The 10 Worst Rock Star Plane Crashes

What is it about famous musicians that makes them believe it’d be a swell idea to charter a small, unreliable aircraft through inclement weather? Music history is quite literally littered with the tragic wreckage of such ill-fated journeys. Blender.com examines the 10 worst rock & roll air disasters and the sometimes dubious decisions that led to them.

Also fun to read on the same site, The 50 Most Awesomely Dead Rock Stars.

Remembering Junior Wells

December 9, 1934 – January 15, 1998

Click image for larger view.

Has it really been nine years since Junior died? It seems like only yesterday that he was blowing his harp at the Back Room in Delray Beach on New Year's Eve.

More on Junior from a previous post.

The World's Best Congueros

While he was alive, Miguel 'Angá' Díaz, a Grammy-winning Cuban percussionist, played five congas with unparalleled brilliance and mastery. He died unexpectedly last August, in Spain, at the age of 45. What a loss!

Here he is soloing with Irakere in 1994.



The reigning King of the Conga now is Giovanni Hidalgo. Check out this mindboggling solo from the Festival Jazz Plaza 2000, in Havana, Cuba.



Related links:
Ray Barretto
Salsa Night
Jammin'

Eric Johnson - Manhattan (G3 Live)

Eric Johnson is a guitarist's guitarist from Austin, Texas, who fuses a multitude of musical styles with a mind-boggling technical proficiency and a cool, smooth delivery. Perfection.

R.I.P. Billy Preston

Billy Preston, who played keyboards for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others, died today in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Watch his phenomenal performance from 1971 on this video.

"Concert For Bangladesh" presented by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar for relief and aid to the starving people of Bangladesh. A list of people on stage for this concert is remarkable. George Harrison, Ringo Star (former Beatles), Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Klaus Voorman, Carl Radle, Don Preston, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis, Bad Finger...and none of them took a penny. Madison Square Garden 1971 - Billy Preston - "That's The Way God Planned It". Preston's performance, energy and love of the reason he was there, made this perhaps one of his best Live performances ever.

"Guardians of the Groove"

"Guardians of the Groove" percussionist2
Originally uploaded by offshore.

Spotted this cool pic of a conguero on Flickr, from offshore's collection.

How Cute Is She?

YouTube is a gold mine for videos. You never know what you'll find. Check out this little future American Idol.

Ray Barretto (1929 -2006)

The world of music lost one of its greats today. Ray Barretto died today in a New Jersey hospital. He had had two heart surgeries within the last month. For nearly 40 years, conguero and bandleader Ray Barretto was one of the leading forces in Latin jazz. In 1957 he replaced Mongo Santamaria in Tito Puente's band and performed with them for four years. He performed and recorded with many jazz greats, such as Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley , Freddie Hubbard, Cal Tjader, Dizzy Gillespie, and others.

This makes me sad.

Pandora

This is pretty cool. It's a music player that allows you to create music stations by typing in the name of a favorite artist or song. The music data base is scanned for similar music, based on rhythmic patterns, orchestration, instrumentation, etc. Pandora will act as your personal DJ and play the style of music you like. In order to refine what your station plays, you can select the tunes you like and eliminate the ones that don't fit your taste.

So far I've tried it with blues and Latin jazz, and it works well with those. Salsa was a bust, though. They just don't have much of it in their selection. Sometimes you'll hear an artist you don't know, so it's a way of expanding your list of favorites.

Pandora is an outgrowth of the Music Genome Project.

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

You can't beat the price. Pandora is free.

Bo and Family

Credit: Tamara Reynolds

You'd have to be living in another country to not know who Bo Bice is. For the two of you who read this blog :D , Bo, an Alabama native, was the runner-up on the last season of American Idol. He seems to be a super nice guy. Southern rock is his thing, but he can sing ballads too, and he has perfect pitch. I LOVE it that a talented musician who spent years toiling away in honky tonks finally made it big.

Love the doggie pacifier!

His debut album, The Real Thing, will hit stores on Dec. 13.

75 Bands

There are supposed to be 75 bands suggested by this picture. There are actually more. Click here for a larger view.

All of the following bands are represented. If you want to try it yourself first, don't peek!









Alice in Chains, B52’s, Animals, Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Black Flag, Black Crowes, Blind Melon, Blondie, Blues Brothers, Blur, Byrds, Cake, Cars, Cornershop, Cowboy Junkies, Cranberries, Crowded house, Cypress Hill, Dead Kennedy’s, Deep Purple, Dinosaur Jr., Doors, Eagles, Eels, Eminem, Fish, Garbage, Gorillaz, Great White, Greenday, Guns ’n Roses, Hole, Iron Maiden, Jewel, Kiss, Korn, Led zeppelin, Living Colour, Lemonheads, Madonna, Manic Street Preachers, Matchbox 20, MC Hammer, Men at Work, Monkeys, New Kids on the Block, Nine Inch Nails, Pet Shop Boys, Pink, Pink Fairies, Police, Postal Service, Postman, Prince, Queen, Radiohead, Ratt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rolling Stones, Roots, Scissor Sisters, Scorpions, Seal, Sex Pistols, Shadows, Silverspoon, Simply Red, Smashing Pumpkins, Spoon, Strokes, Subway Sect, Sugarplum Fairies, Talking Heads, Tatu, The Go-go's, Twisted Sister, U2, Yellowman, Wings, White Stripes, Whitesnake, White Zombie

Salsa Night!

Eeeepaaa!! Last Saturday we found a neat little place in Delray Beach with a live salsa band. It's a restaurant called Brisa Atlántica, off East Atlantic, in what used to be a little house. The place was packed to the gills, but we managed to find a table. There are tables outside too. All were filled and people milled around inside and out, windows and doors open, music wafting into the humid night air. No air conditioning! Fortunately, the nights are starting to get a little cooler, but it's still balmy and very South Florida warm.

