Album Review: Regards to the End
Wells’ captivating soundscapes have the ability to bring one deep within themselves, or even have the cathartic means to release one from the ruminations constantly running through their head.
hardly strictly music
reviews, interviews with artists and some other music musings
The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story
Pilgrim Media Group and Lance Bass Productions’ YouTube Original Documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story
What’s remarkable about the YouTube Original Documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story is that deceased, convicted criminal Lou Pearlman participated in making the film. Not the ghost of Lou Pearlman, but Pearlman himself...
What’s remarkable about the YouTube Original Documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story is that deceased, convicted criminal Lou Pearlman participated in making the film. Not the ghost of Lou Pearlman, but Pearlman himself...
Brainiac
Tim Taylor died in a horrible accident in 1997 ending the music of Brainiac but not their story. Their music, alien from what people had heard before, so aurally disruptive that you still have to ask, “what is that? Do I like it? Why do I want more?” Taylor classically trained as a cellist from the age of four so Stravinsky echos in my mind...
SXSW 2019 Music Festival
Last month 1,964 musicians played at South by Southwest 2019 and I think I’ve recovered. SXSW is my own version of March Madness and I think next time I’ll take a lesson from the college basketball fans and make a bracket. SX is probably the worst best place for the commitment-phobic and the decision adverse...
Emily Wells
EMILY WELLS’ NEW ALBUM
THIS WORLD IS TOO ____ FOR YOU
OUT NOW ON THESIS & INSTINCT
Every time I listen to any of Wells’ music, I hear something new. There’s a purpose and deceptive simplicity to each note, each combination of sounds. It reminds me of something only found in nature. There’s a liquid quality to her compositions. More choreographed than composed the notes sound like they’re dancing and swirling around the instruments. Wells is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, singe
THIS WORLD IS TOO ____ FOR YOU
OUT NOW ON THESIS & INSTINCT
Every time I listen to any of Wells’ music, I hear something new. There’s a purpose and deceptive simplicity to each note, each combination of sounds. It reminds me of something only found in nature. There’s a liquid quality to her compositions. More choreographed than composed the notes sound like they’re dancing and swirling around the instruments. Wells is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, singe
DIAMONDS & DYNAMITE
If you don’t know who Donna Grantis is, you might know her music and if you don’t know her music, you just might know the names of some of the people who she’s played guitar with like Prince (yeah, that one) or Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. On stage, with long black hair, leather pants (sometimes tight, sometimes super-wide bellbottoms or in a flowy dress and heels) and chiseled features, Donna Grantis looks legit guitar player...
Ella Vos
Ella Vos looked familiar to me and it nearly drove me crazy. All I believed I knew about the singer-songwriter before I spoke with her last month was that she survived cancer and her latest music video, Ocean made me want to talk to her. Watch and Wait her recent EP dropped January 25 just ahead of her North American Tour. Her music gets to me and passes the Gen-Z test (I consulted my 19-year-old expert)...
Edie Brickell, Album release show, written by Jennifer Parker
Nothing about NYC on a chilly fall evening screams, “Go to a concert at a venue with no seats.” When it rains in the city, the streets become mini lakes, the storm drains oh after about 15 minutes of rain can’t keep up. The leaves having blown off the trees are now clogging the drains so that the average person is up to her ankles in a stew of discarded cigarette butts, dog poo and bits of trash.
Lindsey Buckingham, written by Jennifer Parker for
She broke down and let me in
Made me see where I’ve been
Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again
You don’t know what it means to win
Come down and see me again
Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again
Fifty-three words. For decades, the better part of half-a-century, rock-fans have practically made a sport out of deconstructing the meaning behind the lyrics of Never Going Back Again.
Made me see where I’ve been
Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again
You don’t know what it means to win
Come down and see me again
Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again
Fifty-three words. For decades, the better part of half-a-century, rock-fans have practically made a sport out of deconstructing the meaning behind the lyrics of Never Going Back Again.
