Author archive: Steven R. Rosen

PETULA CLARK – Lost in You Album: Lost In You Artist: Petula Clark Label: The End Records/Sony Music Release Date: April 02, 2013   BY STEVEN ROSEN  As much a surprise as finding a new album by 80-year-old Petula Clark (singer of the 1964 pop-rock classic “Downtown”) on a label that also features Art Brut, the Prodigy, Cradle of Filth and Anvil is the fact that it’s really good. Not just good, but contemporary in its production and (for the most part) material, creating a showcase for Clark’s reserved but convincingly involved voice. Continue reading →

  Pet Shop Boys Concrete Battleship Potemkin Astralwerks (www.astralwerks.com) (This appear in Blurt in 2011) By Steven Rosen  In the better-late-than-never department, a double-live Pet Shop Boys album first released in England in 2006 is getting a belated U.S. CD release. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen  Kenny Vance and the Planotones Acapella LaPlano Records (www.KennyVance.com) A couple years back, when I interviewed Donald Fagen for his Dukes of September tour – he, Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald took turns singing favorite oldies – I asked if he might be doing any Jay & the Americans songs. It was kind of a cheeky question. While Fagen and Walter Becker got their start arranging horn and string parts for Jay & the Americans, they went in a vastly different – most  would say more sophisticated – musical direction with Steely Dan. Continue reading →

  By Steven Rosen Under Steve Kemple, music reference librarian in the Popular Library, downtown’s Main Library has begun doing some fascinating free programming to highlight the depth of its music collection — and just music in general. It already has an Experimental Music at the Library series, featuring live events such as a band from Oakland (Horaflora) that plays grapefruit, electric toothbrushes and balloons Continue reading →

  Haden. The name’s Haden. Charlie’s a cappella-fetishist daughter Petra Haden follows up her acclaimed Who Sell Out re-creation with a tribute to Hollywood soundtracks. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen   From Blurt 02/15/2013 ELECTRIC PRUNES        The Complete Reprise Singles   (Real Gone Music)   www.realgonemusic.com   It says something about how wacked-out the psychedelic 1960s were that not only could there be a rock band with the ridiculous name of the Electric Prunes, but that name was considered far more of an asset than the actual individuals who made the music using it. What a strange tale, and the 24 tracks and companion booklet of The Complete Reprise Singles reveal a sizeable but not complete portion of it.   It’s hard to figure out from the booklet the exact line-up changes that rocked the Prunes during its short heyday, 1966-1969 Continue reading →

  Move over, Frankie Valli: celebrated reunion of beloved band to be turned into true rock theater.   By Steven Rosen   Felix Cavaliere has announced that Once Upon a Dream, the Rascals’ reunion concert and multimedia show produced and directed by Steven Van Zandt, is Broadway bound. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen http://www.stevenrosenwriter.wordpress.com When Ravi Shankar died in December at age 92, Jim Tarbell’s thoughts turned to when he brought the great Indian classical musician to the historic — and endangered — St. Paul Church in the Pendleton District.  Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen http://www.stevenrosenwriter.wordpress.com   Review: DIANA DARBY         I V (intravenous) (Delmore Recording Society) www.dianadarby.com       We’re so used to drama and forcefulness in contemporary music being expressed through loudness that we forget the capacity of a song – and a singer – to be quietly devastating. Continue reading →

A new release looks at the career of Timi Yuro, who worked with Phil Spector, Willie Nelson and Hank Cochran, and who has been covered by Morrissey. By Steven Rosen http://www.stevenrosenwriter.wordpress.com     Any list of proto-feminist Top 40 hits of the 1960s would have to include Timi Yuro’s 1962 “What’s A Matter Baby” along with Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” and Dionne Warwick’s “Don’t Make Me Over.”  With a voice that roars with the strength, defiance and unforgiving ferocity of that tiger in The Life of Pi, she scoffs at the ex-lover who now is being treated poorly by his new girlfriend. The sturm und drang Wall of Sound production is by Phil Spector, and Yuro’s voice sometimes seems too powerful, too scary, for him to handle Continue reading →

