Category: Music

Triplicate—a three-CD, 30-song set—represents Bob Dylan’s third exploration of the Great American Songbook, following 2014’s Shadows in the Night and 2016’s Fallen Angels. Like those albums, it was produced by Jack Frost (aka Robert Zimmerman, Blind Boy Grunt, and you know who). Like its predecessors, also, it focuses on songs that have been recorded by...

The rap on the Grateful Dead’s eponymous 1967 debut album—which the group mostly recorded in just four days—is that they didn’t yet understand the studio and failed to accurately represent what they could accomplish in concert. There’s some truth in that. Then again, as a bonus disc included with this 50th anniversary reissue makes clear,...

Dennis Coffey, Hot Coffey in the D. In 1968 Detroit was still on fire for musicians. Motown Records’ success had lit the city up, and its glow spread far and wide. Guitarist Dennis Coffey had been on a batch of successful records, and he soon found himself a Funk Brother in the hallowed rooms of...

2016 was rough. Losing friends and artists all through the year just would not stop, and the Presidential election turned the country into a hatful of hate. As always, music provided a way through it all. Favorite albums of the first-half of the year provided solace and inspiration and included Eric Clapton, I Still Do;...

Is there any major artist doing as much for their fans as Bob Dylan? Maybe so, but it’s hard to imagine anyone is surpassing Dylan’s output of quality archival releases. Ever since the 1991 inception of The Bootleg Series (which reached Vol. 12 in 2015), there has been a wealth of previously unavailable studio and...

The Big T.N.T. Show. During the 1960s when rock and roll was just becoming the currency of the realm for youth in America, there was a simulcast movie called The T.A.M.I. Show, which stood for “Teen-Age Music International,” that set young minds reeling. It has since become a storied exploration of what was popular musically...

Talk about a Bobfest! This beautifully packaged new 36-CD box collects every known recording from Dylan’s 1966 shows on three continents—and no, 36 is not a typo. Throughout, Dylan is backed by an outfit that includes Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson of the Hawks (later the Band). The drummer is Mickey...

Blind Boys of Alabama, Atom Bomb. As the new century started almost 17 years ago, one of America’s most venerable gospel groups turned a page in their playbook. The Blind Boys of Alabama signed to Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and took off for new territory. Atom Bomb was the last of four records done...

Daniel Foose, of Waters and Ghosts. Talk about inspired: bassist and composer Daniel Foose grew up in Austin with deep Mississippi roots, went to college in Denton, Texas and then lit out for New York. Once there, he worked his way into the jazz world and, also, performed with Lady Gaga. Why not? On Foose’s...

If ever there was a case of the media building up and then knocking down a band, it was the one involving Fleetwood Mac in the late-’70s and early-’80s. The critics cheered when the group—newly energized by the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—delivered its chart-topping eponymous album in 1975 and the even better...