Bad Reputation: Film review by Jennifer Parker for At Large magazine
The first time I heard Crimson and Clover, I don’t think I liked it. Let me step that back, I didn’t like all of it. I loved parts of it. I hated others. I knew it had something to do with sex. It made me embarrassed and the mofo got stuck in my head. Over and over. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released the song in 1982 on the I Love Rock n’ Roll album. It was January, I was in the last half of 8th grade in a school that I hated more than acne and the last thing I needed was one more thing to r
Another Brick in The Wall opera saved my summer: An opera review
Another Brick in the Wall Opera saved my summer
Once again, it is muggy AF in NYC. Though Labor Day Weekend has passed, the official end of summer isn’t until the Fall Equinox. The holiday weekend brings a sense of finality. I believe no summer should end without a romantic story. I rediscovered an old friend. Wait a hot minute before you make any assumptions because this friend shapeshifted its way through my life, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, but was always there to make me think...
Once again, it is muggy AF in NYC. Though Labor Day Weekend has passed, the official end of summer isn’t until the Fall Equinox. The holiday weekend brings a sense of finality. I believe no summer should end without a romantic story. I rediscovered an old friend. Wait a hot minute before you make any assumptions because this friend shapeshifted its way through my life, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, but was always there to make me think...
NATURAL BØRNS SINGER
BØRNS is my musical antidote to my hashtag fatigued, Russia Investigation, political shit show that is 2018, and friends, we have another four months to go. It isn’t so much his singing as how he uses his voice; like an instrument that scales with the confidence of an opera singer, then wraps around the lyrics with the tenderness of a lover and delights with the playfulness of a child. Then there’s his look, fans have called him a genderless being but that seems to stem from his willingness to dress in clothing that neither reads feminine nor masculine.
The King
Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, two-time Sundance Grand Jury winner Eugene Jarecki’s new film takes the King’s 1963 Rolls-Royce on a musical road trip across America.
Film still from The King
Love him or hate him, Elvis Presley pioneered the cross-branded artist. As the creature of pop culture, Elvis was the recipient of all things not worth worshiping yet he sang from a depth of pain and loneliness. He married a soulful sound to a back-beat (the rock in rock-n-roll) native to hi
Film still from The King
Love him or hate him, Elvis Presley pioneered the cross-branded artist. As the creature of pop culture, Elvis was the recipient of all things not worth worshiping yet he sang from a depth of pain and loneliness. He married a soulful sound to a back-beat (the rock in rock-n-roll) native to hi
Rock Rubber 45s
Making a documentary like Rock Rubber 45s about Bobbito Garcia’s career in what I can only describe as a POV of freestyle by dribbling, faking and confounding the audience takes skill. The only person who has a deep enough resumé to make it is the subject himself and leave it to him to offer conflicting points of view. When it comes to labels, about the only one Bobbito Garcia AKA Bobbito the Barber, Kool Bob Love, DJ Cucumber Slice, born Robert Garcia doesn’t seem to fit is Gen-X.
Breath
People keep asking me if I’ve seen the new Simon Baker surfing movie, Breath. It occurs to me that the people asking haven’t seen the movie. If they have, they would know it is not a surfing movie. It has a few tropes of surfing movies It has some really hot looking actors or some who will be in a few years (oh don’t #metoo me, I know what I’m saying) there’s the big wave that tests the moxie of the leading man err in this case adolescent young man...
May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers A Film Review by: Jennifer Parker
“A Breathing Time Machine”
May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers—
Folk rock is kind of the “not otherwise specified” exception diagnosis for those of us who can’t quite stomach the idea of identifying with anything to do with country music. There’s a few artists who fall into this category. The greats include Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Tracey Chapman and Leonard Cohen. Then there’s the slightly “twangier” but still cool, Indigo Girls and Bonnie Raitt...
May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers—
Folk rock is kind of the “not otherwise specified” exception diagnosis for those of us who can’t quite stomach the idea of identifying with anything to do with country music. There’s a few artists who fall into this category. The greats include Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Tracey Chapman and Leonard Cohen. Then there’s the slightly “twangier” but still cool, Indigo Girls and Bonnie Raitt...
