Music & More

It was magic time Friday night at the Rockwood as Melody Gardot brought her band to one of the most intimate venues on New York's Lower East Side. Baby it was cold outside, but inside the Rockwood it was hot in every sense of the word. Mixing a few new tunes with selections from Worrisome Heart and a couple of covers, Melody gave another breathtaking performance. The Rockwood's performance room could not be any larger than about a thirty foot square and it was quite a challenge just to load in the band to the tiny stage amidst the packed house. Melody was in good spirits, joked with the crowd, and even squeezed in an unplanned encore, the gorgeous "All That I Need is Love" to send her audience home on a tuneful high. Melody at one point asked the band to disappear (not really possible in this venue) while she went solo acoustic for a new tune, "Baby I'm a Fool" which has a simply beautiful melody and lyric, almost on the order of "Gone". The g

Lily Allen's first tour of the states came through Philadelphia tonight, stopping at the sold out TLA. The delightfully abrasive cheekiness that makes Lily's myspace blog posts so refreshingly funny seems impossible for an artist with the degree of success she has already amassed in her native Britain. In concert she spits, she drinks, she smokes, she belches, she dances, she bounces, she liberally uses the f-word, and she sings her heart out with joyful abandon; she does all this with such cuteness and charm that the entire package is both unlikely and compelling. Smile CD Single I didn't catch the names when she introduced her band, but this group of keyboard, guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, trombone and saxophone played the hottest reggae and ska groove for a group from outside Jamaica since the early days of the Hooters before they signed to Columbia. These guys killed it on every song. Lily was awesome too, nailing every song while dancing around the stage like she owned

It may be kind of a cliche to open a romantic comedy on Valentine's Day, but the timing of the release may be about the only thing that's cliched about Music and Lyrics . I don't think either Hugh Grant or Drew Barrymore have ever been better in a movie. The script (most movies' downfall) is smart, funny, and when it comes to the music business it skewers the things that need skewering in a very funny way and it deals with the music business without dumbing it down in the slightest. Drew Barrymore The good writing is no accident. A quick look at the filmography of writer/director Marc Lawrence reveals that his background is screenwriting, the success of which has apparently afforded him the opportunity to direct. He wrote Life With Mikey (1993) which featured Michael J. Fox, The Out of Towners (1999) remake with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Forces of Nature (1999) with Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck, Miss Congeniality (2000) and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabul