This week marks the 25th anniversary of the International Blues Challenge, sponsored by the Blues Foundation, to be held in Memphis from February 4th-7th, 2009. Musicians compete in two categories...
There are several difficulties in trying to figure out a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ride. The biggest of them is the fact that so many people love the book, the radio show, the movie, the television show, or one of the forms of it so much that they might have problems with any new interruption. The other challenge is that of creating a fun “ride” that has the audience sit stationary watching everything unfold on a screen. It’s a different type of medium than I used last time out with The Sword in the Stone ride, but, it’s still fascinating. Sunday, May 17: 8:00 - 9:00PM Nature - “Victoria Falls.” I don’t know about you, but I just don’t think it’s right that Nature is doing an entire episode on a poor woman falling down. Sure, she didn’t have that little pendant
The International Blues Challenge will be held in Memphis next weekend (more about that tomorrow), so if you're in the Bluff City on Friday, February 6th, 2009 be sure to...
Not perfect but pretty darn close.
Before there was Christine McVie and before Fleetwood Mac became international superstars there was Christine Perfect. Christine Perfect would rise to fame to England as the keyboardist/vocalist for the rock/blues group Chicken Shack. She would be honored as English female vocalist of the year two times and leave the band in 1969. By 1970 she...
But tonight I got to thinking, who really is the best modern day rock band out there? Coldplay? White Stripes? Kings of Leon?
I mean let's face it, we really haven't got that many really great candidates waiting in the wings to assume the throne right now. There certainly isn't any Beatles, Stones, or Who standing in waiting and ready to step up to the plate -- to say nothing of a future Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.
As far as songwriters go, I likewise can't see the next Dylan, Springsteen, Brian Wilson, or Neil Young anywhere out there on the horizon -- as much as I would really like to. I mean, I like Conor Oberst as much as the next guy, but honestly speaking I just don't see him filling the shoes of Bob or Bruce.
These are different times than the sixties or the seventies were, and I understand that. Believe me, I do.
Casual fans may find their appreciation of the blues deepened through these biographical snapshots of Delta blues musicians.
The history of American music is shot through with paradox and strange synergies. In no form is this more true than in American blues music. Blues itself is a fusion of black Gospel, Scots-Irish music from the mountains of Appalachia, field-hollers and work songs, and something else -- something indefinable -- that made it unique. The musicians who...
