Artist:
Review:
Bono deserves props for global stumping on Africa’s behalf. So it’s
good that this tribute is a rootsy thank-you, not a world-music
cheesefest. Guinea’s Ba Cissoko reinvents “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
with kora-harp ripples, guitarist Vieux Farka Touré turns
“Bullet the Blue Sky” into a dusty Malian blues, and Cheikh
Lô makes “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” into […]

Artist:
Review:
Bono deserves props for global stumping on Africa’s behalf. So it’s
good that this tribute is a rootsy thank-you, not a world-music
cheesefest. Guinea’s Ba Cissoko reinvents “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
with kora-harp ripples, guitarist Vieux Farka Touré turns
“Bullet the Blue Sky” into a dusty Malian blues, and Cheikh
Lô makes “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” into […]

Artist:
Review:
The interplay of music and race in the Sixties is usually perceived
as a one-way street — white musicians drawing on (or, worse,
ripping off) the songs and styles of black artists. Stax Does
the Beatles demonstrates that the influence occasionally ran
in the other direction, to delightful effect.
A hotbed of funk intensity, the Memphis-based Stax label housed
a stable […]

Artist:
Review:
In Detroit rock, 1969 was the year of the Stooges’ wild lust and
the MC5’s fuck-you politics. But Motown’s Berry Gordy was ready for
the Seventies. In October, he issued the Jackson 5’s Motown debut,
“I Want You Back.” Its mix of Detroit punch and L.A. glitz sealed
the shift in Gordy’s ambitions from boss of a Midwest singles
factory […]

Artist:
Review:
Getting the entire Wu-Tang Clan together seems as tough a challenge
as acing the SATs or making Thom Yorke laugh. So it’s remarkable
enough that the new Wu-Tang album — the Staten Island crew’s
first in six years — actually exists. What’s more, 8
Diagrams is better than most would have expected: a terrific
mix of classic Clan grime and […]

Artist:
Review:
Venture into a city to record unsigned bands, and what you get is a
whole lot of nothing in no particular order. Don’t assume this one
is different because the talent scout is PiL drummer Martin Atkins
— who is also, after all, Pigface major-domo Martin Atkins.
The reason is the city: Beijing, 15 million strong, a hub of […]

Artist:
Review:
Comprising the Philadelphia-spawned lead singers of the three
foremost bogustto groups of late-period soul –the Stylistics?
Russell Thompkins Jr., Blue Magic?s Ted Mills and the Delfonics?
William Hart –the 3 Tenors of Soul are more than a cheeky gimmick.
Conceived and produced by Bobby Eli, a guitarist in the definitive
Philly-sound studio band MFSB, they?re an oldies act with a […]