Author archive: Steven R. Rosen

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 →

To quote the Dells, who we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to play at our electrifying Vinyl Night session of Dec. 27th, “Oh What a Night” it was! We played classic blues and R&B, remembering Hubert Sumlin and Howard Tate; British rock at its most eccentric (Roy Wood’s Wizzard); rootsy post-psychedelic American album-rock (Goose Creek Symphony); two of jazz’s finest sonic explorers ever, Anthony Braxton with Max Roach; and so much more Continue reading →

Wussy’s “Strawberry” By Steven Rosen Blurt ( http://www.blurt-online.com/ ) Published 12-14-2011 Some of the best rock bands of the past, alternative and mainstream, have had male-female co-leads – early Velvet Underground, 1970s-era Fleetwood Mac, X, Human Switchboard. Wussy is a striking, significant addition to that legacy. The Cincinnati band, whose fourth full-length CD is Strawberry, is still a faithful believer in the musical possibilities of a time when the tunefully buzzy, intelligent indie-rock of the 1980s (Husker Du and the Pixies) met the rawer, more emotionally exposed grunge of the early 1990s. Continue reading →

Senior Moments: Rock’s Backpages’ Best Albums of the Year by Artists Over 50 Published by Rock’s Backpages Wed, Dec 14, 2011 Striking a blow against the perennial ageism of pop culture, Steven R. Rosen polled the Rock’s Backpages writers to determine the best albums of the year by music’s senior citizens. Read on for the RBP Top 10 and for individual lists from 50 of our most respected contributors Continue reading →

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Supreme Dicks Breathing and Not Breathing Jagjaguwar Continue reading →

Moogfest, 2011 This coverage, by Steven Rosen and Fred Mills, ran in http://www.blurt-online.com/ , on 11-11-11. Continue reading →

Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Going Strong at 77 BY STEVEN ROSEN From http://www.blurt-online.com/ 10-27-11 CINCINNATI – It’s another night on the American road for 77-year-old Hans-Joachim Roedelius, one of the world’s most melodically ambient and influential – but also underappreciated – electronic-music musicians/pianists. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen Cincinnati CityBeat 10-19-11 Bettye LaVette’s late-career success story is one of the music business’ most remarkable. The powerful 65-year-old R&B singer/stylist first recorded in 1962 — “My Man — He’s a Lovin’ Man” for Atlantic Records, home in that era of such other classic Soul vocalists as Ben E. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen What a long strange trip from Miami University and back it’s been for 1958 graduate Ken Babbs. He returns to Miami, where he graduated in 1958, at 7:30 p.m. Continue reading →

Review: Grace Jones Hurricane ([PIAS] America) http://www.pias-america.com/ By Steven Rosen From Blurt ( http://www.blurt-online.com/ ), 9-20-11 Odd that two icons of dance music, Pet Shop Boys and Grace Jones, both had to wait years to get strong British albums released this year in the U.S. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen (From Cincinnati Enquirer, August 2011) American musical heritage and trains just naturally go together. The low whine of the midnight train helped inspire Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”; the excitement of the journey influenced Tiny Bradshaw’s rhythmic “Train Kept A’ Rollin.’” Both of those classics were recorded in Cincinnati. So it makes sense that a Cincinnati group, Over the Rhine, has emerged as one of the most popular performers on Roots on the Rails excursion trains, which pair Americana singer-songwriters with North American rail journeys. Continue reading →

(Andre Williams, Archie Bell, Roy Head, and Little Joe Washington descended upon Houston’s Continental Club on Sept. 3, 2011 and this report is from http://www.blurt-online.com/ .) By Steven Rosen At age 74, Andre Williams (pictured above) is just coming into his own as a Great American Singer. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen (from http://www.blurt-online.com/ ; 9-15-11) Review of Nick Lowe’s The Old Magic (Yep Roc).Nick Lowe’s staunchest long-time supporter in the music business has been Elvis Costello – Lowe produced Costello’s first albums, they toured together, and Costello insured Lowe’s place in rock history (and ability to earn a living) by covering and popularizing his “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Yet it’s hard to find two great singer-songwriters more different than Lowe and Costello at this stage in their careers. Costello’s work revels in the craftsmanship and effort that goes into the wordplay and melodic construction Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen ( http://www.stevenrosenwriter.com/ ) Blurt, August 21, 2011 http://www.blurt-online.com/ THEY’VE GOT THE POWER Ponderosa Stomp’s Girl Group Extravaganza Aug 21, 2011 (With Ronnie Spector, La La Brooks of the Crystals, Lesley Gore, the Angels, Maxine Brown and more on hand, NYC was awash in a Wall Of Sound.) Lincoln Center and Ponderosa Stomp, the New Orleans-based non-profit dedicated to honoring unsung heroes of rock ‘n’ roll and its tributaries, did more than just offer a nice tribute with its She’s Got the Power concert and symposium honoring girl-groups of the early 1960s. Continue reading →

