Musician, writer and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman makes a rare West Coast swing this summer, his first in nearly twenty years. Joining him on tour will be two members of his original backing band (The Texas Jewboys), Little Jewford and Washington Ratso, and guests are signing up for various stops, including Mojo Nixon in San Diego and Van Dyke Parks in Los Angeles.
Mon., July 26Â VANCOUVER, BCÂ Biltmore Cabaret
Tues., July 27Â SEATTLE, WAÂ Â Triple Door
Wed., July 28Â PORTLAND, ORÂ Roseland Theater
Fri., July 30Â Â SAN FRANCISCO, CAÂ Â Great American Music Hall
Sat., July 31 LOS ANGELES, CA  McCabe’s Guitar Shop (2 shows)
Sun., Aug. 1Â SAN DIEGO, CAÂ Belly Up, with Mojo Nixon
Tues., Aug. 3Â BAKERSFIELD, CAÂ Fishlips
Wed., Aug. 4 SANTA CRUZ, CA Moe’s Alley
Thurs., Aug. 5Â SEBASTOPOL, CAÂ North Bay Live at Studio E
Fresh off the release of their second album, Big Echo, and a headlining tour of the USA, the Morning Benders head back to the roads of North America with Broken Bells, and then with the Black Keys! UK/European dates coming soon.
May 18th || Humphreys Concerts by the Bay || San Diego, CA*
May 19th || Henry Fonda Theatre || Los Angeles, CA*
May 21st || Regency Ballroom || San Francisco, CA*
May 24th || Wonder Ballroom || Portland, OR*
May 25th || Showbox at the Market || Seattle, WA*
May 26th || Commodore Ballroom || Vancouver, BC*
May 29th || Gothic Theatre || Englewood, CO*
May 31st || Vic Theatre || Chicago, IL*
June 1st || St. Andrews Hall || Detroit, MI*
June 2nd || Queen Elizabeth Theatre || Toronto, ON*
June 4th || Royale NightClub || Boston, MA*
June 5th || The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza || New York, NY*
June 6th || Electric Factory || Philadelphia, PA*
June 7th || 9:30 Club || Washington, D.C.*
June 10th || Center Stage || Atlanta, GA*
June 11th || 40 Watt Club || Athens, GA*
July 26th || DAR Constitution Hall || Washington, DC#
July 27th || Central Park Summerstage || New York, NY#
July 28th || Central Park Summerstage || New York, NY#
July 30th || Great Plaza at Penn’s Landing || Philadelphia, PA#
July 31st || Bank of America Pavilion || Boston, MA#
August 3rd || Kool Haus || Toronto, ON#
August 4th || Kool Haus || Toronto, ON#
August 6-8th || Lollapalooza || Chicago, IL
August 7th || Metro || Chicago, IL#
August 8th || Val Air Ballroom || Des Moines, IA#
August 9th || Anchor Inn || Omaha, NE#
August 11th || Iroquois Amphitheater || Louisville, KY#
August 12th || Ryman Auditorium || Nashville, TN#
August 13th || The LC Amphitheater || Columbus, OH#
August 14th || The Fillmore Detroit || Detroit, MI#
Parton’s 1971 album of faith and praise + 7 bonuses
Letter to Heaven returns to print 1971’s Golden Streets of Glory, Dolly Parton’s first full album of inspirational song. The seventeen tracks of this 45-minute collection include the album’s original ten and six bonuses cherry-picked from Parton’s albums and singles of the 1970s. As a treat for collectors, the original album session track “Would You Know Him (If You Saw Him) is released here for the first time. The latter is among Parton’s most compelling vocals in the set, and a real mystery as to how it was left off the original release. Parton wrote or co-wrote ten of the seventeen titles and puts her vocal stamp on standards (“I Believeâ€), country (“Wings of a Doveâ€), gospel (“How Great Thou Artâ€) and classic spirituals (“Swing Low Sweet Chariot,†here reworked as “Comin’ For to Carry Me Homeâ€). The album’s originals are surprisingly generic songs of faith and praise, unsatisfying in comparison to the following year’s brilliant “Coat of Many Colors.â€
By 1967 Frank Sinatra was riding yet another wave of artistic and popular success. After career highs as a big band singer, a solo artist for Columbia, an innovative solo artist for Capitol and the founder of his own label, Reprise, Sinatra found commercial gold in 1966 with “Strangers in the Night†and “That’s Life.†In 1967 he recorded both the chart-topping “Something Stupid†and this artistically rich album of bossa nova tunes. Pairing with Brazil’s most popular musical exponent, Sinatra gave Antonio Carlos Jobim’s originals (and three American songbook standards) the deft lyrical touch that marked the vocalist’s best recordings. Jobim, in turn, gave Sinatra a hip outlet that was more sophisticated than reworking contemporary pop songs. Also contributing to the superb final results was arranger/conductor Claus Ogerman, whose charts gave Sinatra space to sing with a quiet ease.
