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The evening of January 8 I went to see 47 Soul, from Jordan and Palestine at the Sinclair. The play a type of music called Shamstep, a genre of music created from a base of traditional dabke rhythms mixed with … Continue reading
Last Wednesday I was thrilled to finally get a Verified Fan code to purchase tickets for Springsteen on Broadway. I’ve been a Springsteen fan since about the 8th grade, and I was so excited about this series when it was announced, and I registered for the Verified Fan service as soon as I could. This was the third round of ticketing for the extended Broadway run, but the first time I’d gotten the coveted invitation to buy tickets. I was in the third group allowed to purchase tickets starting at noon.
I was in a meeting I couldn’t get out of that precise moment, but within 15 minutes I was online and trying to get into the site. New York is only 3.5 hours from here, and I have a huge amount of unused vacation time, so I was ready to go any day. I started with my birthday, October 17, looking for tickets for myself and a friend. There were no tickets, so I began trying other dates, especially Wednesdays and Thursdays thinking it might be easier to get tickets for those than Friday or Saturday. Continue reading
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I heard a story about Parker Millsap on NPR a month or two ago. It was a “Songs We Love” segment focusing on “Heaven Sent” in advance of the release of the new album on which it appears. The interview was … Continue reading
Prince at Coachella.
It was my best friend from the neighborhood who first introduced me to Prince. Hanging out at his house one day, he played one of the earliest albums, either Controversy of the self-titled debut album. At that time, I was a good Catholic school boy trying to fit in, and Prince was kind of out there for me, with his erotic lyrics and a reputation for performing in underwear. I don’t remember my reaction as I listened to the songs with my friend, but my determination not to like this man’s music did not last long. Those songs stuck with me, echoing in my head.
Prince kept churning out great music, scoring bigger and bigger sales. Soon enough, even the suburban prep-school kids whose opinions I was too concerned about, were also listening. It would be hard Continue reading
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I was planning to attend a conference in Denver toward the end of October when I learned that Ryan Bingham would be playing the Ogden Theater on November 25. I quickly scooped up tickets. I also scooped up tickets for … Continue reading
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The Boston Calling Festival is, in my humble opinion, the best annual music festival in this area, since the Life is Good Festival ended at least. City Hall Plaza is a great setting, the music is an nice mix of … Continue reading
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On September 18 I went to a concert by Stromae, the Belgian rapper and singer/songwriter at the House of Blues in Boston. Stromae is a consummate performer, drawing on a variety of musical influences to put on an amazing show. … Continue reading
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Hayes Carll, whose song “Hard Out Here” inspired the title of this site, played a great show at Club Passim, one of my favorite venues in the area, on July 16. The sold out show was his second in the … Continue reading
The Adam Ezra Group
The Adam Ezra Group is celebrating the release of Volume 2 of the Better than Bootleg series with a show at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA on January 2. Like its predecessor, Better than Bootleg, Vol 2 is a live recording, but while all the songs on Volume 1 came from one single performance, the recordings on this collection are taken from different shows. (Cl
In an interview conducted on December 13, Adam Ezra explained that it is not a live album” in the usual sense, documenting a single concert from beginning to end. Rather the collection represents the band’s ongoing experiments at finding the best way to engineer recordings that “translate the energy from our live shows into a recording.” I quite like the approach taken to this collection. A live recording of a show on a single night is documentation of that specific night’s, but this approach feels more representative of the band’s live shows in general. It mixes things up. The tracks include performances of some of the bands best known songs such as “Burn Brightly” and “Steal Your Daughter,” one cover of James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James,” as well as some of the newest songs in the band’s repertoire. (Click here to jump to a video of “Hippy Girl,” another song from the album.) Continue reading
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It’s no secret I think Ryan Bingham is one of the most exciting artists touring today. I said as much 4 years ago in a post on my Random Thoughts and Ideas blog, and many of you agreed. That post was … Continue reading