A Bloy and his Blog

Last night Ryan Adams & the Cardinals were in town, playing at Madison’s Overture Hall in support of their upcoming release Cardinology. Because of the venue, I expected good acoustic sound and I wasn’t disappointed. This could have been one of the best sounding shows I ever attended. Musically the band seemed to give it their all, playing for almost three hours (with a 15 minute break between sets).

The concert started off with two new songs, which went over fairly well with the audience. Next was a solid “Everybody Knows,” a pained and somber cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall”, followed by another new song. By this point Ryan and the band seemed to be functioning like a well-oiled machine, and came to the first big highlight when they played “Goodnight Rose.” It included a wonderful instrumental jam featuring harmonizing guitars, an almost whispering chant of “goodnight, goodnight” toward the end, which segued into the signature musical riff of the song at full volume to finish.

read the rest of: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals’ marathon jam

Get a free MP3 of Wilco & Fleet Foxes covering “I Shall Be Released” by Bob Dylan. All you have to do is pledge to vote this November. You were going to vote anyway, right?

Here’s a sample of the song, which was recorded from a live show this summer. Very reminiscent of Dylan and The Band.

Found via Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Daily.

I recently stumbled upon this little gem: a bootleg of Sting’s Unplugged performance at MTV studios, in March of 1991 — back when MTV actually had music on the channel.

Sting was touring to support his latest release at the time, The Soul Cages. He plays four songs from that underrated CD, but the highlights of the session are outstanding versions of “Message in a Bottle,” “Fragile,” an excellent cover of Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Tea in The Sahara” which segues into “Walking On The Moon.”

Although a cover image is included in the archive, I didn’t think the publicity image of a Synchronicity era Sting made sense, so I came up with my own cover based on images from The Soul Cages CD.

Share and enjoy.

For the album Trinity Revisited, the Cowboy Junkies celebrated the 20th anniversary of their classic release, The Trinity Session by revisiting Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity to see “what twenty years of experience would bring to those same set of songs.”

Not simply a rerecording, the songs are re-imagined and improved, featuring performances by guest musicians Natalie Merchant, Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt and Jeff Bird. The track that really grabbed me on the first listen is the bluesy shuffle, “I Don’t Get It” (which is available as a free download from the Trinity Revisited website).

read the rest of: Cowboy Junkies: Trinity Revisited

Rolling Stone was the first adult magazine I subscribed to. I’ve been getting it delivered to my home for over twenty years now. But I let my subscription expire this month, and I’m a little nostalgic about it.

Its musical focus was what first got me reading Rolling Stone — especially the music reviews. Over the years though, they’ve added more features on pop-culture things like fashion, television, and video games. Lately a good deal of their random notes section looks like it came from a sleazy tabloid. Often the music news in the bi-weekly magazine was not news to me. I had already heard about it online. I became less and less interested, and issues would pile up, unread. Over the past few years I wondered why I was paying for a subscription, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop.

read the rest of: No longer a Rolling Stone

Orchestra Baobab plays a laid back, Afro-Cuban style, and their show last night at the Barrymore Theatre was almost perfect for a beautiful summer evening. The band from Senegal has nine members: three guitarists, two saxophonists, and four people who spent their evening singing, and taking turns at the three percussion stations.

Orchestra Baobab sings in their native languages (Wolof? Mandinka? and some French) and I’m sure most of us in the audience didn’t have a clue what they were singing about. But that didn’t matter with the easy going groove their music had.

read the rest of: Orchestra Baobab’s laid back groove

You could almost file The Odd Couple, the latest release by Gnarls Barkley, under “old school R&B.” Gnarls Barkley (a duo comprised of producer Danger Mouse and vocalist Cee-Lo Green) brilliantly reference that old R&B style, while adding modern musical elements of their own. Hear that mixing of styles in “A Little Better.”

Following up their critically acclaimed debut album, St. Elsewhere, must have been a daunting task. Even though there isn’t a smash hit like that album’s “Crazy,” The Odd Couple is a more consistent, and better record.

read the rest of: The Odd Couple by Gnarls Barkley