It is indeed a very strange and (here comes that word again) “unprecedented” time for live music. Bands, audiences, venues, and promoters are all still trying to figure out when the gears for the industry will start moving again, and how shows and tours will even
look while the pandemic is still with us or in its own end times.
Contemporary southern rockers the Allman Betts Band are placing their bets on getting back out on the road sooner than later, with an ambitious tour schedule starting this week.
BMG record cover
Their website lists 60+ dates of festivals, support slots, and headlining shows stretching through October (this includes a summer “Spirit of the South” tour that pairs them with like-minded musicians and friends Blackberry Smoke). The third date will bring them to the Houston area at the Dosey Doe on February 2.
To the casual music listener, blues music may seem like a lot of the same stuff. Those iconic opening notes from Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” (by way of Muddy Waters “Hoochie Coochie Man”), the lyrics of devilish women/lost love/being broke, the alternately mournful and boastful vocal styles.
But deeper-diving fans know that around the Umited States, different geographical areas definitely had unique sounds and performers. Mississippi blues doesn’t sound like Chicago blues which differs from Texas blues.
Wienerworld Record Cover
To that end, UK-based reissue label Wienerworld has put out a series of box sets in the Down Home Blues series highlighting lesser-known regional records and performers. The latest is
By James Patterson with Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge 448 pp. Little, Brown and Company
December 8 of this year marked the 40th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, gunned down in the hallway of his New York apartment building at the age of 40. Between that somber milestone, the never-ending and generational regenerating appeal of the music of the Beatles and his solo work, and new books and box sets, interest in Lennon and his music these days has definitely seen a bump. We won’t mention, the, uh, early-pandemic celebrity singalong butchering of “Imagine.”
But first, there’s something of a misnomer with this book’s title. It does not confine itself to the last days, weeks, or even year of Lennon’s life (for that, I would turn to the recent release
Thriller, super producer Quincy Jones told an interviewer from
Radio & Records what he foresaw in music’s future.
He envisioned a time coming soon when music consumers could see an album or single on a computer screen, then click to listen to or purchase it. Or pick and choose which songs from an album to do either with. And that accessing music through satellites, computers, and TV sets would be the norm and might even mean the demise of physical media entirely.
Hachette Books Cover
Those predictions might have seemed bizarre when records (and cassettes!) by megastars Michael Jackson, Prince, Lionel Richie, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Wham!, Phil Collins, Tina Turner, Huey Lewis and the News, Cyndi Lauper, and Duran Duran were flying out of record store bins. And MTV played and played and played the accompanying videos.