Fredrik Strand Halland - Texas Flood & Little Wing

Man i was not ready for this!
blew me africkingway!

Janis Joplin

The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage presence.

Joplin was raised in the small town of Port Arthur, TX, and much of her subsequent personal difficulties and unhappiness has been attributed to her inability to fit in with the expectations of the conservative community. She'd been singing blues and folk music since her teens, playing on occasion in the mid-'60s with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. There are a few live pre-Big Brother recordings (not issued until after her death), reflecting the inspiration of early blues singers like Bessie Smith, that demonstrate she was well on her way to developing a personal style before hooking up with the band. She had already been to California before moving there permanently in 1966, when she joined a struggling early San Francisco psychedelic group, Big Brother & the Holding Company. Although their loose, occasionally sloppy brand of bluesy psychedelia had some charm, there can be no doubt that Joplin -- who initially didn't even sing lead on all of the material -- was primarily responsible for lifting them out of the ranks of the ordinary. She made them a hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where her stunning version of "Ball and Chain" (perhaps her very best performance) was captured on film. After a debut on the Mainstream label, Big Brother signed a management deal with Albert Grossman and moved on to Columbia. Their second album, Cheap Thrills, topped the charts in 1968, but Joplin left the band shortly afterward, enticed by the prospects of stardom as a solo act.

Joplin's first album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, was recorded with the Kozmic Blues Band, a unit that included horns and retained just one of the musicians that had played with her in Big Brother (guitarist Sam Andrew). Although it was a hit, it wasn't her best work; the new band, though more polished musically, was not nearly as sympathetic accompanists as Big Brother, purveying a soul-rock groove that could sound forced. That's not to say it was totally unsuccessful, boasting one of her signature tunes in "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."

For years, Joplin's life had been a roller coaster of drug addiction, alcoholism, and volatile personal relationships, documented in several biographies. Musically, however, things were on the upswing shortly before her death, as she assembled a better, more versatile backing outfit, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her final album, Pearl (ably produced by Paul Rothchild). Joplin was sometimes criticized for screeching at the expense of subtlety, but Pearl was solid evidence of her growth as a mature, diverse stylist who could handle blues, soul, and folk-rock. "Mercedes Benz," "Get It While You Can," and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" are some of her very best tracks. Tragically, she died before the album's release, overdosing on heroin in a Hollywood hotel in October 1970. "Me and Bobby McGee" became a posthumous number one single in 1971, and thus the song with which she is most frequently identified.

Shemekia Copeland - The Soul Truth

The daughter of renowned Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, Shemekia Copeland began making a splash in her own right before she was even out of her teens. Projecting a maturity beyond her years, Copeland fashioned herself a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also proved capable of a subtler range of emotions. Copeland was born in Harlem in 1979 and her father encouraged her to sing right from the beginning, even bringing her up on-stage at the Cotton Club when she was just eight years old. She began to pursue a singing career in earnest at age 16, when her father's health began to decline due to heart disease; he took Shemekia on tour with him as his opening act, which helped establish her name on the blues circuit. She landed a record deal with Alligator, which issued her debut album, Turn the Heat Up!, in 1998, when she was just 19 years old (sadly, her father didn't live to see the occasion). While the influences on Copeland's style were crystal clear, the record was met with enthusiastic reviews praising its energy and passion. Marked as a hot young newcomer to watch, Copeland toured the blues festival circuit in America and Europe, and landed a fair amount of publicity. Her second album, Wicked, was released in 2000 and featured a duet with one of her heroes, early R&B diva Ruth Brown. Wicked earned Copeland a slew of W.C. Handy Blues Award nominations and she walked off with three: Song of the Year, Blues Album of the Year, and Contemporary Female Artist of the Year. The follow-up record, Talking to Strangers, was produced by legendary pianist Dr. John and featured songs that she proudly claimed were her best yet. The Soul Truth, produced by Steve Cropper, was released by Alligator Records in 2005. Never Going Back followed in 2009 from Telarc Blues.

