The News Review:
- Fiona Boyes sings the Aussie blues
- Music Box: Blues revivial crowd reunites at Rams Head
- When the blues hit the city
- Editor Huntington News Network
- Joy division
Fiona Boyes sings the Aussie blues
Canada.com – Aug 25, 2007
While she has already sparked comparisons to Bonnie Raitt Rory Block and Memphis Minnie Boyes is clearly looking to carve out her own career niche. And in the few years that she’s been performing in North America it’s been working very successfully. Earlier this year her latest album the excellent high-energy Lucky 13 was nominated for contemporary blues album of the year in the Blues Music Awards (formerly W. Handy Awards the blues Grammys). She was the first Australian to be nominated in the 27-year history of the awards. Boyes grew up in a musical family hearing big band swing and jazz along with pop radio fare.
Music Box: Blues revivial crowd reunites at Rams Head
Maryland Gazette – Aug 25, 2007
This Chicago Blues Reunion – my first Pick of the Week – brings together the cr<0x00E8>me-de-la-cr<0x00E8>me of the (once) young crowd that inspired the 1960s blues revival. In their own right organist Barry Goldberg (Mitch Ryder Bob Dylan) and singer-guitarist Nick Gravenites (Paul Butterfield) went on to form the Electric Flag. Drummer Sam Lay played in the legendary Butterfield Blues Band and earlier on with Howlin’ Wolf. Harmonica ace Corky Siegel was a leader.
When the blues hit the city
nj.com – Aug 25, 2007
Were we able to walk into a 1920s plantation juke-joint or even a South Side Chicago club in the late ’40s it would feel so alien in some ways that it might as well be another planet. But the music would sound familiar. The blues — the music that descendants of African slaves laughed and cried to in the South and that their children took with them up North — is the common gene that now binds most American popular music from jazz and soul to rock and hip-hop. Here as part of a multi-part series on building a blues library the spotlight is on five influential artists who exemplify the urban strain of the blues from Bessie Smith to John Lee Hooker. Five more will come in a future installment. These recordings made from 1920s New York to 1970s Chicago spurred cultural sea changes.
Editor Huntington News Network
HNN Huntingtonnews.net – Aug 25, 2007
LaFleur’s encore performance and is followed at 1:15 by songwriter Clinton Collins winner of the 2005 New Song Festival for “We’re Watching Home & Garden”. His musical poetry is filled with the mystery fascination and stark beauty of his natural surroundings. Blends of rock country blues folk gospel and mountain music are creatively woven into a sound that retains the fingerprints of Mr. Collins’ own personality. With a relaxed yet passionate vocal style he offers a unique sampling of original songs about people and places that seem familiar and stories that resonate with his audience. Collins also won The Next Great West Virginia Song Contest with “The Appalachian Way” and has just released his latest CD” Creek Boy Blues” on Lost Cauz Records which is available through his website.
Joy division
The Australian – Aug 25, 2007
The argument is simple: video clips which are expensive to make and therefore astutely controlled and manipulated by a profit-conscious industry make musical mediocrity saleable. They are central to image creation and thus to the whole absurd celebrity typhoon that aggressively promotes a handful of superstars over more interesting original talent. For years this specific music lovers’ lament has been leaking into a culture-wide complaint about the adverse effect of music videos on attention spans race relations sexuality and almost every conceivable issue related to teenage delinquency. In the 1980s and ’90s the restless flickering imagery of MTV became virtually synonymous with attention deficit disorders. And the targeted bombardment of hormonally unbalanced teenage boys with a measured supply of bikini-clad babes aroused as much conservative ire as adolescent desire. But maybe it’s worth looking at the issue from another angle: from the point of view for instance of the art world. Video has been prominent in contemporary art since the ’70s… ) ne of the defining characteristics of the best music videos is a sense of humour. It’s been there from the beginning. Look at classics such as the clip accompanying Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues (actually an excerpt from D. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back). Dylan stands in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel in London and as the song unfolds heedlessly flips cards on which random lyrics are written. (The clip inspired the series of photographs called Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say that shot British artist Gillian Wearing to fame in 1992.