Report: The Rascals Live in NY (12/21/2012 http://www.blurt-online.com) At the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, December 13, the first of a series of much-anticipated reunion shows brought out all the old freaks and even a few young ones. Salute to Little Steven Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen Cincinnati CityBeat 12-12-12     It’s never too late in the history of humankind for a new Christmas tradition — especially if it comes out of the world of edgy, avant-garde participatory performance art. Edgy, avant-garde and fun participatory performance art, that is. Continue reading →

Like arts institutions all over the world, University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music is celebrating this year’s John Cage Centennial. A concert featuring work of the visionary 20th century American composer occurs at 8 p.m. Thursday, with the CCM Philharmonia joining Percussion Group Cincinnati for American Voices XV – Celebrating John Cage at 100 Continue reading →

Stones Unturned: ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Documents the Danger and Daring of Rock’s Most Durable Band By Steven Rosen Documentary Magazine (www.documentary.org) November,  2012, Online issue We’re not even five minutes into Crossfire Hurricane, the new documentary about the Rolling Stones’ long career as rock ‘n’ roll icons, when there’s a scene that makes us say, “Whoa! Continue reading →

(From www/blurt-online.com,  11-9-12) (Currently riding a crest of newfound attention thanks to the recently released documentary film about his unlikely career, the Sugar Man himself arrived at Columbus’ Wexner Center for the Arts on November 1 – and he was out to mix a little mischief into his music.) Text & Photo by Steven Rosen At age 70, Sixto Rodriguez has become an American folk hero. The two politically trenchant folk-rock-blues albums that the Detroit singer-guitarist put out in 1970 and 1971, overlooked in their time and long out of print, are now reissued and healthy sellers Continue reading →

  By Steven Rosen From Cincinnati Enquirer, 10-30-12 Champion, a highly anticipated jazz opera about boxer Emile Griffith’s tragic life, got a well-received first “public reading” Saturday night at University of Cincinnati’s College – Conservatory of Music. It is scheduled to premiere in June at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. The opera company has commissioned Grammy-winning jazz composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard for the music and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer for the libretto. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen From Cincinnati CityBeat, 9-19-12 When consummate singer/songwriter Nick Lowe played his most famous composition — “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” — near the World Trade Center site a few years back, he knew the event was special.  “I remember that song on that evening, hearing the echo bouncing off those buildings and thinking, ‘Wow, it’s really something that I’m doing it here,’ ” he said during a recent phone interview Continue reading →

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Barry Adamson Continue reading →

Desperately Seeking Karen Dalton New Reissues Keep Shedding Light on an Overlooked Career By Steven Rosen From Continue reading →

(Because Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass,” a 340-ton, 21-foot-high boulder wrapped in white plastic, has been getting so much attention on its journey to Los Angeles County Museum of Art for installation, I’m posting this story I did for Los Angeles City Beat about another piece of public art that Heizer once did for L.A. It hasn’t had the same impact, but its back story is extremely interesting, nonetheless. — SR) A Tale of Two Spaces: New York and Los Angeles TWO SPACES A New York museum’s popular Michael Heizer installation has roots, and a cousin, in L.A. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen (This first appeared on Cincinnati CityBeat, 2-28-12) Now that Sunday night’s Oscars are over, the Internet is full of catty stories and tweets parsing every last second of televised coverage, from Angelina Jolie’s exposed leg to Adam Sandler’s participation in a taped segment in which actors discussed why they love movies. (If he really loved movies, he’d stop making them, some have said.) It’s both understandable and sad that the Oscars — and movie-award season in general — ends like this, with far more interest in the telecast’s trivia than in the movies that win awards Continue reading →

MOTOR CITY TITAN Mitch Ryder Feb 14, 2012 Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen (this first ran Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen (This ran in Cincinnati CityBeat, 1-18-12) The AOL Music website describes Jimmy Webb as “that rarity in Rock music, a professional songwriter who achieved stardom in that capacity,” pointing out that almost all of Rock’s other great songwriters became well-known for their own versions of their material. The truth of that has long seemed self-evident Continue reading →