“does any1 know a psychiatrist in Dublin or wicklow who could urgently see my [sic] today please?… Im really un-well…and in danger….I desperately need to get back on meds today” —Tweets by Sinead O’Connor 1) Writer Touré is more an agent of entropy than a journalist or critic, so it’s fitting that the best, really … Read more

I owe Bobby Bland a real debt of gratitude. Not just for the time he always graciously gave me (Bobby was the definition of “gracious”), particularly when I was working on the profile of him that appeared in Lost Highway. Not just for the music he gave the world, which, like Sam Cooke’s, was an … Read more

You can hear L.C. Cooke get into a familial groove on recordings his brother Sam produced for him back in the 60s. Those recordings were archived after Sam died, but they were finally released this summer. Decades down the line, L.C.’s collaboration with his brother still sounds like Friday night. My favorite cut is “Put … Read more

Get On Up, the James Brown bio-pic, has moved your editor to re-up on First‘s 2007 tribute to JB. Get On Up‘s love-is-strange treatment of JB circles around the irreducible nuttiness of “the hardest working man in show business” even as it limns the maddening social continuum in which he pursued soul power. The Brits … Read more

To get the preliminaries out of the way, at Bob Dylan’s third of three concerts at the Oakland Paramount, first, the band – Bob (piano and harmonica), Tony Garnier (bass), Donnie Herron (banjo, viola, violin, mandolin, pedal and lap steel), Stu Kimball (rhythm guitar), and especially, given the way the sound mix reached these ears, … Read more