What do you know of these bands? Any favorites? Indianapolis’ live music venue just off of Keystone Ave. has held this contest for years….
Battle of Birdy’s – Band finalists
Saturday, November 10 – 8:30 pm
Rivetshack 9:15
Morning Goldrunner 10:00
Funky Junk 10:45
Audiodacity 11:30
Coup D’etat 12:15
And Away They Go 1:00
Special Encore Performance By 2011 Champions – Phoenix on the Fault Line
roots rock twang news
VIDEO: The Lumineers breaking big ("Stubborn Love")
The Lumineers have sold nearly 300,000 copies of their debut album. They played a 200-person club in Indianapolis in May, and much like fellow Americana darlings The Civil Wars, are on the cusp of breaking really big. Love their sound, and love the loose-limbed live performances. Here’s one recorded in a radio studio of “Stubborn Love” – simultaneously melancholy and uplifting…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6gKOKO484w]
Joe South – legendary songwriter ("Games People Play", Rose Garden", "Walk a Mile in My Shoes") dies at 72
One of the great forgotten names in late 60’s rock/early 70’s country music songwriting – Joe South – died last week a age 72.
The records he made were oddly compelling, full of vocal echo, strings and reverb-drenched guitar – and the others too – sound. But his songwriting was killer. I love the Geaorgia Satellites version of “Games People Play”, John Mellencamp did a down-and-dirty Joe South set during his “Scarecrow” tour encore when I saw him at Detroit’s Cobo Arena in 1985, and South freakin’ wrote “Rose Garden” for Lynn Anderson, a #1 for 16 (!) weeks.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/JpPpCubCKig?t=3m]
from wikipedia: South was also a prominent sideman, playing guitar on Aretha Franklin‘s “Chain of Fools”,[1] Tommy Roe‘s “Sheila”, and Bob Dylan‘s Blonde on Blonde album…1969’s pungent, no-nonsense “Games People Play” wasva hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Accompanied by a lush string sound, an organ, and brass, the production won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Song and the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. He wrote the back-to-nature “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” (also covered eight months later by Brook Benton With The Dixie Flyers) and the socially provocative “Walk A Mile In My Shoes” (also covered by Elvis Presley in a Las-Vegas era version.
Artists who had pop hits with South compositions include Billy Joe Royal’s songs “Down in the Boondocks“, “I Knew You When”, “Yo-Yo” (later a hit for the Osmonds), and “Hush” (later a hit for Deep Purple.
John Paul Keith brings a Booker T/Buddy Holly/Stones-y stew
John Paul Keith played a gig in Lafayette last weekend. Here’s a piece written before the show – good stuff and a dude worth listening to if you like the rock and roll three different ways…
****
His name is enough to get me interested.
John Paul Keith. Like two Beatles and one Rolling Stone.
Turns out he’s a singer/songwriter/guitarist from Memphis with an American rock and soul sound.
Where did the Booker T/Buddy Holly/Stonesy stew come from and why is he trekking to Lafayette, Indiana to play a late night, two-set show for free? He played on August 18 at Hunter’s Down Under in Lafayette.
Deep Purple Keyboardist Jon Lord Dies; created one of rock's signature sounds
Who was Jon Lord?
The name might ring familiar to early 70’s stoners and bluesy brit prog-rocker fans. Lord was the keyboardist who enveloped Deep Purple (and later Whitesnake) with a deep, muscular over-driven organ sound.
He died Monday. He was 71. A statement on Lord’s official website says he died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Here’s what I know of Lord, and why he mattered in rock: Lord co-wrote “Smoke on the Water.”
Isn’t that enough?
Deep Purple was Lord, singer Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover. And it was Lord who wielded a Hammond organ that drove “Smoke on the Water” “Hush,”and “Lazy” and ”Highway Star.”
A signature sound. Wrote one of the iconic rock songs of the past 50 years.
RIP Mr. Lord.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTkKD8BNZgo]
Plug pulled on Springsteen in London
On a night that began with Bruce Springsteen jumping in during John Fogerty’s set to sing “Rockin’ All Over the World”, and ended with Paul McCartney on stage doing Beatles rave-ups, the show was killed a bit early for Springsteen, as someone with access to the on/off switch shut down his show at Hard Rock Calling Festival in Hyde Park in London.
Bruce had pushed well past the three-hour mark during his show with the E Street Band, headlining the Saturday night schedule in front of about 80,000. Curfew was 10:30pm and he was more than 10 minutes past the cutoff.
Up to that point, reports on the web say Fogerty had returned to duet on “Promised Land” and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello had joined for a trio of songs, supplying incendiary guitar solos. But the big surprise was when McCartney ran on to do “I Saw Her Standing There’ and a raucous “Twist and Shout”.
And here’s where it gets ugly.
After “Twist and Shout,”, as McCartney was leaving the stage, Bruce motioned the band back to their positions after a bow. They wanted to play one of the signature songs of the tour, the Clarence-remembrance “10th Avenue Freeze Out”. According to witnesses, Bruce tried to count off the song, but the PA had been shut down. Backstreets.com reported that “Bruce’s monitor engineer had to come on stage to advise that the PA had been cut off, though the stage monitors were on. Unwilling to just walk off without doing something else, Bruce sang a few lines of the folk standard ‘Goodnight Irene,’ audible only to those near the stage, before leaving.”