The musicians were crammed into a little corner, just inside the entrance. I don't know how they fit all their equipment and themselves in that little space, with any elbow room to play. In the picture above you can see the conguero, the timbalero and the sax player/singer. Out of view are the pianist and the female singer. They were excellent! Wow! No real dance floor, just a walk space that everyone scrunched into to cha cha and mambo. You can see how warm it was from the sax player's shirt. It looks like someone poured water on him.

The lovely Latina in the picture below just stood out of the crowd with her beauty. Ah, to be that young and pretty!



If you want to listen to the best salsa on the planet, check out Alma del Barrio on KXLU in Los Angeles. It's on from 9:00AM til 9:00PM EST every weekend. Click on Listen Live and enjoy!

And if you're in the West Palm Beach area next weekend, be sure to check out the Pachanga LatinFest downtown at the Meyer Amphitheater. The fabuloso Tito Nieves is the headliner on Saturday night.

Janis Joplin 1943-1970

35 years ago today Janis Joplin's bright flame burned out. Only 27-years-old, she died of a heroin overdose in a Los Angeles motel room. I can still remember where I was when I heard the news and how sad it made me.

Another Victim of Hurricane Katrina

AP photo

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, singer, guitarist and fiddle player, died Saturday in Orange, TX. He got out in time to escape the wrath of Katrina, but he was devastated to learn that his home in Slidell, LA, was destroyed. In ill health this past year, he probably died of a broken heart.

I saw him locally a couple of times at the old Back Room in Delray Beach, FL. He was a cranky old bird. He didn't like to be called a bluesman, because he didn't limit himself to blues, but he sure as heck could play them.

"Gatemouth" made a lot of feet dance in his long career. May he boogie in Heaven.

Junior Wells

December 9, 1934 – January 15, 1998
Click image for larger view.

Junior Wells was one of the legends of Chicago Blues and the first of the Chicago bluesmen to record an album: "Hoodoo Man", with Delmark, in 1965, which immediately became a landmark recording.

This photo was taken at the Musicians' Exchange, in Delray Beach FL, in May of 1997. It was one of his last performances. He was being treated for lymphoma when he went into cardiac arrest in September, 1997, and fell into a coma from which he never awoke. He died on January 15, 1998. I felt devastated when I heard the news.

Wells' "Come on in This House", recorded in 1996, won the W.C. Handy Blues Award for traditional blues album. The record also was nominated for a traditional blues Grammy. For me, it is one of the best blues albums of all time. He is accompanied by some of the best blues guitarists around: Corey Harris, Alvin "Youngblood" Hart, Sonny Landreth, John Mooney, Derek Trucks, Tab Benoit Bob Margolin, and each one is in top form. Sonny blows me away on "Give Me One Reason" and "Why Are People Like That?".

This photo of Junior was taken by Julio Mateus, who has a whole portfolio of blues portraits taken in concert. He has so many killer shots, all in black and white, some of which have appeared on CD covers and in magazine articles. Unfortunately, he doesn't yet have a Web site or blog, but I'm hoping that will happen soon.

Julio is also a master black and white printer and has been for 25 years. He makes his own prints, of course. The photo above is not a digital print, nor is it a copy of another print. It's a custom silver print made from the original negative. Junior's signature at the bottom is a reproduction of the original signature on the print he signed (in May of 1997) and is indistinguishable from the original. The overall size of the paper is 11" x 14". The image size is 6" x 9".

If anyone is interested in buying one of Julio's blues prints, please email me at es45m-julio@yahoo.com for prices and info and a list of other blues artists that he's photographed.

Do They Even Have A Clue?

Slate has an article about incongruous song choices that advertisers use for TV ads. Several of the ones that bug me are listed, although I don't have cable and don't watch much TV, so I'm unfamiliar with most of them.

"I've always wondered about Janis Joplin's 'Mercedes Benz,' which I always interpreted as a song critical of capitalism and materialism through the tragedy of poor people asking God in despair for the ultimate upper class status symbol which somehow will erase the pain of poverty. When Daimler started using it to sell Benzes, I felt awful. I still do. Joplin did drive a Porsche (which makes the next lyric—'My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends'—a possible self-criticism). Then again, she probably vomited in it."

There's also an audio link for an NPR broadcast on the subject.

Reflejo Medieval

I'm mesmerized by medieval Spanish music, so I was excited to find One Soul Records Medieval Music Mixer. All the sounds, voice and instruments, are extracted from Alexandra Montana's recording of medieval Spanish cantigas, called Reflejo Medieval.

Click on the stones to bring up sounds. Click again to silence them. Make your own combinations of voice, percussion, flute, nature sounds and other instruments.

A quick search of Amazon.com and Tower Records did not find this CD, but it can be ordered from One Soul Records. You can also hear samples from the 15 tracks on the CD there. Haunting!

Maria Muldaur

I saw Maria at the Bamboo Room in Lake Worth, FL, last night. What a treat! She was with her band Bluesiana, which was just guitar, drums and keyboards. The keyboardist played the bass line too. Just fantastic, every song in both sets. She ranged from roots blues to gospel to jazz to R&B and soul to Loosiana cajun swamp in her loose and sexy, bluesy style. She's such a mix of influences and uses all of them well.

Her Meet Me At Midnite, from 1994, is the most-played CD in my entire collection. Every song is killer, and the musicians are fantastic.

Jammin'

Just listening to friends jammin' in a hole-in-the-wall bar. Something a blueberry living in a red state has to do for her sanity. That's Angel Pagán on the congas, Renée Solis on guitar and vocals, and Troy Solis on sax.

"What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?"--W.C. Fields