Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Catfish John” by Jerry Garcia Band It was a tale of two Jerries. By 1980 Jerry Garcia had his day job with the Grateful Dead. During that year, the band released the somewhat weak studio album, Go To Heaven, and took to the road to promote it. While the 1979-1980 shows generally found the band in excellent form, in order to keep things interesting for the fans and themselves, they performed some very special shows. They kicked off their 15th anniversary celebration (1965-1980) with residencies at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and at The Warfield Theater in San Francisco. The shows revived the format of an acoustic...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “While I’m Alive” by STRFKR & “Young Turks” by Sexton Blake Sure, you’d be hard-pressed to forgive them for a band name as over the top as STRFKR (which is short for Starfucker). But props are firmly in order because over the past few years they’ve released three solid albums; chock full of deliciously danceable and tuneful electro pop confections. STRFKR’s roots are in solo projects by guitar/vocalist Josh Hodges, released under the moniker Sexton Blake. While the first Sexton Blake album was purely a solo affair, the second album featured a band (also called Sexton Blake)with Ryan Bjornstad on keyboards, Tom Homolya on bass and Tim Edgar on drums....

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “From The Sun” by Unknown Mortal Orchestra Out of the murky haze of gauze- encased melodies and tranquilized, processed vocals arrives the second album from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, cleverly titled II. UMO is the brain child of Ruban Nielson, formally of the band Mint Chicks, who counts artists as diverse as Captain Beefheart and Sly Stone as major influences. Their muffled sound is an amalgam of neo-psychedelic acts like MGMT, Ween, Apples In Stereo and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, coming off like an updated Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. However, their totally unique angular melodies set this group apart from all the rest. It all began in June of 2010, when...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#833 in the Series) is Richard Thompson, Electric If you are a fan of Richard Thompson, just hearing the title of his new album Electric should make you smile. If somehow you don’t know his music just listening to the first track “Stony Ground” will do the same thing. The song starts out with some clapping and percussion and then Richard Thompson and his Trio kick in to a song about “Old Man Morris” who’s fallen for the widow across the street ~ and can’t keep his mind off her “Honey pot.” Shakespeare? No. Tremendous fun? Yes. I hope that I can explain this, but the real treat of Electric is the...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Kind Of Fuzzy” by Eels It’s wonderful! It’s glorious! It’s Eels new album Wonderful, Glorious! Actually, the album could have been titled Everett Comes Alive, or even more to the point Get Happy! For their tenth studio album, Eels turned to a collaborative process, creating songs out of in-studio jams, with E (Mark Oliver Everett) adding lyrics on the fly. The result is a recording that is far more diverse in its sound and a whole lot looser than the last two Eels records. Coming on the heels of the three-album trilogy, Hombre Lobo, End Times and Tomorrow Morning, with their attendant themes of desire, heartbreak and renewal, Wonderful, Glorious...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Spin” by Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble If you love tuba solos, they’re here. How about exotic string instruments like zithers and kalimbas? Check, they’re in abundance. Funky, funky brass? Present and duly accounted for. Exciting music like you’ve never heard before? Look no further than the welcome return of Kelan Philip Cohran and his latest group, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Cohran played trumpet, zither and other string instruments with Sun Ra Arkestra from 1959-1961, performing on their albums Interstellar Low Ways (1959), Holiday for Soul Dance (1960), Fate in a Pleasant Mood (1960) and later guesting on the record Angels and Demons at Play (1965). He...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman- “Toe Thumb” by Billy Martin and Wil Blades Another dynamic duo! He’s the Martin who pounds the skins for the Jazz trio Medeski, Martin & Wood, and has recorded with the likes of John Scofield, John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards, Chris Whitley and Iggy Pop. Blades is a Hammond B-3 extraordinaire from Chicago, whose made a name for himself in the San Francisco Jazz scene and has lent his skills to the works of John Lee Hooker and fellow organist Dr. Lonnie Smith. The two joined forces for a one-off late night summit at the New Orleans Jazz Festival last year, and from that one gig, they knew they would...

  From a Nonesuch Records Press Release. Piece written by Michael Hill The title song of Old Yellow Moon, due out February 26, 2013, on Nonesuch Records, may be the concluding track on the first official album-length collaboration between Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, but it actually represents a starting point for this long-anticipated project, produced by Brian Ahern. These two old friends and occasional band mates, Harris explains, “were picking songs as we sat around Brian’s big kitchen table, with his extraordinary microphones hooked up to the computer just to make a demo. We would pick a key or toy around with an idea just to make a sketch.” Harris was going over Hank DeVito and Lynn Langham’s “Old Yellow Moon” with...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#824 in the Series) is Billy Prine, Billy Prine “You can’t make a living on a song and a prayer. The men in those taverns are too drunk to care.” from “Goodbye Virginia” by Robbie Fulks It was 1987 or maybe early 1988 the first time I saw it happened at Earl Pionke’s Pub on Chicago’s Lincoln Avenue. It was once the majestic (according to some reports) Somebody Else’s Trouble’s, the now named Earl’s Pub was more tattered and worn through like an old shirt.  Earl’s more famous club on Wells at North, THE Earl of Old Town, had recently closed for good. Holstein’s, a club a door or two north of...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#822 in the Series) is Tame Impala,  Lonerism There’s a tendency to label bands like Tame Impala – meaning those influenced by the  1966-1971-ish golden period of psychedelic rock – as imitators, mimics, copycats, or even revivalists, but to do that is to do the quintet a grave disservice. The Western Australian band have united fans of contemporary psychedelic rock in rapturous appreciation since their excellent debut album, Innerspeaker, in 2010, and even before that in Australian music circles with their first EP, Antares, Mira, Sun, in 2008. With Innerspeaker, they showed that there is so much more to their sound than fuzz pedals and vocal effects, and with new album Lonerism,...