It’s always a welcome event, when the very musically gifted and multi-talented sisters, Ann and Nancy Wilson, better known as Heart, release new music, and what a sparkling album this is. So much so, that one feels like rolling out a red velvet carpet, for these First Ladies and Goddesses of Rock.
No other band is so closely identified with a single musical genre as Yes is with progressive rock. Beloved and belittled, admired and abhorred, Yes has been everything that music listeners love and music critics hate.
Steve Howe and Chris Squire sit in a glass-walled room high about New York’s Times Square, looking down on the spire that is home in the infamous New Year’s Eve hall. It is a fitting place to talk about the once and future Yes as the band contemplates 1997 in the wake of the release of Keys to Ascension. It is also a bit disconcerting to have them in the same room: Squire and Howe have not recorded together since Drama, which was released more than 15 years ago.
Think Led Zeppelin gear, and you think of Les Pauls, doublenecks, and Marshall amps. But Jimmy Page’s early gear in Led Zeppelin was actually a continuation of his old Yardbirds setup.
Corky Laing, the explosive drummer from the legendary rock group, Mountain, with the great Leslie West and master bassist Rev Jones, was at a performance at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Vienna, Virginia – an outdoor amphitheater that is a favorite spot for Washington D.C. audiences – when we spotted him and asked if he’d help us out and he said, “Sure…” to our request to help us roll out a PSA.
Singularity is a creatively conceived album by former Doors guitarist Robby Krieger. Walking the line between being highly improvised and carefully arranged, the album is a kaleidoscope of genres, sound, tone colors and timbres, directly representing the wide variety of Krieger’s musical influences.
Jeff Beck, gifted the crowd at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Vienna, Virginia with a full spectrum performance, weaving together a fine blend of classic rock, funk, opera, and a stirring show tune, all wrapped in soulful and superbly nuanced expression.
Recorded live in Tokyo back in May of 2009, the DVD “Mick Taylor Band – The Tokyo Concert” features Taylor on guitar and vocals, Max Middleton on keyboards, Kuma Harada on bass, Jeff Allen on drums, and Denny Newman on guitar and vocals.
After one of the worst winters in metropolitan Washington, D.C.’s recorded history, the audience at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, was badly in need of a sunny afternoon – and that’s just what Ray Davies conjured up.
When one thinks of Stewart Copeland, iconic drummer for The Police and, more recently, Oysterhead, guitar is not the first instrument that comes to mind.
