Category: Music

Arriving right around the mid-point of Paul McCartney’s third completely DIY album, McCartney III, is an extended song called “Deep Deep Feeling.” An elemental drumbeat kicks it off, followed by McCartney’s otherwise unaccompanied vocal. He’s singing about the duality of love and devotion (“The deep, deep pain of feeling”). Slowly other elements are layered in....

The newly-issued Flaming Pie: Archive Collection makes it a baker’s dozen entries for the slow-but-steady series. Since 2010, McCartney has taken his time curating the Collection. Universally acknowledged solo career high points like Band on the Run (1973) and RAM (1971) sit right next to extravagant re-packaging of far less-loved albums like Wild Life (1971)...

In the late 60s and early 70s, Ian and Sylvia Tyson were among the brightest lights on the Canadian music scene, not only as performers but as composers of some of the era’s best folksongs. Their marriage and professional partnership fell apart in 1975, but in the current century, they’ve been garnering fresh attention via...

The latest installment of Legacy Recordings’ Van Morrison reissue project finds the label turning its attention to 1997’s The Healing Game, which followed a pair of jazz-oriented side trips. When originally released, the album garnered some lukewarm reviews and made it to only number 32 on the U.S. Billboard chart. This three-CD deluxe edition, which...

When I saw Don McLean in concert some years ago, he introduced “American Pie” by mentioning that people often asked him what the song meant. “It means,” he noted after a pause, “that I never have to work again.” Bobbie Gentry could undoubtedly say the same thing about her brilliant “Ode to Billie Joe,” which...

Particularly if you’ve been listening to Steve Forbert’s music for many years, you’re bound to have some fun with his new memoir, Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock. The book—which lifts its title from that of a track on Alive on Arrival, his 1978 debut LP—offers lots of commentary on the inspiration for Forbert’s...

Much of the most interesting work of Paul McCartney’s career has been issued over the course of the last 20 years or so. Albums such as Flaming Pie (1997), Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005), Memory Almost Full (2007), and New (2013) have contained some of the more varied, introspective, and downright creative songs...

What a phenomenal year 1967 was for popular music: that one 12-month period witnessed the release of debut albums from the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Leonard Cohen, Procol Harum, the Velvet Underground, the Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, Laura Nyro, Traffic, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Janis Joplin (with Big Brother and...

John Prine Returns with a Gem John Prine’s The Tree of Forgiveness is his first collection of fresh material since 2005’s Grammy-winning Fair and Square. That means fans have endured a 13-year wait, but it was worth every minute, because the new album is a gem. It’s hard to put your finger on just how...

More than 32 million people have already checked into the Eagles’ Hotel California, a country-rock landmark that first charted during Christmas week in 1976 and spent two months in the No. 1 slot. The group’s third chart-topper (following One of These Nights and Their Greatest Hits), it stayed in the Top 200 for two full...