JD Allen, Love Stone. The tenor saxophone has always sounded like the closest instrument to the human voice. There is something about the range and the tone of the tenor that captures the inner soul of what a gifted singer can express. The long line of America’s saxophonists beautifully encapsulates the entire history of jazz from its earliest beginning, and...
Favorite Albums of 2018 (Second Half) Haiku Reviews
This year once again showed the ultimate test of longevity: great music never stops. It keeps coming like the wind and the waves. So here is this year’s list of favorite albums, starting with the first half of 2018 posted in July’s Bentley’s Bandstand: Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock; Niki Bluhm, To Rise You Gotta Fall;...
Album Reviews: Bobbie Gentry – The Girl from Chickasaw County, plus Music from Marianne Faithfull, Ynana Rose, Bob Dylan, & Paisley Underground Bands
When I saw Don McLean in concert some years ago, he introduced “American Pie” by mentioning that people often asked him what the song meant. “It means,” he noted after a pause, “that I never have to work again.” Bobbie Gentry could undoubtedly say the same thing about her brilliant “Ode to Billie Joe,” which replaced the Beatles’ “All You...
Bentley’s Bandstand: December 2018
The Beatles. Always known as “The White Album,” The Beatles 1968 double-disc set stopped a lot of listeners in their tracks when it was first released. It was different, partly because it was twice as long as their other releases, but more because they’d cut loose from the confines of their previous constructs on how to make an album, and...
Blu-ray Review: City Slickers (Collector’s Edition)
New from Shout Factory’s imprint Shout Select comes City Slickers, a collector’s edition Blu-ray that presents a brand new 4K HD scan of the smash hit comedy. For viewers of a certain age (i.e. those who were barely adults in 1991), it may be a shock to contemplate that City Slickers is now 27 years old. Thanks to Shout’s new...
Album Reviews: The Ramones – Road to Ruin (40th Anniversary Edition), Plus New Music from Johnny & Jaalene, Dave Keller, Permanent Green Light
By the time the Ramones got around to crafting their fourth album, they must have been feeling a little nervous. Several of their contemporaries on the punk/new wave scene— including Blondie, Elvis Costello, and Talking Heads—had begun to break through commercially. They had not. Their first two albums had flopped; and while their third, Rocket to Russia, had done a bit...
Bentley’s Bandstand: October 2018
Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Love’s Middle Name. The only way to enter the rock & roll fray, no matter what age you start, is to know that nothing is going to go as planned. That can be a huge bonus or it can be a bone-crushing killer. In the end, it’s all about faith and fortitude. Sarah Borges...
Available Now on Blu-ray: Strike Back: The Complete Fifth Season
Following what was billed as a “Final Season,” the ten-episode Legacy (as it was called in the U.K.), British Sky One has kept Strike Back going with this all-new season. In keeping with the tradition of Strike Back having one of the more confusing roll-outs of any contemporary show, the ten-episodes serve as the sixth season in the U.K. under...
Bentley’s Bandstand: September 2018
The Band, Music from Big Pink: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. The first spine-tingling notes on this collection feel, 50 years later, like time has stopped and the earth is shifting on its axis. Rarely before has an album changed the musical world’s momentum so assuredly. Before The Band released their debut album in 1968, things were melting towards an...
Album & Book Reviews: Steve Forbert – Big City Cat (book) & The Magic Tree (CD) + Music by Vanessa Peters, Anthony Geraci, Chris Darrow & Max Buda
Particularly if you’ve been listening to Steve Forbert’s music for many years, you’re bound to have some fun with his new memoir, Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock. The book—which lifts its title from that of a track on Alive on Arrival, his 1978 debut LP—offers lots of commentary on the inspiration for Forbert’s songs and the making of...