Music

“does any1 know a psychiatrist in Dublin or wicklow who could urgently see my [sic] today please?… Im really un-well…and in danger….I desperately need to get back on meds today” —Tweets by Sinead O’Connor 1) Writer Touré is more an agent of entropy than a journalist or critic, so it’s fitting that the best, really … Read more

I owe Bobby Bland a real debt of gratitude. Not just for the time he always graciously gave me (Bobby was the definition of “gracious”), particularly when I was working on the profile of him that appeared in Lost Highway. Not just for the music he gave the world, which, like Sam Cooke’s, was an … Read more

You can hear L.C. Cooke get into a familial groove on recordings his brother Sam produced for him back in the 60s. Those recordings were archived after Sam died, but they were finally released this summer. Decades down the line, L.C.’s collaboration with his brother still sounds like Friday night. My favorite cut is “Put … Read more

Get On Up, the James Brown bio-pic, has moved your editor to re-up on First‘s 2007 tribute to JB. Get On Up‘s love-is-strange treatment of JB circles around the irreducible nuttiness of “the hardest working man in show business” even as it limns the maddening social continuum in which he pursued soul power. The Brits … Read more

To get the preliminaries out of the way, at Bob Dylan’s third of three concerts at the Oakland Paramount, first, the band – Bob (piano and harmonica), Tony Garnier (bass), Donnie Herron (banjo, viola, violin, mandolin, pedal and lap steel), Stu Kimball (rhythm guitar), and especially, given the way the sound mix reached these ears, … Read more

Afro-pop artist Busi Mhlongo died of cancer in 2010 a few months after releasing her folk gospel record, Amakholwa. Bongani Madondo — South Africa’s most original pop writer — wrote an appreciation of that CD which should resonate for readers alive to Black Atlantic traditions. You don’t have to know Mhlongo’s music to feel Madondo’s … Read more

“Shake It Off,” director Mark Romanek’s recent clip for Taylor Swift, depicts bad new trends in beautiful old ways. It works the same way as the best ‘80s-‘90s music videos—using semiotics to express up-to-the-minute changes in pop culture, producing the sort of imagery commentators and marketers now glibly call “iconic.” The video shows Swift—a young … Read more