Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Cream Calendar Blondie and X to Play the Ryman on Sept. 30
Posted by Adam Gold on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 1:37 PM
The band charged on stage holding a long scrolling set list. In their only address from the stage, they told the crowd, “We have all these songs to play and less than hour to play them.” So they nudged the tempos up a bit and plowed through what felt like every key track from Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under the Big Black Sun and More Fun in the New World — the debut quartet of albums helmed by the late Doors organist Ray Manzarek — with rapid-fire ferocity and without taking tuning or banter breaks. Mission accomplished! I don’t even recall seeing guitarist Billy Zoom, the Chet Atkins of Punk Picking, even stop to look down at his fretboard once.
Cream Chet Flippo, Famed Journalist and Biographer, Dies at 69
Posted by Jim Ridley on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 1:22 PM
Flippo may be best known for his acclaimed 1980 Hank Williams biography Your Cheatin' Heart. But it was at Rolling Stone in the 1970s, at the height of its influence with rock audiences, that senior editor and star writer Flippo used the cred he'd built with his uproarious, uncensored coverage of the Rolling Stones and other acts to convince the mag to cover country.
He exerted similar influence for five years as Billboard's Nashville bureau chief, where he was among the first to focus attention on the honky-tonk renaissance that revitalized Lower Broadway in the mid-1990s. For the past 12 years, he'd served as editorial director at CMT, whose president, Brian Philips, remembered him today in a fond tribute:
He interviewed artists, oversaw the music content of CMT programming, and perhaps most influentially wrote a regular column for CMT.com called "Nashville Skyline" in which he celebrated artists who would benefit from his attention and took the industry to task for crimes of trend-hopping, image manufacturing, and anything that smacked to Chet of disloyalty to country's core values. He was not conservative in his tastes — Chet championed legitimate musical innovation — but he loved country music too much to let Music Row get away with fostering hypes and copycat artists on the public. Because his criticisms came from a respected insider and known country music-lover, his columns were taken very seriously by the Nashville community. Chet kept everybody honest.
Friends who'd seen him in recent months say he never fully recovered from the death last December of his beloved wife, author and journalist Martha Hume. News of his death has already brought an outpouring of condolences from friends and colleagues, who remember him as intensely private yet encouraging to his last fiber of being toward talent — whether he saw it in an artist like Willie Nelson or the Stones, or in the young writers who trailed in his wake.
Details of any memorial service or tribute will be posted as we receive them.
Reviews Portraits in Blue: William Stout’s Legends of the Blues
Posted by Randy Fox on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 11:53 AM
Now, artist William Stout — himself a veteran of the classic underground comix scene of the 1960s and '70s — has delivered a sequel of sorts to Crumb’s book with Legends of the Blues. Based on the same general format (and with Crumb’s approval) Stout drew 100 pen-and-ink and watercolor portraits of classic blues artists that capture their lively and diverse personalities. Along with the portraits, Stout authored short biographies, listings of recommended songs, and lists of interesting rock-era cover versions for each featured artist.
Creamtastic Caption Contest: Ice Cube Ticket Giveaway!
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 8:00 AM
Yesterday, the folks at Marathon Music Works reached out and offered us a pair of Ice Cube tickets to give away to one lucky Cream reader. So I guess yesterday ... wait for it ... was a good day. Anyway, as we told you last month, the onetime NWA member and mainstream film star will be performing at Marathon on June 29, and local MC Chancellor Warhol will appear in support. Tickets are indeed still available at this link, but let's do the freebie thing.
You know how this works. Come up with the most clever, intriguing or otherwise insightful caption imaginable for the image you see above, and post it down there in the comments section. Be sure to include your email address in the appropriate field — we won't publish it, but we'll need it in order to contact our winner. We've got a full 10 days before this one goes down, so you've got plenty of time to think up something brilliant. We'll contact our winner late next week. All right, everyone ready? Go!