Sinatra sounds unusually relaxed in these sessions, swinging ever so lightly to Jobim’s percussive finger-played acoustic guitar, and the moody strings, breezy woodwinds and muted horns of Ogerman’s arrangements. The easy tempos give Sinatra a chance to explore Jobim’s songs, hold notes and show off the textures of his voice. The recording and mix show off the brilliant results engineer Lee Herschberg accomplished in capturing the nuances of Sinatra’s voice. Jobim adds vocal support with occasional alternating or duet lines, and provides both Brazilian flavor and contrast that highlight the incredible quality of Sinatra’s tone. Three nighttime sessions yielded ten final tracks, which were released as the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, and climbed into the Top 20 on the album chart.
Sinatra moved on to other projects, including an album with Duke Ellington (Francis A. & Edward K.), a family Christmas album, an album of pop and folk rock (Cycles), and the triumphant My Way. But in 1969 he and Jobim returned to Western Recorders for three more nights to lay down ten more bossa nova styled tracks for an album tentatively titled Sinatra-Jobim. But two years later on, Jobim was writing more complex melodies that weren’t as easy for Sinatra to vocalize, and new arranger Eumir Deodato’s charts are more insistent than those Claus Ogerman scripted for the first album. Sinatra sounds rehearsed (which he was) rather than organically warmed up, and his vocals don’t lay into the arrangements as effortlessly or seamlessly as before. Still, there’s chemistry between Sinatra and Jobim, and though the former was particularly unhappy with his performances on “Bonita,†“Off Key (Desafinado)†and “The Song of the Sabia,†the project went ahead with its release plan.
Sinatra-Jobim was finalized, cover art produced and a limited number of 8-track tape editions released to market before Sinatra killed the project. The 8-tracks that got into the wild have since become collectors’ items. The seven tracks with which Sinatra was relatively happy were re-released in 1971 as side one of Sinatra & Company, two more (“Bonita†and “The Song of the Sabiaâ€) were later released on the 1977 Reprise compilation Portrait of Sinatra, and the 1977 Brazilian double-LP Sinatra-Jobim Sessions, and the third (“Off Key (Desafinado)â€) was finally released on 1995’s epic The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings. Pulled together into a single 58-minute disc, it turns out Sinatra was right, the vocals from the second sessions, particularly the three delayed tracks, are not up to his standards. The stars simply didn’t align for the 1969 sessions as they did two years earlier.
Winning documentary of early British Invasion hit-makers
It’s Gonna Be All Right: 1963-1965 is one of four documentaries released as part of a five-DVD British Invasion box set by Reelin’ in the Years Productions. Of the four artists profiled (which also include Dusty Springfield, the Small Faces and Herman’s Hermits), Gerry & the Pacemakers might seem the most lightweight. But like all of the artists in this series, what U.S. audiences saw were just the tip of a larger artistic iceberg, and this collection of seventeen vintage musical performances and interviews, television and stage appearances, and contemporary interviews with Gerry Marsden and Bill Harry (founder of the Mersey Beat newspaper) tells more of the band’s story beyond their oft-anthologized hits. The Pacemakers emerge as early exponents of Liverpool’s beat rock, and an act that vied with the Beatles for the seaport town’s music fans.