Ike and Tina Turner - Workin’ Together

Released early in 1971, a few months after Come Together, their first album for Liberty Records, Workin' Together was the first genuine hit album Ike & Tina had in years; actually, it was their biggest ever, working its way into Billboard's Top 25 and spending 38 weeks on the charts. They never had a bigger hit (the closest was their Blue Thumb release, Outta Season, which peaked at 91), and, in many ways, they didn't make a better album. After all, their classic '60s sides were just that -- sides of a single, not an album. Even though it doesn't boast the sustained vision of such contemporaries as, say, Marvin Gaye and Al Green, Workin' Together feels like a proper album, where many of the buried album tracks are as strong as the singles. Like its predecessor, it relies a bit too much on contemporary covers, which isn't bad when it's the perennial "Proud Mary," since it deftly reinterprets the original, but readings of the Beatles' "Get Back" and "Let It Be," while not bad, are a little bit too pedestrian. Fortunately, they're entirely listenable and they're the only slow moments, outweighed by songs that crackle with style and passion. Nowhere is this truer than on the opening title track, a mid-tempo groover (written by Eki Renrut, Ike's brilliant inverted alias) powered by a soulful chorus and a guitar line that plays like a mutated version of Dylan's "I Want You" riff. Then, there's the terrific Stax/Volt stomper "(Long As I Can) Get You When I Want You," possibly the highlight on the record. Though they cut a couple of classics over the next few years, most notably "Nutbush City Limits," the duo never topped this, possibly the best proper album they ever cut.

Taproot - Our Long Road Home

WHAT are they sayin?

who cares
it still RAWKS



Named after an Iggy Pop song, Norway's DumDum Boys began in the '70s as the punk band Wannskraekk in their hometown of Trondheim. It wasn't until around 1985 that they adopted the Pop-inspired moniker as well as a more traditional rock sound. The band's 1988 debut album, Blodig Alvor (Na Na Na Na Na), is considered by many to be a landmark of Norwegian rock. Since that time, DumDum Boys have released a number of albums and continue to perform.

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C'mon and ride the peace train

Even as a serious-minded singer/songwriter, Cat Stevens never stopped being a pop singer at heart, and with Teaser and the Firecat he reconciled his philosophical interests with his pop instincts. Basically, Teaser's songs came in two modes: gentle ballads that usually found Stevens and second guitarist Alun Davies playing delicate lines over sensitive love lyrics, and up-tempo numbers on which the guitarists strummed away and thundering drums played in stop-start rhythms. There were also more exotic styles, such as the Greek-styled "Rubylove," with its twin bouzoukis and a verse sung in Greek, and "Tuesday's Dead," with its Caribbean feel. Stevens seemed to have worked out some of his big questions, to the point of wanting to proselytize on songs like "Changes IV" and "Peace Train," both stirring tunes in which he urged social and spiritual improvement. Meanwhile, his love songs had become simpler and more plaintive. And while there had always been a charming, childlike quality to some of his lyrics, there were songs here that worked as nursery rhymes, and these were among the album's most memorable tracks and its biggest hits: "Moonshadow" and "Morning Has Broken," the latter adapted from a hymn. The overall result was an album that was musically more interesting than ever, but lyrically dumbed-down. Stevens continued to look for satisfaction in romance, despite its disappointment, but he found more fulfillment in a still-unspecified religious pursuit that he was ready to tout to others. And they were at least nominally ready to listen: the album produced three hit singles and just missed topping the charts. Tea for the Tillerman may have been the more impressive effort, but Teaser and the Firecat was the Cat Stevens album that gave more surface pleasures to more people, which in pop music is the name of the game.

