Rock music has a definite genre problem. When Rhino Handmade announced the reissue of Ride's Nowhere late last year, some absent-minded reading on Wikipedia yielded a primer on the shoegaze genre. "Shoegaze" is one of those things you might encounter if you were a voracious reader of music reviews in the early '90s, but it might have just been a word rather than a whole genre. Shoegaze was a mini-genre assigned to bands with a particular style - particularly, effects-laden guitars taking
Archives for February 21, 2011
UMe Gets Impulsive with Forthcoming Box Set
Universal Music Group has an impressive array of jazz titles in their library. Defining labels of the genre like Verve and Mercury are jewels in UMe's crown, while the catalogues of Concord and Fantasy are distributed domestically by Universal as well. One of the more arguably underrated vintage labels in Universal's family, though, is Impulse! Records. The label, founded by Creed Taylor in 1960 as a label in the ABC-Paramount group, may not be as long-running as the others in Universal's
Presidents' Day Special Feature: Stan Freberg, "The United States of America"
Here's one for Watson: "This actor, comedian, voice artist, singer, songwriter and advertising guru coined the name 'Grammy' for the annual awards bestowed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS)." The correct answer? "Who is Stan Freberg?" To list Freberg's credits in the fields of cinema, radio, television, animation and music would take up the entirety of this column, but readers unfamiliar with those accomplishments are advised to stop reading now, order a copy of
Iggy Pop, Live and in a Box
2010 had no shortage of reissues from The Stooges. All three of their classic studio LPs were reissued - The Stooges in a new deluxe edition from Rhino Handmade, Fun House through the repressed 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions box set also from Rhino Handmade and Raw Power as part of Sony's Legacy Edition series - and Handmade released a live set,
Robbie Williams Reissues to Entertain You in March
After a new double-disc compilation and a heavily-publicized reunion with U.K. boy band Take That (who will go on tour this year), EMI will have another batch of goodies for the Robbie Williams fan in your life: new CD/DVD reissues of the singer's Chrysalis catalogue. Williams - one of the most celebrated male singers in England, with more BRIT Award wins than anyone and some 60 million albums sold worldwide - recorded seven LPs for Chrysalis between 1997 and 2006. Each one topped the British
D.I.Y. Dylan: Bob's "Archive" Box Coming Soon
Maybe Bob Dylan really was a hobo. Despite his solid middle-class upbringing, it wasn't uncommon for fans to believe that Dylan really did ride the rails slinging a bag on a stick. Dylan, for a time, even encouraged this mythology of his own making. But if he wasn't a hobo in the literal sense, he undoubtedly was one, musically, if one defines a hobo as "one who wanders from place to place without a permanent home." Since his self-titled Columbia debut in 1962, Dylan has travelled the path from