Mason
Proper's debut album, There Is
a Moth in Your Chest, is
utterly scattershot. It's a 12-course meal for which there appears
to have been little thought put into the progression or the entirety.
It is in that way a mess. What's striking is that almost all the tracks, separately, feel close to perfect.
Like many noted directors of opera, Bill Fabris has a résumé that boasts a number of heavyweight titles, among them Bizet's Carmen, Puccini's Tosca, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, which Fabris stage-directs - with Ron May music-directing - for Opera Quad Cities on January 18 and 20.
The
title of Pieta Brown's new record, Remember
the Sun, evokes a seemingly
endless darkness without sounding hopeless, and the opening track,
"Innocent Blue," does, too. On a bed of warm keyboards, she
sings: "Iron bars with no irony / One is bound so none get free /
In the innocent blue ... the innocent blue."
Kim
Wiseman & Mark A. Johnson, Visiting
Old Friends at Christmas
If your Mondays are anything like ours here at the River Cities' Reader, they're probably not the cheeriest days of the week. But I think I can speak for everyone here in saying that the next couple of 'em might not be so bad. Work on Monday, December 24, and then - blam! Day off, baby! Work on Monday, December 31, and then - blam! Really lethargic and cranky day off, baby!
The
Chicago Afrobeat Project could not have a more plainly descriptive
name, yet the band's new CD transcends the ordinary. The group,
which returns to the Quad Cities with a show on Friday at the
Redstone Room, does its fair share of aimless jamming - all
pleasant - but on several occasions it reaches highs that lift up
the whole endeavor.
It's
1927, the jazz age, with poet Carl Sandburg toting a funny little
guitar and strumming carelessly to the old tunes: "Whisky Johnny,"
"Where O Where Is Old Elijah?" The Galesburger/Chicagoan
published his wildly popular American
Song Bag with 280 songs
from sailors, cowboys, railroad hands, pioneers, prisoners, and
preachers. Sandburg, motivated by
The People, Yes, finds
democratic merit in these common songs.
In every concert performed by Rockapella, the a cappella quintet that first garnered fame with its appearances (and title-song crooning) on PBS's long-running children's game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a segment is devoted to a solo by the group's vocal percussionist, Jeff Thacher.
When
you look at publicity photos of the band on its Web site and
elsewhere, stereotypes about hippies come to mind. There are rural
settings, and some long hair, and some naughty bits - yes, a pair
of breasts, pubic hair, and even a penis or two.
