G. Love’s hip-hop-blues keeps artist moving forward | Chron.com -…
The News Review:
- G. Love’s hip-hop-blues keeps artist moving forward | Chron.com -…
- Mark Erelli grapples with topical issues; plays Asheville and Decatur
- Billy Idol: Charmed Life : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone
G. Love’s hip-hop-blues keeps artist moving forward | Chron.com -…
Houston Chronicle – Feb 20, 2008
Touring as the front man of G. Love & Special Sauce in support of their 2006 album Lemonade G. Love’s smooth sound has been a mainstay on the music-festival circuit for years. Although it is easy to draw parallels between him and fellow modern folk artists Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews G. Love’s sound remains his own. “My style is called the hip-hop blues” he said. “All the time I was jamming the blues in my room I was jamming hip-hop with my boys… Love’s sound remains his own. “My style is called the hip-hop blues” he said. “All the time I was jamming the blues in my room I was jamming hip-hop with my boys. Eventually when I was an 18-year-old street performer I started rapping the lyrics from Paid in Full by Eric B and Rakim over a shucking blues rhythm. That was my musical epiphany. Influenced by artists ranging from Neil Young and John Hammond to Run-D.
Mark Erelli grapples with topical issues; plays Asheville and Decatur
Anderson Independent Mail – Anderson Independent Mail (subscription) – Feb 20, 2008
Russell Hall: What inspired you to take up the guitar and become a songwriter?Mark Erelli: The big moment was when I heard Chris Smither. It was just part of a radio interview with him on a Boston radio station but I was floored. At the time I was really into blues music and I was starting to get into folk and suddenly here was the link between the two. Afterwards I found his “Another Way to Find You” album in a used CD store in the Joni Mitchell section totally misfiled. To this day it’s one of my most cherished albums. RH: You had a relatively carefree happy childhood. What are your thoughts about the theory that in order to play blues or country music you have to have led a hard life?ME: Hardships are all relative.
Billy Idol: Charmed Life : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone – Feb 20, 2008
Without denying that for many the thrill of living has a lot to do with risking their lives Idol opens himself up to the counterbalancing emotions of love mercy and humility and in doing so explores new dimensions in his character and his work. In two of Charmed Life’s most potent and revealing numbers “Prodigal Blues” and “Mark of Caine” Idol draws from biblical stories to uncover lessons or work through his paradoxes. “Prodigal Blues” is the album’s first change-up coming as it does after “The Loveless” and “Pumping on Steel” a pair of blustery hypercharged rockers in the Rebel Yell mold. The latter two tracks are deliciously edgy lustfully walking on the wild side in an adrenaline rush of surging crypto-metal guitar and bellowing vocals… ” The music is delicate; Idol’s voice is pensive stripped of its gravelly swagger. With its classic sense of hard-soft dynamics and its slow deliberate buildup from aspiration and struggle to transcendence – a structure that recalls both “Dream n” and “Stairway to Heaven” – “Prodigal Blues” could well become a rock standard. The other allusion to the Bible occurs in “Mark of Caine” the album’s most amazing song in which the battle between the will to love and the compulsion to self-destruct comes into boldest relief. Jazzy clear-toned arpeggios from guitarist Mark Younger-Smith give way to fulminating power chords and dissonant intervals create an acidic uneasy air as Idol faces his demons.
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