The parallels between the Pacemakers and the Beatles are many. Both were Liverpool bands with Skiffle roots that turned to covering American R&B. Both honed their live performances in demanding Hamburg gigs, played the Cavern Club, were managed by Brian Epstein, wrote some of their own hits, were produced by George Martin, starred in their own film (Ferry Cross the Mersey), toured America and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. The Pacemakers’ music wasn’t as edgy as the Beatles, and Marsden never really varied from his smiling, sometimes hammy, showmanship as a front-man. The group broke in 1963 with “How Do You Do It?†and “I Like It,†and crossed the Atlantic the following year with “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying.†Their earlier U.K. singles would find later success in the U.S., though “You’ll Never Walk Alone†and “I’m the One†(#1 and a #2, respectively) remained UK-only hits.
Brill Building legend Carole King has really had two full music careers. Starting in the late 1950s and flourishing in the 1960s, she was part of the legendary stable of New York City songwriters who took their name from the sister building to the one in which they wrote their effervescent gems for Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music. Together with Gerry Goffin, King wrote some of the most memorable songs of the 1960s, scribing landmark sides for the Shirelles, Everly Brothers, Drifters, Chiffons, Monkees, Aretha Franklin, and dozens more. King is generally regarded, based on the chart success of her songs, as the most commercially successful female pop songwriter of the twentieth century. Had this been her only contribution to pop music, she’d be heralded as a legend, but King also had it in mind to step into the spotlight and perform her songs.
Her early attempts at a singing career, represented here by the Top 40 hit “It Might As Well Rain Until September,†fit into the prevailing Brill Building sound. She sang demos (some of which can be sampled on Brill Building Legends) and had another minor hit with “He’s a Bad Boy,†but didn’t really develop her singer’s voice until nearly a decade later. Moving to the West Coast, King recorded an album with Danny Kortchmar as The City (Now That Everything’s Been Said), and released a solo debut (Writer) that gained notice but little sales. It wasn’t until the following year’s Tapestry that King found the fame as a singer that her songs had previously found for her as a songwriter. Her songs created a lyrical voice that was perfectly in sync with 1971, and even more poignantly, her tour de force remake of 1959’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow†highlighted the emotional depth that had been part of her songwriting from the earliest days.
Legacy’s 2-CD set looks at both sides of King’s career. Disc one samples her early solo work, her 1970s stardom with tracks from Writer, Tapestry, Music, Rhymes & Reason, Fantasy, Wrap Around Joy, Thoroughbred, her score for Maurice Sendak’s Really Rosie, and a couple of later tracks recorded with Babyface (“You Can Do Anythingâ€) and Celine Dion. Missing are the albums she recorded for Capitol, Atlantic and EMI from the late-70s into the early-90s; they may not be essential to telling the story of her breakthrough years, but a sampling of tracks would have made a nice addition. Disc two samples fifteen King compositions recorded by (and mostly hits for) other artists. The breadth of acts that made brilliant music from King and Goffin’s compositions is staggering, particularly when you realize this is a fraction of the hits she wrote, and that is in turn a fraction of the thousands of cover versions these songs earned.
The first single from Reno Bo’s debut album, Happenings and Other Things, is graced with this artist-animated video. Bo’s paid homage to Terry Gilliam’s moving collages, Yellow Submarine‘s psychedelic juxtapositions, Shel Silverstein’s drawings, and the artwork of Schoolhouse Rock. Oh– and the song is a great slice of 70s-inflected rock! Full album review forthcoming, but for now, enjoy the video:
Archival CD release from Reno & Smiley’s early-60s television show
