Tag Archives: jazz
Tom Waits For No One
I’d heard about Tom Waits’ music for years before I picked up a copy of his Asylum anthology on vinyl. I was about 18 years old in my first year at Michigan State University. I’d read the book Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock’s Great Songwriters by Bill Flanagan. The interview with Tom is [...]
DJ Dick
As someone who spends a lot of time writing I can often be found at my desk at home or at the library or in a corner of a coffeehouse typing away with my headphones on. Here’s a little secret: I’m almost never listening to anything. If I’m reviewing a film or working on my [...]
Smack Talk
My man Ezra flipped a sweet Dazed article about music and heroin into our {R}emnants mag on Flipboard yesterday, and sitting down to post it caught my eye. Here’s a bit from Dazed… But heroin has consistently eluded this ebb and flow, from its prominence and influence in the jazz and blues era of the [...]
Devil’s Night
I don’t remember how old I was when I learned that Detroit was the only place with a Devil’s Night. I’m posting this on Thursday evening, but I won’t share it with anyone until Friday morning, just in time for the night before Halloween — Devil’s Night. The film Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages was [...]
Forever Ornette
My first instrument was the saxophone. That instrument introduced me to performing music and if I hadn’t started playing my horn at the age of 11 I probably would have never started writing my own songs. I still love my saxophone. Even though my singer/songwriter output is balanced on my lyrics, playing the saxophone offers [...]
Visit The Pyramids With Sun Ra
Google Maps has just released a street view that invites you to virtually explore The Great Pyramids of Giza and The Great Sphinx on digital foot among blurry-faced tourists who seem as curious about you (the Google eye) as they are about the presumably man-made wonders. Technology has elevated the experience of vicarious, imaginative tourism [...]
Basement Band
45 years ago, in 1969, The Band released their classic sophmore album and changed rock ‘n’ roll forever. But, how did a group of nearly-all Canadians seem to absorb the entire history of American music from folk, to blues, to country to jazz and recreate it in their own inimitable way? While the band received [...]
Sun Ra Centenary
This year we celebrate the 100th birthday of the cosmic reign of the avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra whose official birthday is celebrated on May 22. For those who know the man’s music, there is no need for an introduction here. For neophytes, here is a sampling of the story from the Sun Ra Arkestra’s [...]
Astral Weeks at 45
Van Morrison joined the British Invasion with Them until he left the band to meet Dylan and the folk rock revolution head-on with his first great masterpiece, Astral Weeks. Here’s what Rolling Stone has to say about this epic, emotive music: Van Morrison never sounded more warm and ecstatic, more sensual and vulnerable, than on [...]
