February 2009

***As a disclaimer, I’m not of the Christian faith, so any portion of this that is inaccurate is purely accidental and shouldn’t be considered an affront to ya’ll.

Handel’s Messiah is probably one of the most famous and easily recognizable classical compositions ever performed – trust me, you know the “Hallelujah” chorus. Handel’s work, written in 1741 and first performed the following spring in Dublin, recounts the life of Jesus. It’s parsed into three sections, the first detailing the Christmas story, section two recounts the Passion and the third part is reserved for John the Revelator. Read more

It’s odd that some genres that have seen their hey-day come and go still maintain a rather vibrant, yet ignored scene. The height of RnB could be figured to be anywhere between the ‘50s and the early ‘70s. Bands claiming an RnB lineage by the later half of that time frame were occasionally known to just be disco bands aping a tag to get them over – not that anyone can blame them, but…

Current RnB sits closer to pop ballads with some beautiful woman (or man, I suppose) being pushed out in front of some hired guns to perform a song that a writer in a tiny office somewhere put on paper. Even with such travesties occurring daily, there are proponents of the genre to try and push back against some of the nonsense. Read more

I’m gonna go ahead and offer a challenge. Name a singer from the Bahamas. I know that personally, I can name two, but only two. One of those folks is Exuma. In his obscurity rests a part of his seemingly mystical personage. In reality, though, he was just a man. But a man that had the ability to summon some other worldly spirits during his performances. Read more

Being predicated upon the notion that the Pretty Things represented as many things about the Brit rock explosion as anyone, the band embodies as much as any other group the beginnings of what would become British punk a decade later. As mentioned in nearly every write up of the band, Dick Taylor, the band’s guitarist, briefly played with an early line up of the Rolling Stones. But even if that nugget of information wasn’t actually true, the Pretty Things were a revved up blues band in a way that the Stones couldn’t ever achieve. The Pretty Things just didn’t have their song craft down pat. Read more