Madeira Celebrates British Punk Rock By Steven Rosen (From Cincinnati CityBeat, 08-10-11) Who knew that Madeira is a hotbed of British Punk Rock scholarship? Those familiar with the quiet, upscale northeast Cincinnati community might think its musical interests fall more toward Streisand and Manilow than The Damned and The Sex Pistols. The political content and D.I.Y. Continue reading →

Review: Cowsills at Indian Lake Text/Photo by Steven Rosen Blurt, July 28, 2011. Continue reading →

The Song That Never Ends Locals to celebrate enduring, seminal Rock song recorded by Tiny Bradshaw in Cincinnati 60 years ago By Steven Rosen (From Cincinnati CityBeat, July 20, 2011) Brian Powers, the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County archivist who has done so much research on King Records, has a theory why the Cincinnati record label was slow to get proper international respect as a progenitor of Rock & Roll. All the other early sources of modern-era Rock are guitar-based — Rockabilly, Country, Chicago Blues and acoustic Folk and rural Blues. Many of King’s earliest and most transformative songs were of a form called “Jump Blues” — horn-based and with roots in the Big Band era. Continue reading →

07/11/2011 Marianne Faithfull Horses and High Heels (Naïve Records) www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk 7 stars from Blurt (www.blurt-online.com) 07/11/2011By Steven Rosen Marianne Faithfull’s 1979 Broken English may be as influential an album to come out of Britain’s punk revolution as any – and it isn’t even punk, technically. But when Faithfull, who had been missing in action as a relevant recording artist for more than a dozen years (at least in the U.S.), came blazing back, with a voice that replaced the sweetness and innocence of “As Tears Go By” with something as burnished and rough-edged as a worn straight razor, it seemed a metaphor for the way punk wanted to toss out pop prettiness and mannered artifice for the cutting edge. Her sound was more varied and complex than punk’s buzzing, slashing guitars, but it was as bold Continue reading →

The Buddy Holly Tribute Album Maintains a Precarious Balance By Steven Rosen www.stevenrosenwriter.com The advance buzz on tribute album Rave On Buddy Holly (Fantasy Records) is all about Paul McCartney’s contribution, in which the 69-year-old ex-Beatle rants, shouts and growls his way through a madly goosed-up version, complete with false endings, of “It’s So Easy.” Rolling Stone has described the approach as “He yowls like he popped some Viagra and then set his pants on fire.” But is that a good thing? While one appreciates the effort and the autobiographical themes of his contribution – McCartney, whose Beatles cued off Holly’s Crickets for their name, is engaged to be married for the third time, proving that indeed it is easy for him to fall in love – and while the song itself has that kind of crackling, electric arrangement (live-sounding lead guitar upfront, ever-so-slightly-weird processed backing vocals) of late-1960s Beatles, the novelty of McCartney’s vocal embellishments wears off quickly and becomes annoying. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen http://www.stevenrosenwriter.com/ Craig Miller, curator of design arts at Indianapolis Museum of Art, has told his staff that their newly acquired Eero Saarinen-designed Miller House in Columbus, Ind., is one of America’s four greatest mid-century Modernist residences. The others are the Philip Johnson Glass House in Connecticut, Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., and the Charles Eames House near Los Angeles – all open to the public to varying degrees. Yet, until this year, the Columbus Area Visitors Center never told tourists that the National Historic Landmark home existed – and many come to this small city just 95 miles northwest of Cincinnati because it’s a haven for contemporary architecture. Continue reading →

By Steven Rosen http://www.stevenrosenwriter.com/ Review: Garland Jeffreys The King of In Between (Luna Park) http://www.garlandjeffreys.com/ In a long career that so far has never quite jelled into all it could be, Garland Jeffreys has made some good records and one great one, 1977′s Ghost Writer. He also wrote and recorded a memorably savvy and eccentric rocker, 1973′s “Wild in the Streets,” that managed to be both ebullient and cautionary. Continue reading →

The Bryce Dessner-curated festival May 13-15 featured My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, Megafaun and other avant-indie luminaries – plus Dessner’s own band The National to close things out. By Steven Rosen (From www.blurt-online.com; June 6, 2011) MusicNOW, the six-year-old Cincinnati festival curated by Bryce Dessner, guitarist for the National, has a reputation for being on the cusp of rock-oriented musical collaborations and experimentation. It’s a reputation more known within the alternative-rock community than the population at large, since it’s a relatively low-budget, grass-roots event held in an old auditorium that holds at most 500 people Continue reading →

After celebrated gatherings in 2009 and 2010, the adventurous, eclectic Knoxville-based event took 2011 off. By Steven Rosen www.blurt-online.com Even as AC Entertainment head Ashley Capps prepares for his company’s biggest event of the year, the massive Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., on June 9th-12th, he’s announced that the smaller, artier and cutting-edge Big Ears Festival will return next year. That will be the third edition of the festival, which mixes adventurous rock with New Music, jazz and various experimental strains of pop Continue reading →