Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin was born on January 19th, 1943 in Port Arthur, a coastal city in East Texas. After short stints at the University of Texas at Austin and Lamar State College, Joplin started recording songs, and in 1963, she relocated to San Francisco to persue a career in music. In 1964, she recorded a demo of blues standards with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. Though the tape, which became known as The Typewriter Tape, highlighted her prodigious talent, her problems with speed, alcohol, and heroin forced her to return to Texas in May 1965.
In Texas, she attempted to clean up her life and re-enrolled in college. However, in 1966, Big Brother and the Holding Company, an up-and-coming San Francisco psychedelic rock group, heard her demo and recruited her to be their lead singer. Joplin played her first show with the group on June 4, 1966. The quintet released their self-titled debut album in 1967 and subsequently hoped to capitalize on a substantial buzz, mostly stemming from their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival a few months before the disc was released. While the album was only moderately successful commercially, it introduced the world to Joplin's frenetic, passionate vocal style.
If Janis got her foot in the door with Big Brother's debut, she kicked it down with her performance on the group's 1968 release, Cheap Thrills. Though the record only features seven songs, three of which are covers, it is widely considered one of the greatest albums of the '60s. One of the cover songs, Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Burns' "Piece of My Heart," became a huge hit for the group and features one of Joplin's signature performances.
Though things were looking up for Big Brother, Joplin left the band to pursue a solo career in December 1968. She formed a backing band called the Kozmic Blues Band, and released her first solo album in September 1969. It was called I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! It quickly was certified gold, and it features Joplin favorites, such as "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" and "Maybe."
Though her music career was soaring, Joplin was falling apart. The Kozmic Blues Band would not survive 1969; they disbanded at the end of December. She was perpetually fighting against depression, self-doubt, and loneliness. One of her most famous quotes, "Onstage, I make love to 25,000 people, then I go home alone," summed up her deep, internal struggles. Though she had made efforts kick drugs in the past, the singer was again involved with heroin, apparently shooting up daily. She had battled with drugs and alcohol her entire adult life, and, by the end of the decade, it looked like she may ultimately lose the war.
At the turn of the decade, she decided to visit South America, in hopes of cleaning herself up and taking a break from the grueling music industry she had fallen headlong into. However, once the sojourn ended, Joplin came home and fell right back into substance abuse. She formed the Full Tilt Boogie Band in May 1970, and promptly hit the road, and in September of that year, Joplin went back into the studio to record her next album.
By the 4th of October, she was gone, found alone in her LA hotel room dead of a heroin overdose. She was 27.
The album she was working on, Pearl, was released four months later. Many view Pearl as her greatest achievement. It has a more polished sound, and Janis' vocals are on fire. Rolling Stone ranked it the 122nd greatest album of all-time. It features some of her most famous songs, notably Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" (arguably her most popular) and the haunting, sparse "Mercedes Benz." The latter would be the last song she would ever record, and remains a testament to the power and passion of truly singular vocalist.
Since her death, the Texan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys. More importantly, she has enjoyed continued musical, social, and personal relevance generations after her passing.

The Stone Roses (Album Review)

This album is unbeatable.

Chris Jones 2007-05-08

 

