Happy New Year — The Band’s Genuine Bootleg Series 4: Crossing The Great Divide. “3 CD The Band bootleg released in 1997, not to be confused with the official Across the Great Divide box set. This is the third release in The Genuine Bootleg Series, for some reason sub-titled Take 4. The two first bootleg [...]
If there’s a power pop heaven, you know they’ve got a hell of a band. Us sinners can get a sneak preview of it on this recording, which captures Big Star in the spring of 1974 — opening for, wait for it, Badfinger. This gig took place around the same time as the officially released [...]
By the close of the 1970s, Talking Heads had come a long way in a shockingly short period of time. After emerging as a minimalist three-piece at CBGBs in ’75 centered around the nervous presence of David Byrne, the band expanded their sonic palette in ways that had to have seemed unimaginable to anyone who [...]
There are those among us who will shudder when I say this, but let’s face facts: Can was a jam band. Indeed, jamming was at the heart of pretty much everything the legendary krautrockers did. Rather than a group centered around a songwriter, Can was a collective of improvisers whose primary modus operandi in the [...]
Aside from the essential Precise Modern Lovers, live documents of Jonathan Richman’s first musical forays are few and far between. But this recording surfaced just a few years back, capturing Jonathan Richman, Jerry Harrison, David Robinson and Ernie Brooks playing two full sets at the Stonehenge Club in Ipswich, MA, sometime in 1970 or ‘71. [...]
More often than not, most of what you read concerning the Velvet Underground will inevitably note how woefully underappreciated the group were during its brief lifespan. But the VU were superstars — and not just in the Warholian sense — in certain parts of the U.S., including Boston. This quintessential New York City band made [...]
Let’s take a trip to the Bowery, shall we? By the time the Feelies emerged in late 1976, CBGB was already well established as the epicenter of the era’s cutting-edge rock music scene: the reputations of Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads, and the Ramones were built on its stage in a few short, but action-packed, years. While [...]
“I’d like to do this song for Rodan the Flying Monster,” announces Neil Young towards the end of the opening acoustic set on this excellent audience tape. The song that follows is a mellow rendition of the chart-topping “Heart of Gold“. But Neil obviously had Japanese monsters in mind this evening: he returns for the [...]
