By Dave Cantor

“It’s funny, when you’re living through history, you don’t think of it as such,” postulates Lateef the Truth Speaker, who alongside Lyrics Born constituted the mid-nineties East Bay hip-hop group Latyrx. “The Grouch, Sunspot Jonz, we all went to high school together. I remember listening to music and having debates with Opio about whether or not Das EFX were really fresh or if it was just a gimmick. The [self-titled] Cypress Hill record came out at about the same time. I was like, ‘This shit is dope. It’s kinda gangster, but still talks about society.’”

The early nineties were a heady time in music generally, but specifically for hip-hop. Expanding the lyrical and sonic possibilities of the music, A Tribe Called Quest and the Pharcyde helped inform a second wave of MCs intent on further pushing the edges of what rapping was and could become. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s infrequent when fifty-year-old careers claim the last few months as the most fruitful. During March, Dr. John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And the NOLA native’s 2010 album, “Tribal,” was in contention for a Grammy as “Best Contemporary Blues Album.” It’s the pianist’s earliest recordings, however, that continually pull in younger music scavengers. Sure, “Tribal” sought to more fully incorporate that bad ju-ju the singer prodded decades back with tracks like “Manoovas” sounding as if the band were possessed by some devilish spirits. But “Gris Gris,” recorded back in 1968, remains Dr. John’s towering achievement. For an album so beholden to NOLA’s musical and spiritual heritage, it’s odd to find that the disc was recorded in Los Angeles, where Dr. John had relocated and begun work as a part of the Wrecking Crew, taking on studio gigs backing up everyone from Sonny and Cher to Canned Heat. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sure, the first Lettuce album was titled as a joke—“Outta Here.” The fact doesn’t lessen the music’s funky impact, though. Comprising a handful of players engaged with Soulive and any number of groove-related revival projects, Lettuce ranks as an enduring live act. Read the rest of this entry »

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Electric Picnics at Millennium Park have been going swimmingly this summer. Who knew that a little bit of twitch with your ham sandwich could be so enjoyable? Helping to round off the summer series is a celebration for the twentieth anniversary of Rephlex Records. Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin and the founder of the label, has been lying low for the past few years. While he hasn’t released anything personally, his label has been churning out records from other artists, including Squarepusher and Kevin Martin. Rephlex must be feeling extra celebratory, as they’re having a party for each decade that it has been around: one at Pritzker Pavilion and the other at the Empty Bottle. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ariane Smolderen

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If you’ve spent any time digging through crates of used jazz albums (and you should have), the sight of pianist Randy Weston’s tripped out, electric-azure “Blue Moses” should be a familiar sight. Recorded during the early seventies for Creed Taylor’s CTI imprint, the disc graces pretty much every cutout bin in the country. It’s not for lack of vision, but Weston’s combination of Afro-centricity, Latin rhythms and bop found better articulation on other outings. As early as 1964, the band leader was coaxing Afro-themed bop and blues from ensembles counting underrated players like Booker Ervin, but finding distribution a difficult proposition. A few trips to Nigeria and Morocco, however, solidified Weston’s resolve when he returned with “Tanjah,” the follow-up to “Blue Moses.” Read the rest of this entry »

“I remember going to see the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia when the band was still at DePaul and standing at the railing,” recalls trumpet player Lee Loughnane of the band Chicago. “I was amazed with the brass section. I remember auditioning for the Civic Orchestra [the training orchestra of the CSO] and Adolph Herseth [longtime CSO principal trumpet] was right there, and it was like, ‘Oh, my God: I’ve got to play in front of the best there is?’ ”

Loughnane and his band mates from Chicago did eventually make it to the stage of Ravinia at the height of the band’s initial wave of popularity in August of 1972, but have not played the venue since. Late Ravinia executive director Edward Gordon described the aftermath of that concert “as if a B52 had flown by and dropped a ton of garbage over the park.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Following the successful reunion last year of Chicago’s seminal nineties emo band, Cap’n Jazz, it seemed only a matter of time before the city’s other genre stalwart, Braid, would also announce their return. Bob Nanna and co. return to the Metro (where their initial departing shows occurred way back in 1999) with the hope to recapture the energy of their brand of post-hardcore that became so influential long after their breakup. Read the rest of this entry »

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Anthony Dominick Benedetto, aka Tony Bennett, turned 85 earlier this month (August 3) but it’s hard to think of many other octogenarians still swinging the way that Tony is. Who else but Bennett could unite such diverse artists and icons for his 2006 “Duets” album as Barbra Streisand, Bono, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Sting, James Taylor, the Dixie Chicks, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, Michael Buble, Tim McGraw, et al, to sing duets of the songs most associated with him over the last six-plus decades, not across coasts and even continents the lackluster way that Sinatra did late in his career, but one-on-one, live and in person alongside of him, working to make every phrase count? Read the rest of this entry »

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Ohio’s made some healthy contributions to rap culture. Really: Bone Thugs, Mood and Cudi. Stalley’s not a name that resonates in the same way as the aforementioned folks, but after issuing a pair of surprisingly cogent mixtapes and hitting SXSW last year, Rick Ross and his Maybach Music Group saw fit to sign the Massillon, Ohio MC to a contract. Beginning with 2009’s “MadStalley,” listeners were exposed to a sturdy flow positioned atop production not sounding too distant from the early nineties’ embrace of jazz samples. A minute-and-a-half-long track, “The Autobiography,” turns in a seventies, keyboard-focused beat while Stalley defines himself as a performer and a man: “I am mellow/I am hard as metal.” While that release didn’t bring the Ohio native to national prominence, blog-hype around this year’s “Lincoln Way Nights (Intelligent Trunk Music)” made the beardy MC a familiar figure. Videos for a few tracks, including “Slapp” and more recently “Chevys and Space Ships,” shined a light on Stalley’s hometown and the goings on in a moderately populated city distanced from Akron and Cleveland. Read the rest of this entry »

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Encompassing and surpassing everything that was American Primitive guitar and freeq-folk, Ben Chasny and his Six Organs of Admittance continue to record weird, acoustic-based compositions pushing drones on unsuspecting Western audiences. It’s not just Chasny’s guitar that makes his recordings so unique, but the man’s sense of production, which can include anything from one-off bells to the double tracking of his—occasionally mic’d from inside and outside the body simply to catch the aches and moans of a well-traveled piece of wood. Read the rest of this entry »