Music & More

Photos: Beverly Kates Tash Sultana headlined a show Friday night, May 17th, at Philadelphia's new venue, The Met. Both Sultana and show opener the Pierce Brothers came to us from Melbourne, Australia, and all commented on the beauty of the room. And a fine job they did renovating this building and opening last year as a concert hall. The Hidden City website tells us that in 1908: "Impresario Oscar Hammerstein (grandfather of the famous lyricist) brought his operatic franchise to Philadelphia, where he built one of the grandest opera houses in the nation: over 4,000 seats, a gorgeous design, and a bold challenge to the Academy of Music (run by the Metropolitan Opera Company) downtown. After only two sold-out seasons of grand opera in a full-on Philadelphia opera war, Hammerstein ran into debt and had to sell his wildly popular opera house to his competitor." From a quick look at the internet, we know that Sultana started playing guitar at the age of three, dealt with ...

Photos: HBO I can't quite believe I'm writing this. A quaker and a pacifist writing about "the greatest killings." I just remember to tell myself that this show is pure fantasy, based on a work of fiction and nobody really dies [spoiler alert!]. So, off we go. The "greatest" killings in Game of Thrones happen to characters who really deserve it, in the sense that they themselves are responsible for senseless killings and worse, much worse. The "worst" killings in Game of Thrones are those that happen to beloved characters who usually are good people. These are the ones that really hurt. When a favorite character bites it, you can't help feeling crushed. These lists are completely arbitrary. If you disagree, or even if you do agree, have your say in the comment section below. Spoiler Alert: The following includes events through Season 7. The Greatest Killings 1. Ramsay Bolton, Warden of the North Among his many transgressions w...

Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) riding one of her dragons Photos: HBO On the Season 8 preview Nerdette Recap podcast, Peter Sagal said something to the effect that the internet seems to be inundated with Game of Thrones right now. No kidding. The nearly two year hiatus between Seasons 7 & 8 hardly seems as cruel now as it did in 2017 when it was first announced. The real problem was that the show got ahead of the books by George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire), upon which the series is based. Although critics have complained that as a result the writing in Season 7 was not quite up to snuff, as it were, the delay has obviously worked to the advantage of HBO's most watched and most expensive show. In the last couple of weeks (Season 8 debuted last night), attention on the internet has grown to a fever pitch. And the attention is only likely to increase over the next six weeks as Game of Thrones winds to its conclusion. And so it is that Game of Thrones has touc...

On Wednesday, November 14th, The Art of Sound, a high end audio store located in Lambertville, NJ hosted a performance by Lindsey Webster as part of their "Unplugged" jazz series. Attendance was limited to fifty by the size constraint of the space; The Art of Sound is located in a former nineteenth century paper mill nestled along the Delaware River and Canal. I had just seen an email from Webster listing two tour dates, one in California and the other in New Jersey. The NJ booking turned out to be The Art of Sound, and we were lucky enough to secure the last pair of tickets to this special show. The conversion of the paper mill to an audio showroom can be seen in the pictures below. This had to be one of the coolest and most unusual spaces in which to see such an event. Webster sat on a stool and just sang, accompanied by Keith Slattery on piano. Don't get me wrong, I love her three albums but this show was truly special in that Webster sang a good number of stand...

Photo courtesy of Average White Band This is a special pairing of two bands that are each headliners in their own right. They both live on the road, and since they record new albums very infrequently, they both earn their keep playing live. As they often do, their tour schedules coincided at The Keswick on Saturday, October 20th. I've seen these bands many times, both separately and co-billed. Historically, Tower of Power has always been the larger band in terms of their number of musicians. As such, I think that the order of performance is pre-ordained. It's been about five years since I last saw the Average White Band (AWB). Up to that point they had been a five piece. The then-newest member, Klyde Jones, was such a talented multi-instrumentalist and singer that I couldn't imagine the band without him. When he left to spend more time with his family, AWB ultimately added three new members, a lead vocalist and two keyboard players (one of which doubles on sax). As...

Photo Courtesy Of Kacey Musgraves Kacey Musgraves and her band brought her Oh, What a World Tour to the sold-out Fillmore in Philadelphia on Friday night January 18th. The crowd reaction, when Musgraves hit the stage, was enormous. Even though the band was amplified enough to drown out conversations, they showed that they could both wrap the place in sound yet stop on a dime when needed, and give Musgraves the delicate acoustic backing that some songs require. This was evident right from the top as Musgraves had plenty of space to deliver a gorgeous "Slow Burn" to open the show (watch "Slow Burn" below). Musgraves nicely paced the set using all of the songs from her latest album Golden Hour , arguably her best yet. She opened the show on a high note with three of my favorites from the album. "Wonder Woman" and "Butterflies" nicely followed "Slow Burn". There were also three tunes from Pageant Material , "High Times", ...

Rob DeMartin/Courtesy of the artist Looking over the list of albums, which were released in 2018 (that I was interested in), there is only one thing I know for sure and that is that one person could never listen to them all, at least I couldn't. So, the albums shown below are the ones that managed to make it through the milieu to make me the craziest this year. My album of the year follows, with my picks for top ten after that. Please enjoy reading about and listening to what follows. And I wish you a safe, happy and healthy 2019. Happy New Year! Click on album names to listen. Album of the Year: Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen On Broadway Buy at iTunes or Amazon Bruce Springsteen's one man show on Broadway was unprecedented for a rock musician. There have been hit shows based on an artist's music; Mamma Mia! using the music of Abba set the mold. Movin' Out with the music of Billy Joel and Beautiful , the Carole King musical, are two examples. But, Sp...