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Cream Calendar Shakey Graves w/Wild Child and Marmalakes Tonight at The High Watt
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 3:55 PM
Hey! Show of hands: Who here didn't go to Bonnaroo? If you have your hand up, that means you may indeed currently have the energy and desire to see some live music this evening. Good for you. And if you like blues-rooted folk music, I've got the thing for you. Shakey Graves, Marmalakes and Wild Child will perform tonight at The High Watt, and Edd Hurt wrote us up a mighty fine Critic's Pick:
Back in the days of such impure folk purists as Gordon Lightfoot and Ralph McTell, pop music and folk mingled freely — singing the blues with an acoustic guitar went together with string arrangements and big hooks. These days, young pop-folk acts blend hummability with experimental urges, with often interesting results. Tonight’s show features three Austin bands whose oddball harmonies and pop chord progressions are backed by various stringed instruments. Wild Child is a sextet specializing in strange post-Gilbert O’Sullivan songs often laced with semi-atonal banjo licks. Meanwhile, Marmalakes makes sunny folk-pop with dark undertones — last year’s In Arnica EP sported such blithe but opaque tunes as “Septimus Warren Smith” and “White Height.” Rounding out tonight’s show is Shakey Graves, a stone-cold acoustic pop-folk-blues performer whose 2011 Roll the Bones full-length will give you the urge to ramble. —EDD HURT
Kicks off at 9 p.m., and $7 will get you in.
Moving Pictures The Civil Wars’ ‘The One That Got Away’ [Fresh Vid]
Posted by Adam Gold on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:50 PM
Last week we dished some deets on mid-indefinite-hiatus folk-pop duo The Civil Wars’ highly anticipated self-titled sophomore effort (out Aug. 6), and also posted the album’s lead-off single, “The One That Got Away.” Now you can check out the video for the dire dirge, which the duo dropped on YouTube today. It’s a black-and-white clip capturing members Joy Williams and John Paul White cutting the track, lounging around with looks of rock-star exhaustion (See also: Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” video) and avoiding eye contact with each other. Peep it above!
Cream Calendar JEFF the Brotherhood to Headline The Stone Fox's Nashville Outlines Aug. 3
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:07 AM
Hey, so remember the free block party we told you about? You know, The Stone Fox's Nashville Outlines, which will take place Aug. 3 and feature bike tune-ups, a Third Man dunking booth, food trucks and performances from Bully, Clear Plastic Masks, D. Watusi, Fly Golden Eagle, James Wallace and the Naked Light, JP5, Kin Ship, Natalie Prass, Natural Child, Promised Land Sound (formerly Promised Land), Ranch Ghost, Ri¢hie, Tristen and Weekend Babes? Well, the top-secret headliner — the one that folks at The Stone Fox couldn't tell us about just yet — has now been announced, and as you can see on the poster above, it's homegrown psychedelic siblings JEFF the Brotherhood, last seen crushing it at Bonnaroo.
"Indiana Avenue will be closed at 51st to allow foot traffic to travel freely from the Fox to the Garden Stage, located in the Stone Fox garden lot across Indiana Avenue from the main building," say the Fox folks. "Music will run from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the Garden Stage and 6 p.m. to late on the Fox Stage." Oh, also — speaking of people who played Bonnaroo and will be playing non-Bonnaroo stuff soon — Jack Johnson is coming to the Ryman Oct. 2. I'm wondering how narrow the overlap is on the Venn diagram of JEFF fans and Jack Johnson fans.
Creamtastic Lake Fever Presents The Chris Crofton Show, Episode 136
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:00 AM
You gotta see my china set. I'll throw it in your face. I got a wedding dress with antique lace. I've got Abraham Lincoln's shoe in my safe. And it's The Chris Crofton Show, Episode 136. Hear it after the jump.
Monday, June 17, 2013
The Spin / Bonnaroo Bonnaroo Sunday, 6/16/13 [Ed Helms, A$AP Rocky, Tame Impala, JEFF the Brotherhood, Kendrick Lamar, David Byrne and St. Vincent, More]
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 7:13 PM
- Photo: Steve Cross
- Kendrick Lamar
Well, The Spin survived once more, by God. From the opening strains of Ri¢hie to the final notes of Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers shutting it down with "American Girl," we entered the trenches for the 12th annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and came out with another fresh set of battle scars. Now, for the final round of this year's war stories ...
The Spin / Bonnaroo Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at Bonnaroo's What Stage, 6/16/13
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM
Alas, the first victim of the new Bonnaroo performance benchmark set Friday night by Paul McCartney might have been the festival’s closer: a somewhat oddly chosen Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who opened with The Byrds’ “So You Want to be a Rock 'n’ Roll Star” just as the skies literally threw cold water on the party. (The rain stirred the crowd a few songs later to a defiant sing-along with “I Won’t Back Down.”) As if aware they were filling a slot occupied in the past by a closing-night jam, Petty and his bandmates stretched out on extended versions of “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)” and his Traveling Wilburys’ Springsteen goof “Tweeter and the Monkey Man”; hell, he even tossed the jam base a bone with a nifty cover of “Friend of the Devil."
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