Manchester at the end of the 80s was caught between two schools of musical thought. Still in thrall to the legacy left behind by both Factory records and the recently-departed Smiths it was also in the grip of early club culture.The odiously-named Madchester scene was just on the horizon. No band summed up this schism as well as the Roses.
Originally a punk-loving, bandana and leather trouser-sporting bunch of rowdy locals with a following and a Martin Hannett-produced flop to their names, they finally re-emerged with Johnny Marr's chiming Byrd-isms married to new bassist Mani's loping funk on "Sally Cinnamon". Guitarist John Squire now felt confident enough to let his influences shine and Ian Brown had progressed from raw shouts to Mancunian cool. The sound was sorted. Now for some top, banging album action.
John Leckie, producer for XTC, George Harrison and Simple Minds, was brought in as producer and finally the band released the prequel to the debut album, "Elephant Stone", a psychedelic raver which (along with "Fool's Gold") was included in the re-issued two-disc version of the album. When it did arrive it wasn't to the universal acclaim that it now garners as 'best debut album of all time'. Instead it was a quieter word-of mouth process that, within the year had put the band on top of the new Manchester scene and led to Spike Island and all its attendant problems.
On first listen, The Stone Roses is a strangely old-fashioned album. Brown's multi-tracked vocals (he was never a strong singer) mix pleasantly with Squire's chiming Rickenbacker to produce a very mellow, 60s West Coast vibe. But if you get insisde the heart of songs like "I Wanna Be Adored" and "I Am The Resurrection" there's that unmistakeable swagger and defiance that was to prove such a template for Oasis a few years later.
It's also this strange friction between old and new that makes this album so durable. Certainly it was Squire who took the band into essentially 'freak-out' territory, especially on the wah-wah'n'drum work out at the end of "I Am The Resurrection", and it was he who sank the follow-up with his adoration of Jimmy Page. But as an accurate picture of how working class hedonism fused dance and rock in the dying days of the 80s, this album is unbeatable.

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Black Sabbath Live in Concert

       

Sensorites-Just Because You Can (Lyrics and Video)

Just Because You Can

-----------------------

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Sometimes human nature takes the blame

for pain and misery

If we just escape the fate we make then maybe

we’ll be free

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Sometimes human nature takes the blame 

for pain and misery

If we just escape the fate we make then maybe 

we’ll be free

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Just because you can

Doesn’t mean u should

Sometimes human nature takes the blame 

for pain and misery

If we just escape the fate we make then maybe

we’ll be free

All Rights Reserved (sensorites)   demo's by Sensorites

The Gaslight Anthem Makes Triumphant Return

Back in October when The Gaslight Anthem last played Philadelphia, it was for a two-night sold out stand at the historic Trocadero.

The New Brunswick, N.J., foursome tore through sets that spanned both of its full-length releases, an EP and even tossed in a cover of Tom Petty ’s “Refugee” for good measure.

It was a victory lap of sorts, the final leg touring on the album that will always be known for breaking the band, “The ’59 Sound,” an album chock full of singer Brian Fallon’s storytelling and jittery punk-rock riffs.

But for drummer Ben Horowitz, despite the whirlwind that wound down since the critical acclaim that followed that record, his biggest memory of the Troc doesn’t even involve The Gaslight Anthem, but at a mid-’90s show when New York hard-core band Sick of It All played the venue.

“I mooned the entire Trocadero audience ... by accident,” he told Rock Music Menu. “I was crowd-surfing, trying to get on stage to jump off, and right when I hit the front, I was on all fours on the stage and I used to sag my pants really low, like a skateboard kid, and yeah, I totally mooned the entire audience before I jumped back out.”

Horowitz, who says he’s been to “probably 20 to 25 shows” at the Troc over the years, will likely keep the burlesque activities to a minimum when The Gaslight Anthem returns to town Thursday to play Penn’s Landing’s Great Plaza in support of “American Slang,” the group’s first LP since being dubbed the saviors of Jersey rock ’n’ roll, a tag that surprisingly didn’t add too much additional pressure in the studio.

“I feel like the pressure was on ourselves, and you gotta trust yourself,” Horowitz said. “So the pressure for us was to just make a record that we thought was a progression from ‘’59 Sound,’ something that challenged ourselves and something that moved in a new direction.”

The course the band took was one of natural development. Songs are more polished, bigger sounding in all the right places, and still have that authenticity wound into the fabric of each note. At times, it’s like “The ’59 Sound” was the rambunctious, freewheeling down the (Garden State) Parkway record, whereas “American Slang” is the arrival at the destination, taking time to absorb all the sights and ambience of the surroundings. That’s not to say The Gaslight Anthem have slowed down, but just more focused on the craft than ever before.

“I think the approach to this record was a little more direct as far as tones and sounds went — just from a purely sonic level, and I think it’s a much bigger guitar sound,” said Horowitz. “Brian went away from the reverb vocals and went with a more straight up kind of vocal approach too.”

“It’s more punchy and forward and direct — sort of like a larger rock ’n’ roll record.”

