Music & More

  Photo:  Stevie Connor, The Sound Cafe Despite the many achievements of Bela Fleck combining bluegrass and jazz, I've got an admission to make. I do remember when Fleck first appeared playing jazz with his banjo. Although I've heard songs here and there, in all these years I have never taken the opportunity to see him play live or even listen to one of his albums. Perhaps it was that I was never all that enthusiastic about the bluegrass part of the equation. That is... until now.  Fleck has just released his latest long player called Rhapsody in Blue to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the piece's debut. I've read that Rhapsody in Blue was first performed on February 12th, 1924 in NYC at  Aeolian Hall (believe it or not, that building still exists) . I always love the piece. I don't know how far back I go with the  Rhapsody , but no, I wasn't there for it's debut. It was already familiar to me when I had the privilege of playing it from the prospec...

Photo courtesy of Nouvelle Vague Music I knew I'd run into these guys before, possibly on their first album, which I kind of liked. What I wasn't prepared for was, in reading the press surrounding the release of their new album,  Should I Stay or Should I Go? , was the fact that they've been at it now for twenty years and that this is their eighth album.  Nouvelle Vague was formed in France to do cover versions of post-punk and new wave classics (hence the name). They intended to cover these songs in a bossa nova style. This band has no lead singer; they prefer to assign female vocalists on a song by song basis. I'm no expert in new wave or the British singles chart, but a listen to their new record reveals that it is not a tribute to The Clash or even political bands of that ilk. It is covers of some nicely chosen British and European hits going back to the 1970s. I could name some examples. but I don't want to spoil the opportunity to listen to it as I did, witho...

  Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Have you heard the new Billy Joel record, "Turn the Lights Back On"? "Turn the Lights Back On" is the first new popular recording released by Joel in over thirty years. This blog didn't even exist when the last Billy Joel album, River of Dreams , was released in 1993. Note:  River of Dreams was Joel's last album of popular songs, he did release a classical album after that .  I could never understand how someone so amazingly talented as Billy Joel (just consider his discography) could just flip a switch and turn it off and leave it off for over thirty years. Part of what made that possible, performing live concerts, might also have had the opposite effect. Joel begins to answer that question and many more during this week's conversation with Howard Stern; more on that below. The song starts with just piano and voice and on first listen, it sounds like there is no way that all this time could have passed. When the meani...