Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#886 in the Series) is Sturgill Simpson, High Top Mountain High Top Mountain, the impressive new album by Country Singer Sturgill Simpson, is the best Outlaw Country throwback album released in years, and would have fit right in with Willie’s Red Headed Stranger, Waylon’s Dreaming My Dreams, and the Mighty Merle Classic, Back to the Barrooms.  This guy is that old school, that true, and that damn good. The opening track “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean” sets the template for 12 tracks of superb playing and true-life story lines, with Sturgill himself telling you what he thinks of all of the outlaw hoopla that is starting to envelop and mostly...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#883 in the Series) is Shooter Jennings, The Other Life Much like his old man, the venerable Waylon Jennings, Shooter Jennings wears the blaze your own trail outlaw crown to musical perfection on his latest release The Other Life. Showing a consistently cool and carefully crafted career path going back to his debut 2005 release, Put the O Back in Country, Shooter Jennings may lure you into the listening kiosk with his pedigree, and he does play the modern day outlaw role to perfection, it is actually his own unique blending of Country Roots Rock Americana with a peppering of good old fashioned Rock & Roll soul that brings you back to...

London, UK – Much to the excitement of music fans worldwide, guitar legend Steve Hillage is releasing a new album in the US with Japanese progressive rock/jam band ROVO on October 8, 2013 on Cleopatra Records. Steve Hillage is widely considered a guitar innovator, and is associated with the Canterbury scene, working in experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his critically acclaimed solo recordings, Steve has been a member of the ensembles Khan and System 7. But, he first came to prominence as a member of the multi-national rock band Gong, and appearing on successful albums such as ‘Angels Egg’, ‘You’ and his final album with the band ‘Shamal’. Steve recorded his first solo album in 1975 entitled...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Wake Me Up” by Elvis Costello & The Roots After the release of Elvis Costello’s last two T. Bone Burnett-produced albums, he was ready to throw in the towel on his recording career seeing no point in going back into the studio to create new records that nobody would hear. And as a long-time Costello fan of 36 years who suffered through those albums, I was beginning to sadly think that it might’ve been the right decision. Fortunately, inspiration struck in the oddest of places while guesting on the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon TV show where The Roots have been the house band since the show’s inception several years ago....

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#878 in the Series) is Robbie Fulks, Gone Away Backwards (Bloodshot) Gone Away Backward, the latest release from Americana, Roots Rock artist Robbie Fulks not only marks a triumphant return to Bloodshot records, the label that gave him his first significant exposure, but also represents a sort of back to the future homecoming, with the same sort of down home songwriting and storytelling that made him a critics darling going back to the mid 1980’s. Trying to capture the essence of Robbie Fulks is a bit like trying to catch a butterfly in mid-air with one hand.  It takes a lot of dexterity and a bit patience, but as you slowly open your...

William Shatner will be releasing a “Prog-Rock” album next month. It appears to be just that as well since it’s a collaboration with former Yes members Bill Sherwood and Tony Kaye. How did Shatner describe prog-rock to Rolling Stone Magazine in a recent interview? “Prog rock is the science fiction of music . . . has the same concept of exploration into the parts of the music world that hasn’t been explored.” There will also be a few live performances. 82-year-old Star Trek icon William Shatner will perform the album titled, Ponder The Mystery, in its entirety along with progressive rock band CIRCA which features  Sherwood and  Kaye. William Shatner is a film and TV icon with an intense...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#877 in the Series) is Billy Prine, Billy Prine’s Big Beat Battalion.  I was lucky enough to go to the album release concert for Billy Prine’s Big Beat Battalion and what a night of hard Southern-style rock we experienced. Since Billy Prine was a new experience for me I was primed for a comparison with Billy’s big brother John Prine. Once the show started that thought left me immediately. Billy is not a John Prine clone, he is living in his own hard rocking world and having a ball doing it right. Billy Prine’s Big Beat Battalion is a seven song album loaded with driving rock and some surprising moments as well, all...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#876 in the Series) is Little Green Cars, Absolute Zero (Glassnote Records) Travelling the back roads of the “Mumfordization” highway, on a road already well navigated by Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers, The Lumineers, and Dawes, Dublin’s own Little Green Cars with their sparkling debut album, Absolute Zero, are gassed up, ready to form their own trail, and are headed for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The blueprint for this band of feisty twenty-something’s consists of fronting duo (think Buckingham-Nicks) Stevie Appleby and Faye O’Rourke, Dylan Lynch (Drums), Donagh Seaver O’Leary (Bass), and Adam O’Regan (Guitar, Piano), brilliant musicians all, where all five pieces seem to meld...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “That Old Black Magic” by Tony Bennett with The Dave Brubeck Trio Every so often the reissue gods bestow upon us a truly special recording that music fans never knew existed.  Recently, one such recording was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public by our friends at Sony Legacy, featuring a musical summit that took place between Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck on August 28, 1962 at The White House. The event was a special concert recorded at the Sylvan Theater (at the base of the Washington Monument) welcoming a new group of volunteers (or interns as they are now called) that had come to Washington DC to work for the government. The...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#875 in the Series) is Glen Campbell,  See You There. (Surf Dog Records) I’ve always felt that music is at its best when it reaches out and hits you hard, hard and right in the heart.  Nothing can do that as well as a lyric. A lyric that makes you think, a lyric that brings you closer to the song, and closer to the artist. This happens during the seventh track on Glen Campbell’s latest release See You There where in the middle of his classic song “Galveston,” Glen sings “Galveston Oh Galveston .. I Am So Afraid of Dyin’.”  Yes, we’ve heard that line countless times before, but it’s different now and...