Much of that punch comes from Horowitz’s ability to lock into a groove where the melody is king, even though he still counts “big, hard-nosed rock drummers” like John Bonham and Dave Grohl as major influences.

“I adjusted my style when I started playing in this band because it was the first time I met somebody like Brian who really wrote songs,” he said. “Before that, I had bands that were really music driven, and melody came as a secondary thing. But this is a band based on melody — they’re melody-driven rock songs.”

The combination of soul, punk and straight-up rock brought on relentless touring, and last year it was hard to find a major festival any place in the world where The Gaslight Anthem wasn’t on the bill. That time period was a big blur for Horowitz, and while he got to see plenty of bands and meet a bunch of people, he’ll gladly take the more intimate headlining gigs.

“It’s a lot more fun in all honesty,” he said. “I would much prefer when I wake up in the morning to be in a place where I’m gonna be face-to-face with 500 people and I know that there’s no question for energy and sincerity of the music.”

Playing to 500 people is a bit of an understatement, as The Gaslight Anthem audience has grown by leaps and bounds in the past two years, leaving the band in that precarious position where the original hard-core fans from the beginning have to mingle with the newcomers and hit-seekers who come to shows.

“We honestly try to do our best to reach and please both — but at the same time please ourselves,” Horowitz said. “There’s no song that we’ll be playing every night if we’re not having fun playing it. As far as the old songs are concerned, we’ll keep a pretty steady rotation going. We’re definitely reactive (live). When somebody’s yelling a song that we feel like playing that night, we’ll play it. We don’t always stick to the set. We try to keep it loose.”

“I like when a band is willing to supplant a little bit of tightness for just energy and having fun.”

Lately, the group has been keeping things lively by mixing in an interesting cover into the setlist, the Pearl Jam fan favorite “State of Love and Trust,” an early, beefy grinder by the band that initially appeared on the soundtrack to the film based around the ’90s Seattle scene, “Singles.”

“I don’t know who brought it up first, either me or Brian, but we both definitely have a history of that music in our past, just like the grunge stuff,” Horowitz said. “We were 11 and 12 years old when that really broke; the movie “Singles” and that soundtrack were a pretty big record for us and that song has always been my favorite Pearl Jam song — and it’s a ton of fun to play.”

Though entirely unintentional, that choice of a cover flies in the face of almost every single article written on the band that puts it in the same box as Jersey’s favorite son, Bruce Springsteen. It’s a tag that three records in, is starting to wear thin. The Boss has performed with the group and is admittedly a big part of Fallon’s makeup, but at this point, it’s fallen well into the land of overkill. Still, the band is cautious about trying to be too abrupt in shedding the comparisons.

“It’s important to preface the conversation that we do consider it an honor that people relate the two things,” said Horowitz. “There’s a lot of (expletive) groups out there and a lot of (expletive) people out there, and luckily we’re being compared to someone who’s been really good for a really long time and happens to be, from what I can gather, a good person and a straight-up dude — and I’m into all that.”

“But at the same time, in reality, Bruce Springsteen wasn’t a gigantic influence all around the band, and it’s sort of like a narrative the press came up with and we didn’t. It is a little trite to hear, and I wish some people took the time to find another angle. I mean, I’ve never heard a Bruce Springsteen song that’s as punk rock as like 75 percent of our songs.”

“It’s an easy comparison to make when you’re from the same place and you have somebody who likes to tell stories, and I think everybody gets that.”

To contact music columnist Michael Christopher, send an e-mail to rockmusicmenu@hotmail.com. Also, check out his blog on the Daily Times website.

Original Story Link

James-Sit Down Video

Vampire Weekend respond to lawsuit

Vampire Weekend have responded to the lawsuit that was filed against them last week. Ann Kirsten Kennis, the woman on the cover of the band’s recent album, Contra, is contesting that the group, and photographer Tod Brody, used her image—a photograph taken in 1983— without her permission. Kennis is seeking over $2 million in damages.

Frontman Ezra Koenig spoke with NME earlier today about the issue, saying he couldn’t go into details about how the band will respond to the lawsuit because they wanted to deal with it correctly. He also mentioned this was the first time the group has been sued.


