When you hear the words Black Friday, horrific images might float around in your head. Crazed parents trying to find that new hot toy for their spoiled kids, people camped outside of Walmart for hours before the doors open and retail workers praying for their sanity while they deal with droves of customers until their shift […]
Compared to many of my fellow music writers who toil daily in the literary trenches, I’m still a relative newbie, having only been at this just shy of a decade. In that time, I’ve received hundreds of compact discs, many of which today enjoy new life re-purposed as beer coasters. But this week, in an […]
Wynton Marsalis is arguably the most important musician of his generation. A nine-time Grammy award winning trumpet virtuoso, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, master educator, impassioned arts advocate and humanitarian, Marsalis has been at the forefront of the global music scene for more than 30 years. On Friday, December 4, 2015, at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, FirstWorks […]
Big Grams – “Lights On” I love this song, should be a radio hit. Expectations were pretty high for this Phantogram & Big Boi collaboration, but the album didn’t quite live up to the hope given the range of the two talents. But this song is the exception. “Lights On” sounds more like a Phantogram […]
With the holiday season right around the corner, fewer shows are popping up around PVD. The end of November, however, has some good shows on hand. If you missed the last-minute H20 and Angel Dust show at Dusk, you can catch them playing at The Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 19. Meanwhile, Atomic […]
Rome is known for a lot of things — the Colosseum, the Italian Renaissance and the city’s numerous statues and monuments. Who’d have thought that a place like Rome would also be home to a badass punk scene? Calling The Eternal City home, Lags have a sound reminiscent of Fugazi and At The Drive-In and […]
Gavage – Self-Titled (75orLess Records and Port of Providence Records) A couple of years ago, my friend Mike Kelly recommended checking out Gavage. I took notice mostly because in the 20-plus years of our friendship I only recall him turning on to one other band. It evolved into Kilgore and went on to become local […]
Okee dokee folks … Every year it seems that I have to adopt my Ebenezer persona earlier and earlier. I don’t do Christmas. I haven’t for almost 30 years. It is hard for most to understand this, but I am not religious and I am not one for pomp. When Christmas music and decorations are […]
What does a musician have to do to be considered prolific in 2015? Is it doing a never-ending amount of session work in the studio? Putting out a countless number of albums? Maybe Ty Segall has the answer to that question. Along with a successful solo career, the Los Angeles garage punk wunderkind has been […]
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” where we enter the minds of local musician types to find out exactly why they do what they do. In this episode I present to you a Providence icon of multiples genres, an activist on many levels and a protector of […]