Music journalist and MOJO magazine founding editor Paul Du Noyer first spoke with Paul McCartney at a press conference in 1979. At the time, McCartney was about to take what would be the final configuration of Wings on a 19-date UK tour. Du Noyer managed to get a question in, though he was just one face among many in a...
Bentley’s Bandstand: March 2018
David Byrne, American Utopia. In rock & roll, David Byrne has long been the King of Quirk. That’s a high compliment, too. Over 40 years since Talking Heads first rolled into CBGB’s to start their run, nobody has outdone Bryne in roping in more influences to fuel his creativity, and trolling world music at the same time he mines the...
Album Reviews: The Eagles – Hotel California (Deluxe Edition), Plus Five More New Releases
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 years. Two of its nine...
Album Reviews: Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac (Deluxe Edition), Plus Andrew Sheppard, Sue Foley, Sam Lewis
I can’t listen to Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous 1975 album without thinking of a lunch meeting I had in New York City early in the year before its release. I had arranged an interview with a folk duo called Carlson and Gailmor, whose debut LP was about to come out, and a publicist at their record company had asked for a...
Bentley’s Bandstand: February 2018
Bing & Ruth, No Home of the Mind. As those moments arrive when the only sure-thing bet for a psychic lift is music that turns sound into prayers, Bing & Ruth hear that call. Led by pianist David Moore, this aggregation reaches the heavens with such artful ease there must be some kind of divine connection involved. How else to...
Music Blu-ray Review: Bee Gees – One for All Tour: Live in Australia 1989, Plus Albums by Sunny War, Nina Simone, and an Elmore James Tribute
If you’re not at least a bit older than the concert featured on One for All Tour: Live in Australia 1989, you might not realize just how big a group the Bee Gees were. Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb (the brothers Gibb, hence the name Bee Gees) sold tens of millions of records—hundreds of millions by some estimates—and saw their...
Bentley’s Bandstand: January 2018
Ella Fitzgerald, Ella at Zardi’s. As part of the centennial celebrating Ella Fitzgerald’s birth, the lady’s record label went all out with reissues of every stripe and selection. Quite possibly they saved the best for last, when this live album (recorded in a Hollywood nightclub in 1956) was released in December. Oddly enough, it has never been out before, likely...
Album Reviews: Arthur Lee & Love – Complete Forever Changes Live, Plus Raven and Red, Dinosaur Eyelids, and More
Though live material from Arthur Lee’s brilliant rock band Love was in short supply for decades, the situation has changed in recent years. You’ll still have trouble finding much from the lineup that issued Love’s classic quartet of early albums between 1966 and 1969; but the good news is that group prime mover Arthur Lee—who died of cancer in 2006—performed...
Bentley’s Bandstand: December 2017
Peter Bernstein, Signs LIVE! At the end of a long and discombobulating year, what could be better than a sheer blowing session by what is surely one of the most knocked-out jazz aggregations on earth. Guitarist Peter Bernstein, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Gregory Hutchinson need no introduction whatsoever. They just happen to be among the very...
Blu-ray Review: War for the Planet of the Apes
Maybe these new Planet of the Apes movies, including the new-to-Blu-ray War for the Planet of the Apes are for people who just can’t get past the rubber masks of the original series. The 1968 adaptation of Pierre Boulle that started it all is a multi-layered science fiction masterpiece laced with humor, much of it quite dark. The subsequent series...