Reviews for Music
Paul McCartney - We Believe In Yesterday
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There is a scene near the beginning of the Beatles 1965 film, Help! (recently re-released on digitally-restored DVD), where the four moptops pull up to a quiet suburban street, exit from a black Rolls Royce, wave to two friendly looking older ladies and enter what looks to be four rather-modest rowhouse apartments. One lady beams, and remarks, 'Lovely lads, adoration hasn't gone to their heads...
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For rapper/actor Ludacris, giving back is a major role
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CHICAGO-Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges can't stop laughing.A rapper with a powerful vocal delivery, he keeps envisioning his big head on a little person's body, going toe-to-toe with Vince Vaughn in his new film 'Fred Claus,' which opened Friday. The image recalls one of his first music videos, featuring his head on a tiny body that danced and gyrated in front of a camera, rapping and cracking up...
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Helen Reddy's miles away from her singing days
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'Hear her roar' screamed the cover of last month's Newsweek, emblazoned just above the forehead of - who else? - presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.Former pop star and actress Helen Reddy, on the other side of the world, can't contain her amusement at this full-circle turn of events.The Woman I Am(Tarcher/Penguin, US: May 2006)Amazon 'I put two phrases into the lexicon, and that blows...
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Closer, Still: Reflections on Joy Division
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Between February 2005 and January 2006, four of my friends took their lives. During that time I was both devastated and grief-shocked. As I traveled through a vast range of emotions, I began to turn to music as one way to cope. I found myself listening to a lot of Joy Division. Before, I'd had a hard time understanding why any person would make such sorrowful music, but I began to recognize...
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe got rock rolling long before Elvis
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I said, 'Say man, there's a woman who can sing some rock and roll.' I mean, she's singing religious music, but she is singing rock and roll. She's ... shakin' man ... She jumps it. She's hitting that guitar, playing that guitar, and she is singing. I said, 'Whoooo. Sister Rosetta Tharpe.' -Jerry Lee LewisThe late, great Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a one-of-a-kind pioneer of 20th-century American...
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All Tomorrow's Parties: The Warhol Years 1965-1967, Part One
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In meeting Andy Warhol, the Velvets acquired what few fledgling bands have been lucky enough to achieve: a wealthy patron. In addition, Warhol's Factory, populated by an enormous range of people of varying talents, provided a fertile cross-pollination of ideas and personalities, whilst also constituting a powerful PR machine.Enter NicoThe Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground(Rough...
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Live Fast, Die Young, or Get Off the Stage
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'I am an antichrist. I am an anarchist.' John Lydon haltingly spits out the incendiary opening lyrics of his magnum opus, the Sex Pistols' 1977 single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.' What can only be described as a long, loose rugby shirt affixed with a bustle disguises Lydon's now ample torso as he gyrates obscenely on the Tonight Show stage. I cringe, watching the bustle sway when he shakes his ass....
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The delightful and difficult Mr. Zevon
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Warren Zevon took me for a ride.Or it seems that way to me now, based on something Jackson Browne says in 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, the engrossing new oral history by the sardonic songwriter's ex, Crystal Zevon.I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon(Ecco/HarperCollins, US: May 2007)Amazon The bio is part of a new posthumous...
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Lead By Example: A New Dawn With Sixx: A.M.
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Billboard is not in the business of supporting vanity rock star projects. This is not a vanity rock star project. This is a brilliant piece of work. -Tamara Conniff, Executive Editor/Associate Publisher, BillboardUsually such comments as Conniff's, above, are preemptive defensive posturing for anything of dubious quality in desperate need of a disclaimer. Yet Conniff's choice words were...
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Facing the music about a Florida town's racism in the '50s
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Country music songwriting legend Bobby Braddock recalls Auburndale, Fla., where he grew up in the 1940s and '50, as a rural, Southern burg where orange groves alternated with cattle fields.Traffic was nonexistent, condos hadn't been invented yet, and a boy could spend his days like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, in search of aimless adventure.Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old...
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