Friends will attest to the fact that the past few months have found me neck deep in all things related to the HBO serial drama The Wire. For those not familiar, the show is a fascinating take on the overtones an undertones of life and the inner workings of the modern American city (Baltimore, Maryland). [...]
This short set was recorded February 23, 1971 at the BBC’s Television Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush, London. An incredibly clean recording, I am hoping Neil explores selections from this tour in his newly minted Archives series. As you might note from previous live Neil Young shows I have posted here in the past, this era [...]
Robyn Hitchcock’s 2006 album Olé! Tarantula was such a strong comeback it re-kindled my interest in The Soft Boys 2004 reunion album, Nextdoorland, which then whetted my appetite to dig out their second album, and opus, 1980′s Underwater Moonlight. Whew – that was a mouthful. I had some of this album on cassette, but in [...]
Mr. Garrison Reid turned me onto this show via archive.org a few weeks ago claiming it was a super fine Ryan Adams bootleg head to toe — he was right, too. The show, recorded this past October in Germany, has everything a good boot should: the band’s in top form, it contains a few unreleased [...]
Roy Orbison, like many pioneering rock & roll artists of his generation, has the dubious honor of countless greatest hits collections bearing his name — all of them of varying quality. I know this because I have owned several over the years. One of the more interesting of Orbison’s ‘best of’ collections is the 1987 [...]
As mentioned in the 2006 Year In Review, Califone’s fifth album, Roots & Crowns, has become one of my favorite albums of 2006. My esteem and fondness for the LP grow with every listen — and possibly might have edged it’s way into my top twelve of ’06 if given another week of listening. With [...]
New releases tend to notoriously dry up the last month of the year. This being so, I had been anxiously awaiting the copy of Sonic Youth’s odds and sods compilation, The Destroyed Room, to land in my mailbox. I am happy to report — as far as die hard Sonic Youth fans go — the [...]
Through my father’s collection I inherited a formidable amount of out-of-print and rare Latin jazz, Latin soul, and salsa on vinyl. One day I will get around to ripping some of it to MP3 format to share on the Drunkard, but until then a number of key artists and tracks are captured on the Soul [...]
Irish lilt mixed with the attitude of early UK punk rock was what initially powered the The Pogues. Fronted by the (in)famous Shane MacGowan, The Pogues lifted traditional Irish music out of the gutter of past injecting it with a strong dose of piss and lager. Originally released in 1987 If I Should Fall from [...]
The most recent addition to the “Under Review” DVD series focuses on what would become known as Bowie’s Berlin period from 1976-1979. A particularly fertile period in Bowie’s artistic development, the sessions produced the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger, not to mention Bowie’s production and co-writer credits on Iggy Pop’s albums The Idiot and Lust [...]
