Rant’n’Roll – The Best of the Rest: One Last Look at 2018 Mike Greenblatt January 16, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Best Idea Soul’s Core was Atlanta singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins’ 1998 debut that had the folkie touring behind the surprise million-selling single “Lullaby.” In an extremely rare move, Mullins has r...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt January 9, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Heady Han Los Angeles pianist/composer Connie Han is barely 23 but her Crime Zone debut (Mack Avenue Records) cannot be ignored. With a sax/trumpet frontline and a blistering drums/bass rhythm section...
Rant’n’Roll – The Best of 2018 Mike Greenblatt January 2, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll The Best of 2018 I’m a list freak. Always kept ‘em. Always will. When I was a little kid, I kept lists of baseball players, professional wrestlers, TV shows, songs, movies, girls who let me kiss them,...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt December 26, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll A New Miles Davis EP Well, it’s only five different mixes of the same song but still. The year was 1985. The notoriously impossible-to-deal-with Miles Davis, curmudgeon that he was, abruptly left...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt December 19, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Jukes To Party Like it’s 2019 On New Year’s Eve The walls of The Count Basie Theater in Red Bank will shake and sweat when Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes welcome in 2019 for what has become a...
Backstage With The Struts Mike Greenblatt December 12, 2018 Features, Interviews 1 I’m sitting in a backstage Philadelphia dressing room with singer Luke Spiller, guitarist Adam Slack, bassist Jed Elliott and drummer Gethin Davies, known collectively as The Struts. They just may be the...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt December 12, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll These Two Guys Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson are Temporary Kings on their new ECM Records record. It’s but those two guys on six originals by pianist Iverson (one of which, the grandiloque...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt December 5, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll R.E.M. at the BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation always did love that little old band from Georgia, REM. Active from 1980 to 2011, you could make a convincing argument that Michael Stipe, Bill B...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt November 28, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll A Man Named Ilhan As the fourth installment of his esteemed “Istanbul Sessions,” Solar Plexus (Nublu Music) by Ilhan Ersahin, is one of the most adventurous, satisfying, eclectic, cinematic, far-out C...
Rant’n’Roll Mike Greenblatt November 21, 2018 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Lucky Girl Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist/Producer Carter Sampson’s fifth album, Lucky (Horton Records), is a died-in-the-wool traditional country gem but with alt-pop sensibilities. Her pe...
