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Photo: Steve Atkins The Rolling Stones played a free concert in Havana, Cuba on March 25, 2016, capping off an historic week in which the thawing of relations between Cuba and the United States was celebrated with an official visit by President Barack Obama. The concert had it all: history for one thing, Cuba had never seen a rock concert on the scale of this magnitude. The concert had a huge audience; estimates varied but it's a safe bet that the Stones played to several hundred thousand people. The Rolling Stones are never short on drama, but this one had drama to the max. The one thing this concert had that may be surprising is that the Stones, despite their advanced ages, gave a superb performance, much more about that below. Photo: NME First, about the event: “Finally, the times are changing,” proclaimed Mick Jagger to a vast, euphoric crowd in Havana on Friday night, as the Rolling Stones completed their Latin American tour with a concert that may well prove a pivot...

The rich keep getting richer, We can't feed our poor. The whole wide world, About to go to war. Times have changed Times have changed Nothing remains the same Today is a brand new game Times have changed So sings Ronnie Baker Brooks on the title track of his new album Times Have Changed . Brooks and Delbert McClinton have released the first new albums to get me excited in 2017. These are not specifically blues albums, but both are steeped in the blues. I don't know if periods of political and social turmoil are specifically conducive to the blues, but I do know two things. Times definitely have changed, and these two records sound especially good right now. Photos courtesy of Ronnie Baker Brooks Ronnie Baker Brooks - Times Have Changed Buy at Amazon Buy at iTunes Stream on Spotify Ronnie Baker Brooks (RBB) has been called "Chicago Blues Royalty" referring to his lineage as the son of blues legend Lonnie Brooks. His younger brother, Wayne Baker B...

Demon Records has just released a group of albums under the title Twelve Inch Eighties that collects extended twelve inch versions of some of the 80s best songs. This is a great concept, whether you are are an eighties fan or a record collector. Twelve inch singles proliferated during the eighties (until they were supplanted by CDs); these long versions were often remixes as well, and they rarely appeared on the regular album releases of most artists. Twelve inch singles were known to have the best sound quality and terrific bass. This had something to do with the fact that a 12" vinyl record had plenty of physical room for the grooves so they wouldn't be packed as tightly as they were on a typical LP. Twelve inch singles usually ran at 45 rpm, which allowed for even more vinyl real estate of per minute of groove. Whatever the technical reason, when I listened to these Demon collections I was quickly reminded of the 12" reputation for sound quality. Demon did a ph...

Photo: Team Rock Imagine you could climb into a time travel device and transport back to 1966 to see Otis Redding perform at a club on the Sunset Strip. Just imagine... Otis Ray Redding, Jr. was born on September 9, 1941, and he died at the age of 26 in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. During his short life, he distinguished himself as one of the greatest soul icons ever with his singing, his songwriting, and his explosive live performances. Regarding the latter, the Concord Records Group has recently released Redding's 1966 live recordings from The Whisky A Go Go, located on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California. Redding performed at that legendary venue, Friday, April 8 (two sets), Saturday, April 9 (three sets), and Sunday, April 10 (two sets). Stax recorded all of these shows with the intention of releasing a live album. The result, In Person At The Whisky A Go Go , wound up being a posthumous release in 1968 offering ten tracks. In 1993, Stax released seven addition...