| Off Track: Guggenheim Grotto | | Posted Friday, February 02, 2007 1:05:16 PM by Blog57 Team | | The first track sounds like the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. The third track is modern radio pop, the sixth tune is a country song and the 10th reminds of rhythm and blues. The vast gamut of sounds (you can find an Irish ballad and some Spanish-sounding strings) found on The Guggenheim Grotto’s debut LP, … Waltzing Alone, makes the album a bit of a square peg in today’s round-holed, genre-obsessed music world. That could be part of the reason that, despite placing songs "Philosophia" and "Vertigo" on a pair of ABC primetime shows and Damien Rice’s endorsement of Independent Music Award-winning track "Lifetime in Heat," the Irish Trio is still largely flying under the radar. Singer and lyricist Kevin May calls their approach a double-edged sword. On one side, the eclectic collection makes it difficult for journalists to slap a label on it, on the other it gives him and bandmates Mick Lynch and Shane Power the freedom to pursue any musical avenue they choose from here on out.... | |
| |
| | | Rock/Pop: Paul Simon | | Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 11:10:38 PM by Blog57 Team | | Those who think of Paul Simon as the cherubic urchin gracing the cover of the 1968 Simon and Garfunkel album Bookends may be shocked to realise that the songwriting legend performing at the SECC tomorrow is now 65. Thankfully the compositions he's released over the years have aged well, the simplicity of his arrangements lending them a timeless air. This fortunately means the expectant audience – who've waited 15 years for Simon to play a Scottish show – will be spared the unfortunate sight of an OAP struggling into latex trousers and prancing about the stage like an arthritic hippopotamus. Many believe that Simon shared a symbiotic relationship with Art Garfunkel that would doom any future projects, but he's sustained a successful solo career which reached its peak with 1986's Graceland, on which he famously utilised the rhythms and sounds of African performers such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo.... | |
| |
| | | Boys? What boys? | | Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:07:01 PM by Blog57 Team | | I meet bandleader, videographer, and Mission District indie icon Leslie Satterfield at Ritual caf on a summer evening as she walks up Valencia Street looking weather-beaten and weary from her recent travels. Is she just back from a cross-country tour, I wonder? No, she was precisely where you'd expect the guitarist from Boyskout to have been: camping. She survived days of deer watching and near–bear sightings in the Sierras, and despite her desire for a hot shower and warm bed, Satterfield settles in with a cappuccino and some good stories. .... | |
| |
| | | Practicing to Be the Best | | Posted Tuesday, August 15, 2006 9:06:29 PM by Blog57 Team | | The Saugus High School football field was alive with music Friday afternoon as the school's marching band and color guard performed its annual preview performance of their 2006 field show for family and friends. In what the band and color guard booster club president John Patterson called the "band's two-week equivalent to football's hell week," students have been hard at work learning the three songs and accompanying marches that compose the field show. "These kids learned the entire show in five days," said Bob Gibson, Saugus High's band director. "It's a very fast-paced schedule." Since the first week of band camp consisted of auditioning and seating the band, editing the music and taking care of the business aspect of running a high school band, the 71 band members didn't start learning the music and marching until the second week.... | |
| |
| | | Ode to Joystick: Video Game Tunes Go Classic | | Posted Thursday, August 10, 2006 3:04:08 PM by Blog57 Team | | You just can't leave the game at home, even when you've come to hear the 90-piece National Symphony Orchestra, backed by the Master Chorale of Washington, play the music of "Final Fantasy," "Super Mario Bros.," "Halo," "World of Warcraft," "The Legend of Zelda" . . . "I swear, I'll turn it off when the concert starts," Ben Finckel said to his mom and dad. In typical 12-year-old fashion, he was multitasking: snacking on Goldfish crackers, chatting with a friend and playing "Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop" on his Nintendo DS. .... | |
| |
| | | A Scanner Darkly | | Posted Thursday, July 06, 2006 9:06:07 PM by Blog57 Team | | Richard Linklater's trippy and sinister bad-vibe whatchamacallit A Scanner Darkly might be described as an animated movie, only the animation consists of live-action footage that's been painstakingly drawn over, a method known as ''interpolated rotoscoping.'' The actors, such as Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder, look more or less like themselves, and so do the settings (scuzzy stoner living rooms, fluorescent surveillance offices), but every surface, every face, has been heightened with pastel blotches that melt and shift like liquid shadow; the effect is akin to paint-by-numbers stained glass that moves. This is the technique Linklater employed in his 2001 dream fantasia Waking Life, and using it, for the first time, in a narrative feature, the director proves, at least technically, a canny mainstream experimentalist.... | |
| |
| | | Simon's New Tour Is About Music, Not Art | | Posted Sunday, July 02, 2006 7:58:25 AM by Blog57 Team | | NEW YORK - Paul Simon's new tour is about music, not Art. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer launched his first solo tour in five years with a Wednesday show in Cleveland, supporting his critically acclaimed album "Surprise." His last time on the road in 2003-04, Simon teamed up with old friend Art Garfunkel, rather than going alone. "The situation with Artie was unique," Simon said about their collaboration. "I really had to think about what would serve that show the best. ... But when I'm doing my own show, I do what I want to do with the show. I don't have to share responsibilities."Simon, 64, said one of the challenges of this tour is re-creating the soundscapes from the album that came out of a collaboration with avant-garde musician Brian Eno."To a degree I try to do it; to a degree I don't," Simon said.... | |
| |
| |
|
|
