Perfect Sound Forever- online music magazine- Aug/Sept 07 issue
Jason Gross
In the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine
<http://www.perfectsoundforever.com>, you'll find (among other
things):
BAND REUNIONS
* The good, the bad & the ridiculous
"The head starts to flush with delight as you envision seeing a
favorite band you thought only still existed on records or old videos.
Wether you haven't seen the band in years or maybe you never got to
see them live before you're equally ecstatic. The chance to get to
hear songs you love done live among a crowd of dedicated fans is a
sure promise for a great show. Eventually though, after the initial
joy of the announcement, fear starts to surface- can the reunited band
can live up to the expectations in your head?"
ERROL DUNKLEY
* From rocksteady to world traveler "Dunkley's talent partly resides
in his ability to turn a cover song (like Barbara Lynn's "You're Gonna
Need Me," Sam and Dave's "Soothe Me" or John Holt's "Nobody Else")
into an original tune. Maybe this tendency to rely on cover songs has
done him a disservice and he may have come across as a competent
singer lacking "originality." This view is quite erroneous as
Dunkley's own compositions (like "A Little Way Different,"
"Repatriation" and "Rush Me No Badness") are evidence that he is a
good songwriter too."
EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER
* In defense of
"Progressive rock can be a very disreputable subject. No other musical
style has been so vilified by the critics and became a synonym for
'pompous' and 'bombastic.' Almost every music critic in the early
'70's had something unflattering to write about it. None of them seem
to have noticed that the genre combined the old with the new and
brought things to popular music that simply wasn't there before."
PETER HAMMILL
* Van Der interview
"Some call him The Voice and still marvel at his thunderous, operatic
rants and his celestial falsetto. Others follow him as a good-natured
English philosopher, a wise, unassuming man who can express our
feelings better than anybody, especially when trying to untangle the
mysteries of love, memories of childhood, the castrating shadow of
religion, the perversity of politics, or the doom of mankind..."
HAPPY GOODMAN FAMILY
* Gospel goodness
"What happens when one sees and hears a stout man, that man's brother
who is a wisecracking tenor, a brother who is really a baritone but
sings bass and writes songs--and the stout man's Rubenesque wife, who
once aspired to be an opera singer? What one sees and hears is The
Happy Goodman Family, one of Southern Gospel music's major
pioneers--and a Grammy winner--from the 1960's through 1990. Actually,
the verb in that last sentence should be 'was.' They are all, as
country comedian Jerry Clower used to say, graveyard dead."
IIP
* Wunderkind folk duo
"Vanessa Palmer is not your average young woman. In addition to being,
the prodding force behind the indie folk band In Ink Please, she has
been married and is in the process of divorce, been to Antarctica,
will be spending the summer in Germany, and is a chemistry
major/environmental health minor at the University of Washington in
Seattle. She and her band-mate Jerik Hendrickson have been on two
major tours of the U.S. as In Ink Please..."
LOUIS JORDAN
King of the Jukeboxes
"Louis Jordan was one of the musical greats who emerged from the swing
era to leave a permanent mark on American music. In addition to being
an accomplished saxophonist, Jordan is best remembered as a vocalist
of immense vitality whose combination of down home earthiness and
comical patter played an integral part in the evolution of rock and
roll music."
LOBBY LOYDE/IAN RILEN
* Aussie punk legends
"It would be unfair to throw the lives and work of Lobby Loyde and Ian
Rilen into the same general basket merely because they died within a
few months of each other... It would be just as unfair to their
respective legacies to talk about them in the same breath merely
because, for instance, they were both bass players for Rose Tattoo at
different moments in the '70's. It might be more relevant, however, to
discuss them together for the fact that they were both older
participants in the world of Australian punk and new wave in the '70's
and '80's"
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE
* Throbbing psychic interview
"Genesis P. Orridge should need no introduction as the hermaphrodite
extremist fronting art-magick experimenters Throbbing Gristle, Psychic
TV and Thee Majesty. Now living in New York, he's recently rekindled
his love of rock music, using it to espouse an exploration of future
human evolution via pandrogyny on the new PTV3 album Hell Is Invisible
/ Heaven is Her/e out now on Sweet Nothing in the USA, Cargo in
Europe, not to mention a long awaited TG reunion and new album (The
Endless Not on Mute)."
THE SLITS
* Stalking their reunion
"The Slits are not typical girls. Never were. They made it clear some
30 years ago. Typical girls buy magazines, as they sang on their
legendary if under-acknowledged debut album Cut. Typical girls worry
about spots, fat and natural smells. Typical girls learn how to act
shocked. Typical girls don't rebel. They are, however, typical Slits.
And they'll say so."
MARGARET LENG TAN
* Avant toy piano
"Tan was the first woman to graduate from Julliard with a doctorate in
piano performance, and the first decisive career move she made was to
give up being a pianist in favor of training hearing-assist dogs. She
was able to train and deliver two such dogs--a fact of which she is
justifiably proud--before the badly run program collapsed, and she
returned to the piano. On her return to music, she faced again the
worry that had prompted her to involve herself with the potential of a
non-piano-appreciating species: she felt that as a concert pianist,
she was of no real use to society."
ROB TYNER
* Reliving the last rites for an ex-MC5
"I had several Rock n Roll heroes back in the late '60's One of them
was Rob Tyner, lead singer from the MC5. The other was Dave Dixon,
Chief Air Ace from Detroit's WABX Radio. Back then, Dave filled all
our minds with radical politics and radical music, while Rob
personally incarnated and exemplified that wild revolutionary hard
rock life-style that made the late '60's into that powerful pivotal
historical epoch we all remember with such suffering and such joy."
VINYL ANACHRONIST
* Listen for Yourself
"I've received even more requests for blanket recommendations on all
things analog over the last few weeks. This, of course, is
understandable if you're a vinyl newbie, and you're looking to get
into this crazy hobby for the first time, or maybe even just the first
time in many years. You don't want to spend a lot of money. You don't
want to be fiddling around with cartridge alignment, anti-skating or
tracking force. You just want a little taste of what vinyl can do,
with as little fuss as possible."
ZOMBIES
* Their early years
"The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, and The Kinks are the bands from
the first British Invasion era that garner the most attention, and
deservedly so. Bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, The Searchers,
The Move, and The Dave Clark Five undeservedly garner a little less
attention. And there are still other bands that garner even less
attention, some probably deservedly so, but that shouldn't be so with
The Zombies."
We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if
you have anything to share.
See you online,
Jason
Perfect Sound Forever
online music magazine since 1993
<http://www.perfectsoundforever.com>
see website for contact information