“I think I can speak for all of us and say this is the first time any of us have ever been sued, so we’re still learning how it works,” Koenig said. “There’s so many things we could say about it but given we have no experience of it we’re just keeping conversations to a journal for now, which is a little frustrating. There’s nothing we can say about it. We’re not trying to be mysterious. I imagine in the next few months there’ll be plenty to talk about. Given it’s our first time we just want to do it properly.”

The band’s record label, XL Recordings, has also responded to the suit. The label released a statement today that reads, “As is standard practice, Vampire Weekend and XL Recordings licensed the rights to use the photo on the cover of Contra pursuant to a license agreement that contains representations and warranties authorizing this use of the photo. Now that a lawsuit has been filed, we look forward to having the matter resolved in Court. We will be filing our response after we have had an opportunity to review the allegations. Consistent with our practice, we will not be commenting further about the pending litigation at this time.”

Original Story on My Space

The Verve Release New Album

The new Verve album will be called "Third", the band have announced. The follow-up to "Urban Hymns" will arrive this summer, a decade after Richard Ashcroft and co's last record. With the band set to headline the Glastonbury Festival this weekend, details of their comeback have now been confirmed. The first fruits from the album, single "Love Is Noise", was unveiled on BBC Radio One earlier this week. "Third" is expected to be released on August 18.

Watch The Verve's music videos here...

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The Zutons-You Can Do Anything (album review)

The Zutons
You Can Do Anything
[Deltasonic]
Artist: The Zutons
Released: 02 June 2008
Catalogue number: DLTCD078

Review by Chris Jones

Two years after Tired Of Hanging Around, the album that made them a family name (or at least the album that contained their hit Valerie, which, when covered by you-know-who, paid off their mortgages), the Zutons return in a bullish mood. Again. You Can Do Anything seems to continue where the previous album left off. Their initially cuddly exterior, soon gives way to some very urban paranoia and angst.

Hidden amongst the retro riffs, horn squawks and lustily sung choruses are tales of scroungers (Family Of Leeches) infidelity (Dirty Rat), intolerance (You Can Make The Four Walls Cry) and sheer bloody violence (What's Your Problem, Bumbag). Add to this the tales of rent boys (Freak) and you soon cotton on that this is not a pretty picture of modern Britain that the band want you take home with you. And it's all delivered with that great yearning scouse voice of Dave McCabe that helps overcome the overwhelming kitchen-sink squalor of it all sometimes.

Musically it's definitely business as usual, and the departure of guitarist Boyan Chowdbury seems to have merely spurred them on to greater guitar madness. Always Right Behind You boasts some killer slide. Mind you, the saxophone of Abi Harding still seems a little too basic at times. More and more you suspect she's there for the wrong reasons. She may provide contextual eye candy for male fans, but sometimes the little musical texture that she does add is frankly negligible.

But no matter. The Zutons are, you'll be relieved to know, on fine form. And maybe this time around they can keep the big hitters for themselves.

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What's Your Problem
Give Me A Reason

ORIGINAL LINK>>>

Zeppelin Join Foo Fighters On Stage

Two members of Led Zeppelin joined Foo Fighters onstage at their show in London on Saturday night. Guitarist Jimmy Page and bass player John Paul Jones emerged during the encore at the Wembley Stadium gig. Their appearance came towards the close of a spectacular second night at the venue, following Friday's concert. Announcing the arrival of the legendary rock duo, Foos' frontman Dave Grohl said it was "the greatest f*cking night in our band's lives". The crowd of nearly 90,000 people then saw the super-group perform Zeppelin classics "Rock'n'Roll" and "Ramble On". Foo Fighters set-list, according to the NME, was as follows: "The Pretender" "Times Like These" "No Way Back" "Cheer Up Boys, Your Make-Up Is Running" "Learn To Fly" "This Is A Call" "Long Road To Ruin" "Breakout" "Stacked Actors" "Skin And Bones" "Big Me" "Marigold" "My Hero" "Cold Day In The Sun" "Let It Die" "Everlong" "Monkey Wrench" "All My Life" "Rock'n'Roll" "Ramble On" "Best Of You".