Hazard County Girls

I'm so in LOVE

Alice In Chains - Check My Brain

New (old) groovy stuff

R.I.P. Les Paul

Time to RAWK

Gone.Gone,Gone

Monday Bob

The other side of Bob Dylan referred to in the title is presumably his romantic, absurdist, and whimsical one — anything that wasn't featured on the staunchly folky, protest-heavy Times They Are a-Changin', really. Because of this, Another Side of Bob Dylan is a more varied record and it's more successful, too, since it captures Dylan expanding his music, turning in imaginative, poetic performances on love songs and protest tunes alike. This has an equal number of classics to its predecessor, actually, with "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "My Back Pages," "I Don't' Believe You," and "It Ain't Me Babe" standing among his standards, but the key to the record's success is the album tracks, which are graceful, poetic, and layered. Both the lyrics and music have gotten deeper and Dylan's trying more things — this, in its construction and attitude, is hardly strictly folk, as it encompasses far more than that. The result is one of his very best records, a lovely intimate affair.

Turn On Your Receiver

After putting themselves on the hard rock map with Razamanaz, Nazareth took their new, forceful style even further the next year on Loud & Proud. With Roger Glover once again at the controls, the group added even higher levels of distortion and energy to create one of the hardest rocking items in their catalog: "Go Down Fighting" starts the album with a sonic boom thanks to its blend of furious riffing with a breathless tempo, and the group's cover of "Teenage Nervous Breakdown" transforms this Little Feat into a runaway locomotive of hard rock riffing. However, the album's definitive moment of heaviness is their extended reworking of Bob Dylan's "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," which drenches the tune in ungodly levels of feedback to create an ominous, horror movie-style feel. Loud & Proud also produced another hit single for the group with a cover of Joni Mitchell's "This Flight Tonight," which transforms the wistful original into a throbbing rock song. The end result of this ultra-heavy approach is that the album lacks the accessibility and high level of experimentation that characterized Razamanaz. That said, the album does retain a few stylistic curve balls to keep listeners on their toes: "Turn on Your Receiver" is a mid-tempo slice of country rock (complete with an exaggerated Southern accent in the vocal) and "Child in the Sun," a stately ballad dominated by acoustic guitars. In the end, Loud & Proud lacks the crossover appeal of Razamanaz but remains a bracing collection of rockers that will entertain Nazareth fans and anyone else with a yen for 1970s hard rock.

Shall we kill something?

The true birth of thrash. On Kill 'Em All, Metallica fuses the intricate riffing of New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Diamond Head with the velocity of Motörhead and hardcore punk. James Hetfield's highly technical rhythm guitar style drives most of the album, setting new standards of power, precision, and stamina. But really, the rest of the band is just as dexterous, playing with tightly controlled fury even at the most ridiculously fast tempos. There are already several extended, multi-sectioned compositions foreshadowing the band's later progressive epics, though these are driven by adrenaline, not texture. A few tributes to heavy metal itself are a bit dated lyrically; like Diamond Head, the band's biggest influence, Kill 'Em All's most effective tone is one of supernatural malevolence — as pure sound, the record is already straight from the pits of hell. Ex-member Dave Mustaine co-wrote four of the original ten tracks, but the material all sounds of a piece. And actually, anyone who worked backward through the band's catalog might not fully appreciate the impact of Kill 'Em All when it first appeared — unlike later releases, there simply isn't much musical variation (apart from a lyrical bass solo from Cliff Burton). The band's musical ambition also grew rapidly, so today, Kill 'Em All sounds more like the foundation for greater things to come. But that doesn't take anything away from how fresh it sounded upon first release, and time hasn't dulled the giddy rush of excitement in these performances. Frightening, awe-inspiring, and absolutely relentless, Kill 'Em All is pure destructive power, executed with jaw-dropping levels of scientific precision. [An Elektra reissue added the cover songs "Blitzkrieg" and "Am I Evil?" from the European Creeping Death EP, which were later deleted and included on Garage, Inc.]

