Category: Music

For music lovers, it’s always a kick to pick the favorite albums of the year. So much so that it’s twice as fun to do it twice—once at the end of June and now in mid-December. All the music mentioned below is an exhilarating and often educational ride on the sonic highway, guaranteed to get...

Volume 11 of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series offers a monstrous amount of material in a handsome, boxed-set package. Simply put, Columbia/Legacy’s presentation treats The Basement Tapes as they should be: a culturally and artistically important historical document. After all, the whole concept of the bootleg record started with these recordings. Bob Dylan, staying far out...

Time to clear the decks with a year-end round-up of albums and a novel released in 2014 that made it through the deluge. Each and every one of these 40 titles is worthy of interested ears and open eyes. And don’t forget to pay respect to Father Time on December 13 (12/13/14). It’s the last...

Boasting possibly the most noticeably improved audio fidelity of Paul McCartney’s Archive Collection reissue series thus far, Wings at the Speed of Sound arrives as a newly remastered double-disc set (available November 4). The deluxe book edition adds a DVD and far more elaborate packaging. Notable for being the most democratic of McCartney’s Wings-billed albums...

What a great time to be a Paul McCartney fan. On the eve of the long-awaited next installments in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection (Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound), Concord Music Group issues a collector’s edition of 2013’s NEW. Packaged in a compact hardcover book case, this two-CD, one-DVD edition...

This column is like the title says — its intention is to fill the gap for those of us who were satiated musically in the ’60s and then searched desperately as we aged for music we could relate to and get the same buzz from nowadaze. iTunes was the answer for me in 2003 and...

Pieta Brown, Paradise Outlaw. Is there a way to capture true musical transcendence in words? If so, let it happen for Pieta Brown, one of America’s treasures, someone who is still moving towards finding a fitting audience. Fortunately, Brown’s new album, co-produced by stealth partner Bo Ramsey, is the kind of creation where no explanation...

I confess that my first thought upon hearing of this collection was: “A three-CD ‘legacy’ release of ‘rare and unreleased recordings’ from Dave Ray?? I’ve never even heard of the guy.” But it turns out that I was in fact well acquainted with his music, though not with his first name. Instead, I knew him...

This column is like the title says — its intention is to fill the gap for those of us who were satiated musically in the ’60s and then searched desperately as we aged for music we could relate to and get the same buzz from nowadaze. iTunes was the answer for me in 2003 and...

Paul Butterfield’s Better Days, Live at Winterland Ballroom. “Without Paul I don’t know if a lot of us would be here tonight…” That’s the way Bill Graham introduced Butterfield and his then-new band Better Days at this 1973 concert in San Francisco. Truer words were never spoken. When the Paul Butterfield Blues Band first burst...