Jamie’s Cryin’—The Life and Loss of Edward “Eddie” Van Halen (Jan. 26, 1955–Oct. 6, 2020) By Elizabeth Cruciani The year 2020 has been cruel and unforgiving, especially to those in the music industry. Not just because the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to all live performances, but also due to the loss of several talented Read more
Hymns and Myths, Homeric and Modern By Stu O’Connor Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan Columbia Records. Release date: 19 June 2020 * * * * * (out of five) One can never count Bob Dylan out—ever. I went to see him at The Tower Theater in Upper Darby in the fall of 2017, Read more
Playing Through Pain: Remembering Neil Peart, 1952–2020 by Jude Joseph Lovell “Changes aren’t permanent,” wrote Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist of the legendary Canadian rock trio Rush, “but change is.” Here in this new year, Rush fans around the globe now face one change that unfortunately is permanent: Peart’s untimely death from brain cancer on January Read more
December 4, 1927 Duke Ellington Opens at Cotton Club Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C. and moved to the Big Apple in his early twenties. Duke Ellington was an American jazz legend. Composer, jazz orchestra leader and pianist, his career spanned more than sixty years. But his big break Read more
Language in Opera Singing by Cathleen McGowan As an opera singer, people comment that I must know a lot of languages. I wish I did, but currently I speak and understand two languages fluently: English and not-English. Not-English is a hybrid of the languages I’ve studied and is nearly incomprehensible outside of my own brain. Read more
Bruce Springsteen Born to Be You Book review by Jude Joseph Lovell American music legend Bruce Springsteen turns 70 years old on September 23. This prompted me to pick up his 2016 memoir, Born to Run. The book is a magnificent, colorful, unruly story of an epic, valley-to-the-mountaintop life in performance. Reportedly, Springsteen wrote every Read more
A Hot Summer with Keith Urban by Liz Cruciani If you were to ask me a few years ago if I was a fan of country music, my answer would have been a quick, “No. Not my cup of tea. This rock n roll chick listening to country music? Unheard of!” That all changed one Read more
Monday Night Mettle Crown of Earth at The Nail, Ardmore, PA by Stu O’Connor A full moon hung in the lazy summer twilight sky, which seemed an auspicious sign for visiting the lair of Philly-area heavy metal enclave, The Nail. First impressions of the event—there were three bands on the bill this Monday night—seemed to Read more
Slipping Away in South Philly The Rolling Stones, 23 July 2019 Lincoln Financial Field by Stu O’Connor The first time I saw the Rolling Stones was during their fabled Exile on Main Street tour in 1972. Chalk it up to urban legend or rock folklore, but a rumor circulated that a guy saw guitarist Mick Read more
How can we connect to this national mythology in the first part of the 21st century, where the once mighty rails appear to be an anachronistic, yet still-potent vehicle for moving freight from place to place? In the pursuit of a great idea, two fine musicians boarded a passenger train in Chicago in 2016 and rode those mythic American rails all the way to L. A. The result is the wonderful disc recorded by Billy Bragg and Joe Henry, entitled Shine a Light: Field Recordings From the Great American Railroad. Bragg, who is British, seems to understand the American psyche far better than most Americans. The evidence is in both his work here and with Wilco on the Mermaid Avenue series, where many unknown Woody Guthrie lyrics were put to music, a project which yielded three fine albums. Read more
