth Is Not Fiction
In a discussion I heard on the radio the other day, a pundit suggested the blues as a genre needs to speak to "today's reality" to find a wider, younger audience. I have found such a voice and such a...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 8, 2003 12:35 PM
The Yardbirds: Guitar Hero Conspiracy Revealed
If you're old enough to remember when the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" first hit the charts, you might also remember rumors of a cooperative venture between the US and UK. In order to lessen American teenagers' angst over JFK's assassination,...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 3, 2003 08:52 PM
The Black Keys - Long Walk Off a Shortlist
The 2003 Shortlist Finalists have been announced: Black Keys, Bright Eyes, Cat Power, Cody Chestnutt, Floetry, Interpol, Damien Rice, Sigur Ros, The Streets and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. INTERPOL, BRIGHT EYES, CAT POWER, DAMIEN RICE AND BLACK KEYS CONFIRMED TO PERFORM...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 3, 2003 01:41 PM
Whoa, these guys rock
Polaris DVD Companion North Mississippi All-Stars (ATO) This is a 2 video and 1 documentary DVD from this band of Mississippi blues merchants. The videos and the track (un-named) that plays over the menu show how impressive this quartet can...
Posted in Blogcritics on September 2, 2003 05:01 PM
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
this is interesting. maybe i'm not rememberin' this correctly, but i could swear that the buildup to ken burns "Jazz" was much larger than this....but there appears to be a much larger groundswell of blues support after only three nights of the show.
...which is fine by me (the burns thing was disappointing on several levels)
2 - Taloran
I loved the Ken Burns Jazz series. I am also very much enjoying the Scorsese series. I am a much bigger blues fan than jazz fan (20 years ago the opposite was true) but I found the Burns series more educational (thus far.)
3 - Eric Olsen
T, you're right about the educational side of it. Scorsese and his minions have made a big deal about the series being "impressionistic not pedantic," and that has certainly been true. The book and the CDs assotiated with the series are much more educational than the films themselves.
4 - jan herman
Hate to disagree with you Eric, but I find the films in the blues series getting progressively worse. I think the best one was Scorsese's on the first night of the series. The rest seem dull, though I love the music. They're missed opportunities to me.
-- Jan Herman
5 - Eric Olsen
Disagree away! What would you do differently, how would the opportunity be better fulfilled?
6 - Mac Diva
For the interest in the blues to spread to the hoi polloi there need to be tie-ins, Mark. Ken Burns' relationship with Starbucks' Here Music and a special Borders Books pamphlet and CD series kept the material out there. I suspect it may have penetrated to people who never gave jazz a second thought before.
A funny aside in regard to Burns is it was also the jazz films that got him kicked out of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
7 - Eric Olsen
MD, that is funny! Was he too sympathetic to the artistry of the descendents of the unpaid help?
I think the marketing difference just comes down to Burns himself. Over the course of doing his films he has learned to be a great marketer and merchandiser. I don't he's ever had anything like the volume of products The Blues series has, though.