Story Archives of 'Music'

Twenty-three-year old Nathan Williams has had a stressful year. The singer and guitarist records under the name Wavves. And in the past eleven months or so, he’s seen the kind of rise and fall that provided the arc of the “behind the music” series for years: gritty-beginnings, rocketing rise, drug-induced crash and burn ending in rehab, Holiday Inn lounge circuit, or reality show.

At first, music blogs and established rock magazines alike embraced Wavves’ lo-fi, punk aesthetic, and hundreds of people showed up at his very first show. Nathan was on top of the world. But at Spain's Primavera music festival in May, things took a drastic tumble. He was disjointed, he couldn’t play worth a lick, and angry fans hurled bottles and shoes at him. The blogs documented his self-destructive episode, and reader responses turned rancid.

Washington Post pop music critic Chris Richards has seen the same backlash happen to bands like Vampire Weekend and Black Kids, and hip-hop performers like Charles Hamilton. Richards believes that as music blogs take up a bigger role in promoting and distributing the newest bands, more aspiring young stars will be thrust into the spotlight well before they’re ready. Chris Richards joins us from the studios at the Washington Post.

The Washington Post: Indie-Rock Success So Sudden, It Actually Hurts

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Thirty years ago, three guys from Englewood, New Jersey took the instrumental track from Chic’s disco hit “Good Times,” added some rhymes and before you could say, “You don’t stop,” The Sugarhill Gang was climbing the charts with “Rapper’s Delight.”

It was the song that introduced hip-hop to America’s pop music charts. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five followed days later with “Superrappin” and street corner hip-hop was on its way to becoming a Top 40 mainstay. The late eighties brought NWA and gangsta rap from big names like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and later Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent.

The golden age of hip-hop is fading, or that’s the read from The New Yorker’s pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. He says that the electronic sounds of techno and club music are replacing the bluesy swing that once fueled the genre. Don’t ditch your gold chains just yet. Sasha has an artist or two up his sleeve that he says are bringing back the old school sound.

The New Yorker: Wrapping Up

indieWIRE: Is hip-hop really dead? Or just resting?

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The first ever Boston Book Festival kicks off on Saturday. It’s a star-studded affair, with a keynote address by Orhan Pamuk. Authors Richard Russo, Anita Diamant and Dennis Lehane are among the literary world attractions. As is, inexplicably, Hollywood actress Alicia Silverstone. Venues are all near Copley Square and they are all free.

One panel caught our eye. It’s called And Now for Something Completely Different, and it’s running a little under the radar.

One of the speakers is cartoonist R. Sikoryak, and he’s the only comic artist on the bill. His new collection Masterpiece Comics delivers adaptations of literary classics, such as Crime and Punishment rendered in Bob Kane-era Batman style, or Charlie Brown as a cockroach in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. R. Sikoryak joins us with more on Masterpiece Comics.

And if you’re interested in comics history, there’s an exhibit opening Saturday at Keene State College that’ll catch your eye. It’s called "Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics" and it’s showing at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery. The works range from early newspaper strips to digital internet comics, and feature work by minority and women artists.

Brian Blade has come a long way from the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana where his father was a pastor. Brian and his brother came up playing music. Then Brian went on to study in New Orleans and it wasn’t long before the talented young drummer was playing with Ellis Marsalis and Joshua Redman.

Brian Blade has recorded with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois, and Emmylou Harris. Brian has also played with Bill Frisell and he’s a long time member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, who he’ll be playing with in Boston this weekend.

Since 1998, Brian Blade has been stretching out his sound, composing and recording with Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band. Now on Mama Rosa, his fourth solo album, Brian stepped out from behind the drums to play guitar and sing. Brian Blade joins us on the line from Los Angeles to tell us about his long road from, or maybe back to, Shreveport and Mama Rosa.

Jazz 40 Fest at New England Conservatory

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