Music & More

It's been a long nine years since Loreena McKennitt's last album, The Book of Secrets (1997) . This fall, Loreena will release her seventh studio album, An Ancient Muse . Check out the e-card announcement. Here are all the details from the official Quinland Road / Verve Records press release. For Immediate Release August 8, 2006 LOREENA McKENNITT TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM, AN ANCIENT MUSE THIS AUTUMN ON VERVE /QUINLAN ROAD This autumn, Verve/Quinlan Road will release Loreena McKennitt’s label debut, An Ancient Muse. As with her earlier albums, McKennitt takes her inspiration from the Celtic peoples, fusing the melodic sensibility of Scottish and Irish balladry with musical traditions from Greece, Turkey, Spain, and even Scandinavia. The recording is McKennitt’s first new studio album since 1997’s multi-platinum The Book of Secrets. Produced by Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse continues McKennitt’s exploration of Celtic themes on a journey that sweeps across eras and musical genr...

Following up last year's 885 Greatest Albums , which itself was a sequel to 2004's 885 Greatest Songs , WXPN has launched this year's listener survey to determine the 885 Greatest Artists of all time. Dismissed as silly by some but hotly debated and agonized over by others, these surveys provide great fun during the voting and a great listen when the results get counted down on the air. Go to xpn's website to submit your top ten list which also enters you in a contest to win the complete cd catalog of each of the top three artists as voted by the listenership. Voting deadline is September 10th. Check out the xpn discussion boards which will heat up as the countdown gets closer, with real time critiques, reaction and tears as the results are revealed. Also check out xpn's staff and artist picks , and xpn's music blog . Listener JimGPhynn of Horsham got the ball rolling very nicely on the discussion board with this post, Letterman style, of the top ten reasons...

Kiki & Herb previewed their new Broadway show for four nights at Philadephia's Wilma Theater this week. Initially thinking this to be something of a self-test of my own open mindedness, Kiki & Herb's show quickly exploded the notion that one needs to be gay to enjoy drag queen musical comedy cabaret lounge act theater (not that there's anything wrong with that). Having honed their act for the better part of the past twenty years, Justin Bond totally becomes the aging diva Kiki, and Kenny Mellman is equally at home in the role of her piano man Herb, variously described in the act as a "gay Jewish retard." Essentially, it's a parody of a lounge act where Herb plays piano and Kiki sings and drinks. The songs are interspersed with lengthy asides that are both historical (tales of their characters' history) and hysterical. As outrageous as the comedy is (the stuffed toy cow on the piano was described as having been in the manger when Jesus was born, a...

Madeleine Peyroux will release her third album, Half the Perfect World on September 12th in the U.S. and on November 6th in the U.K. The production here by Larry Klein is masterful, Klein has been knockin' em dead with regularity recently with similarly superb production on albums by Joni Mitchell, Julia Fordham, Bird York, and soundtracks such as Crash (2005) and Duets (2000) , as well as Madeleine's last album, Careless Love (2004) . Half the Perfect World features four new originals, three written by Peyroux, Klein, and Jesse Harris, and one song penned by Peyroux, Klein, and Walter Becker of Steely Dan. The other eight tracks are well chosen covers by the likes of Johnny Mercer, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, and Serge Gainsbourg, among others. The core band from Careless Love is back including Dean Parks on guitar, David Piltch on bass and Jay Bellerose on drums. Keyboard duties are ably handled by Sam Yahel and Larry Goldings. Each track sounds like Klein h...

Although Wawa stores have yet to hit New York City, today's New York Times Magazine includes the following article. Those who live in Wawa's mid-Atlantic coverage area already know. Consumed Convenience Cult? By ROB WALKER Published: July 30, 2006 The I Love Wawa group on MySpace.com has more than 5,000 members, making it the largest of several Wawa-related groups on the online-community site. Over on Livejournal.com , there’s a group called We Love Wawa, with about 950 members. This would be pretty ho-hum if Wawa were an indie band or video game. Instead, it’s a chain of convenience stores, with 550 locations in five states on the East Coast. Many of the postings to these groups involve praise for Wawa’s house-brand goods — coffee, hoagies, etc. But the most intriguing factor in Wawa loyalty may be something else: the service. This, at least, is the contention of Neeli Bendapudi, an Ohio State University marketing professor who studied the chain as part of her continuing re...

Karla Bonoff made a somewhat rare local appearance tonight at the Norcross-McLaughlin Memorial Dell at Haddon Lake Park in Haddon Heights, NJ. Although it was a typical Philadelphia summer night (hot and muggy), a good sized crowd turned out to hear Karla perform with her long time producer and bassist Kenny Edwards , with accompaniment by Nina Gerber on electric lead guitar. Even though Karla had difficulty getting the proper monitor mix for virtually the entire show, the audience had no such problem as this amphitheater had maybe the best sound and lighting you might hope to find at such a venue in a park. With easy parking, great music, friendly artists, and no rain, it was a totally enjoyable experience. Kenny Edwards opened the show with a solo set, having finally released his own album in 2002 after nearly forty years working as a sideman and producer. His solo material was excellent, with a singing voice that somewhat resembles James Taylor. He performed most of his songs on a...

Arif Mardin, one of the all-time great record producers died on June 25th at age 74. In conjunction with the two founders of Atlantic Records (Ahmet Ertegun & Jerry Wexler), Mardin's extraordinary talent as a producer not only aided the success of the label, but his steady hand helped create a large catalogue of music that we've known and loved over the last forty years. Many excellent articles have been written on Mardin, a good reference point would be the Wikipedia biography, but the following appreciation was written by Alan Gorrie of the Average White Band and posted as a "White Paper" (one of his continuing series of diary style essays) on the AWB website : DATE: June 17, 2006 FROM: Alan SUBJECT: Farewell Arif We sadly say goodbye to Arif Mardin who passed away on Sunday. It would be fair to say that none of what we have today could have happened without him. Like so many of his protégées, almost all of whom became his musical family, he gave us the knowled...