Category: Music Review
Ingrid Karklins: A Passion to Race the Sky
A trip across Australia with Midnight Oil and Yothu Yindi in a Holden Gemini leads to passionate encounters with love and the extraordinary passion and beauty of Ingrid Karklins’ music.
The Philosopher Kings all dressed up for San Francisco, bringing their charms
It was the summer of 1995. I was back from extended travels through Australia and SE Asia, living in a Deep Cove cabin with the gentle high-tide waves lapping on the rocks just 20 feet below me while I busily built a website (a blog long before the name became popularised) from the travelogue and…
Sheryl Crow is strong enough to be my man…
Sheryl Crow, I don’t know, she’s got something going on, and has been one of my muses at critical moments. She writes and sings like a broken angel, with equal measures of strength and vulnerability, passion and fear, hope and futility. Some of her music is exquisitely beautiful — notably just about anything from the…
A selection of music from the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
Sarah McLachlan, I’ve been told, has perfect pitch. Her performance at the opening ceremony was also pitch-perfect. She had me the very first time she flashed that smile of hers — bright as the sun, and open like a flower in full bloom. That may seem a superficial reason to for loving her as a…
Roberta Flack & Johnny Cash: The first time ever I heard your voice
I love covers. Have I said that before? It’s always a bit of a thrill when I find some beloved song masterfully covered by another artist. (See my post regarding Feist’s transcendant cover of Secret Heart.) What I also love are the emotional inflections each cover artist brings to a song. For example, eighteen renditions…
Who are they? A former supergroup at the Super Bowl with still a bit of super left.
I was never much of a The Who fan.. Sure, I enjoyed the songs I heard of theirs, but I’ve never bought an album, wouldn’t pick one out of someone else’s collection to play, and never would’ve bothered going to a concert…until some buddies at work in the late ’80s cajoled me into joining them…
Gabriella Cilmi: Lessons to be learned and feel a little safer
Gary (my blog partner when we began this blog together) says he’s having some trouble finding Australian music worthy of positive reviews, especially anything produced in the present or recent past. Hmmm… how about this young, little gem? Gabriella Cilmi (pronounced “chill me” — and she does give me chills) was all of 17 years…
Tijuana Cartel: dancing to the key of coast
Tijuana Cartel epitomises for me what locals of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast refer to as the Coast lifestyle. An easygoing presence that knows how to have a heckuva lot of fun, more than a little passion and a spiritual base from which all that energy exudes. TC features Paul George’s virtuouso classically latin-inflected acoustic guitar work…
I Can See Your House From Here. It’s made of Ice, and there’s a Camel parked outside.
I first heard this song on campus radio late one night in 1979 at Rochester Institute of Technology, where I was studying photography and living the Art House residence hall. In the next room — good buddy Steve “The Rockin’ Guru” Guy. It was my first year in school, my first year away from home,…
