Author Archive
Alternate Take: New Progressive Rockers Starless and Bible Black
March 30th, 2010
Read David Fricke on King Crimson here: Alternate Take: King Crimson’s Royal Remix Treatment.
Starless and Bible Black take their name from a 1974 Crimson album. But this British quintet cast their own haunting net on their second album, Shape of the Shape (Locust), from smoky electronics and spectral-country guitar to English acid folk. Singer Hélène Gautier channels Sandy Denny as a Raymond Chandler femme fatale in “Radio Blues” and hovers through “Country Heir” like a ...
Alternate Take: King Crimson’s Royal Remix Treatment
March 29th, 2010
When Steven Wilson of the English band Porcupine Tree, a lifelong King Crimson fan, began work on reissues of Crimson’s 10 1969-74 and ‘81-84 studio albums — remixing for CD and DVD-audio, excavating outtakes — one of the first he wanted to tackle was 1970’s Lizard, a notoriously turbulent merger of art rock and modern jazz. Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp was shocked. “His eyebrows went up,” Wilson says. “He said, ‘Really? That’s the least-popular album.’ ...
Alternate Take: Country Roots Reborn
March 16th, 2010
The Carolina Chocolate Drops — banjo player Dom Flemons and fiddlers Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson (they all sing and juggle guitar, Autoharp and percussion) — reignite a vintage outsider music: the early-20th-century jump and lamentation of black country string bands from North Carolina’s Piedmont region. The Drops’ marvelous new record has a proud and true title, Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch), and features exuberant treatments of antique party favors like “Cornbread and Butterbeans” and “Papa” ...
Allman Brothers Band Refresh Classics With New Jams in NYC
March 15th, 2010
The weather was lousy — cold, wet and windy — and the location was new, about a dozen subway stops north. But the Allman Brothers Band brought the springtime — sunshine, peaches and robust harmony guitars — to New York, as they have virtually every March since 1989, on the second night of their 2010 residency at the United Palace Theater in Harlem on Friday.
Watch Warren Haynes rock an acoustic set and get the lowdown ...
Fricke’s Picks: The Kristofferson Vaults
March 15th, 2010
Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
In her new memoir, Just Kids, Patti Smith tells of a night in New York when she saw Kris Kristofferson — an Oxford-educated, ex-Army songwriter struggling to make it in Nashville — sing his tune “Me and Bobby McGee” for Janis Joplin, who soon recorded it. His own first take on Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72 (Light in the Attic) starts out as Smith surely ...
Fricke’s Picks: The Greatest Rock Concert Movie Ever Made
March 2nd, 2010
All that is dull and predictable in modern rock-show films — caffeinated-jitter edits, hagiographic close-ups, the cheesy melodrama backstage — can be traced to this fact: The best example of how to do it right, The T.A.M.I. Show — a 12-act revue topped by James Brown and the Rolling Stones, shot live in Los Angeles with a delirious audience on October 29th, 1964 — has been officially unavailable, in its entirety, for more than four ...
Jeff Beck on His Legendary Unreleased 1970 Motown Album
February 25th, 2010
Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty In Rolling Stone’s new issue, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton sit down for the first time to discuss old rivalries, blues heroes and the secrets of their craft. Here’s more from David Fricke’s conversation with Beck: the guitarist on the legendary, unreleased album he cut at Detroit’s Motown studios in 1970.
Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all time?
Why did you go ...
Jeff Beck on New LP “Emotion & Commotion” and Recording the Perfect Guitar Solo
February 24th, 2010
Photo:Mazur/WireImage
In Rolling Stone’s new issue, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton sit down for the first time to discuss old rivalries, blues heroes and the secrets of their craft. Here’s more from David Fricke’s conversation with Beck: the guitarist on the orchestral twist on his next album Emotion & Commotion and the art of capturing the perfect guitar solo.
Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all ...
Eric Clapton On Revisiting “Layla,” Sobriety and Reflecting on His Life
February 22nd, 2010
Photo: Mazur/WireImageIn Rolling Stone’s new issue, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton sit down for the first time to discuss old rivalries, blues heroes and the secrets of their craft. Here’s more from David Fricke’s conversation with Clapton: the guitarist on revisiting the Layla album, his sober years and documenting his life.
Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all time?
What did you get out of returning to ...
Eric Clapton On Jeff Beck’s Singing and Having An Old Man’s Voice
February 19th, 2010
Photograph by Sam Jones In Rolling Stone’s new issue, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton sit down for the first time to discuss old rivalries, blues heroes and the secrets of their craft. Here’s more from David Fricke’s conversation with Clapton: the guitarist on Jeff Beck’s vocals and learning to love his own “old man voice.”
Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all time?
How do ...