Live From the Detroit Jazz Festival 2014
The Detroit Jazz Festival has proven to be every bit as resilient and adaptable as the city it represents. Robert McCabe founded the festival in 1980 at a time when Detroit was in the midst of being a symbol of urban political dysfunction and decay. The city is emerging from those years of decline and […]
Stereotypes
Kev Marcus and Wil B can do more with two string instruments than what most of today’s artists can accomplish with an entire catalog. Soon after the pair met during high school in FL, Kev Marcus (Kevin Sylvester) and Wil B (Wilner Baptiste) combined their individual gifts into an energetically eclectic musical approach, grafting together influences […]
We The Generation (2015)
To be over the age of 35 or so and witness the resurgence of dance music and all the fashions and culture that characterized the 1990s, now presented with even more color, textures, and form-fitting clothing can be alternate between disquieting to curiously complimentary. High top fades, crazy large square glasses, and throbbing, repetitive […]
Love Song (album review)
With three decades of recording already on her resume, the fact that Love Song is only the fourth album release from Joyce Sims speaks to just how diffcult the music business can be for independent artists who choose to put songs and vocals ahead of image and trendiness. The Rochester, New York native made a […]
Souvenirs of Love (album review)
There is not a lot of what one would call “highbrow” happening in popular music these days. Every once in a while someone like jazz drummer/producer Brandon Williams or alternative soul outfit Moonchild will come along and deliver something you feel you should be dressed up in your finest and theatrically sipping top shelf […]
Tantalizingly Hot (reissue) (2015)
Stephanie Mills is an artist who could rightly wear the label of child prodigy. The native New Yorker won multiple Apollo Theater amateur night contest, and performed in the casts of two Broadway Musicals, Maggie Flynn (alongside Irene Cara), and her signature role in The Wiz, which brought her fame and an enduring part in […]
Live in Seattle (2015)
I had friends who didn’t feel, Wild Heart, Mindi Abiar’s 2014 album that featured her teaming with the likes of Gregg Allman, Trombone Shorty, Keb Mo and Booker T. Jones on 11 rock, country rock, blues and soul tracks. Abair, who has the ultimate musician’s pedigree, took me for a loop on Wild Heart because […]
Live In London 35th Anniversary Show
Considering the changes that have taken place in soul and funk music, Jean Paul “Bluey” Maunick and the vocalists and musicians of the group Incognito have plenty of reasons to celebrate their 35 years of making music. Incognito emerged during an era when self-contained bands were as much the rule as the solo vocalist, and […]
Cautionarytales
The band guiltypleasures takes the less is more approach to album making. Their 2009 project – the very good Lovestories – had 10 tracks, while the recently released Cautionarytales weighs in with at eight songs. That’s a track count that would be right at home in the vinyl era, and in keeping with their ethos […]
Last Diva on Earth, Episode 1: Planet Sexy (2015)
As founder and guiding force of the cutting-edge power-R&B band Klymaxx from the early to mid 1980s, drummer and vocalist Bernadette Cooper opened doors in contemporary soul and dance music for women both musically and lyrically. With a uniquely sassy, unmistakably assertive tone, her presence on kick-butt jams such as “Meeting in the Ladies’ Room,” […]