Musical discovery of the day

Formed by singer Dallas Taylor shortly after he was bounced from the long-running Christian metalcore act Underoath (rumor has it that the rest of the band considered Taylor's marriage proposal to his longtime girlfriend evidence of insufficient devotion to the Rock), Maylene and the Sons of Disaster are something of a stylistic change. Although they share Underoath's hardcore roots, there's an old-school vibe to Maylene and the Sons of Disaster's sound that suggests the generation of 1970s boogie rockers that the punks were supposed to have destroyed. Taylor's throaty bark of a voice is intimately connected to the post-hardcore and screamo scenes, but it meshes with Josh Cornutt and Scott Collum's swaggering guitar riffs and the looser than usual rhythm section of bassist Roman Havaland and drummer Lee Turner to create a mixture of vintage Southern rock boogie and punky aggression that at times sounds like a new-millennium version of Humble Pie or .38 Special. Named after the notorious 1930s bank robber Maylene "Ma" Barker and her murderous sons, whose local criminal reign is now fodder for tourists in Taylor's hometown of Ocala, FL -- a commentary on how even the most violent and amoral acts can eventually become light entertainment -- Taylor formed Maylene and the Sons of Disaster in Birmingham, AL, in 2004; signing with the Christian metal label Mono vs. Stereo, the group released their self-titled debut album the following year. Following a period of personnel uncertainty during which Taylor flirted with joining a new band with some former Underoath members and former From First to Last singer Phil Readon, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster announced that their second album, imaginatively titled Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Vol. 2, was due in the spring of 2007. It then appeared that March.


Maylene and the Sons of Disaster - Step Up (I'm On It)


This is just my style.I love how they tied the Deliverance sequence in the video.One of my favorite movies.
Now 'cuse me while i go interweb huntin'.....

Alice in Chains - A Looking In View

This is probably my most anticipated lp of the year.
and if it is as good as i hear.
i will forgive the boys for using the AIC moniker
RAWK

Super groovy guitar machine....

If you like guitar rock ie. Hendrix,Vaughan,Clapton,Page,Hanyes,Trucks,etc,etc.
You will dig this.

Kiss M&M's

i sure do want me some Kiss M&M's....NOW



Blabbermouth has the lowdown on a piece of Kiss merchandising that’s actually tasty, rather than tasteless: Kiss M&M’s. The limited-edition chocolates are due in October, in time for Halloween — which the band will spend rocking New Orleans’ Voodoo Festival, as Rock Daily reported. Plus, the band’s new disc, which Paul Stanley promised “rocks big time!” should be ready pretty soon, according to our calculations.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (born 1970) is an indigenous Australian musician, who sings in the Yolngu language.

He was born on Elcho Island, off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Australia about 350 miles from Darwin. He is from the Gumatj clan of the Yolngu and his mother from the Galpu nation. He was born blind, has never learned Braille and does not have a guide dog or use a cane. Yunupingu speaks only a few words of English, and is said to be acutely shy.

He plays drums, keyboards, guitar (a right hand-strung guitar left-handed) and didgeridoo, but it is the clarity of his singing voice that has attracted rave reviews. He sings stories of his land in both languages (Gälpu, Gumatj or Djambarrpuynu, all Yolŋu Matha) and English.Formerly with Yothu Yindi, he is now with Saltwater Band.







*

Empty Memories

After Forever '07

Beer

It's all that is good

Saturday Night Bob

Gonna try and start this old fugger up

there will not be any "revelations" nor eloquent writing going on here.
just favorite music,observations,ramblings,videos,links and such.
hope ya join me
oh yeah
RAWK

What I'm Diggin this week

Those Darlins
groovy stuff,REAL music.Not cookie cutter crap
DIG IT

Last.fm Boffin

Pretty cool app from Last.fm if you are into that sort of thing
tags all the music on your hard drive from tags at last.fm and plays them
check it out

Boffin tags from Last.fm