The
fills.
That's why Charlie Baty started really playing the guitar. In the early 1970s, when he met singer, songwriter, and harmonica player Rick Estrin, "I had never played guitar in a band," Baty said in a recent phone interview.
At that time, Charlie was the singer and harmonica player in his own band, Little Charlie & the Nightcats. But with Rick already an accomplished harmonica player and set to join the band, Charlie picked up his guitar and studied his Chicago blues heroes.
Few
people in the United States have heard of it, but the Eurovision Song
Contest might be likened to an American
Idol for songs (rather than
singers) on a multinational scale. The contest
(
The
band's instruments - including mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar -
suggest folk and bluegrass. But the centerpiece of Hot Buttered Rum's
second studio album, last year's Well-Oiled
Machine, is "Waterpocket
Fold," an instrumental tune clearly built on the intricacies and
interplay of jazz and classical music.
Rock
and roll, in its conventional hard-rock form, seems to have all but
disappeared. Who practices this archaic type of musical expression,
with its earnest guitar-bass-drums-vocals format and no
acknowledgment of irony or speed metal, alt country, world music, hip
hop, emo, or any other musical fashion of the past 20 years except
grunge? Pearl Jam seems the last vestige of this noble tradition with
both credibility and market presence.
It's
no surprise that Jen Chapin was pulled in several directions.
With all due respect to The Departed, the actual best picture of 2006 was one that didn't come to a theatre near you ... or, for that matter, to a theatre near anyone else.
He
has the magisterial licks and unbound ambition of Billy Corgan
without the self-seriousness. He has the expressive, expansive
palette of Andrew Bird but with an arena-rock heart. He's an
insatiable omnivore like Mike Patton, stirring everything together
into a sometimes-ugly stew, but without the aggressiveness and with
most of the rougher edges buffed off. He has a fascination with twee
'60s pop, and with muscular prog rock.
Showcasing
acts from around the United States (including a number of Quad
Cities-area contributors), Hello
Future? is the latest
compilation from Radical Turf, the label of local musician and
producer Jeff Konrad. Touted as a "grab bag" of
electronic-oriented music, Hello
Future? is just that: There
are some treats that are keepers and some that will stay in the
bottom of the bag.
