| Concert review: Kinks' Ray Davies shows he still really got it
Even as Ray Davies blasted through a jumpy version of "Where Have All the Good Times Gone," at the Warfield on Thursday night, one couldn't help but wonder where Davies had gone the past couple decades. Outside of making the news a couple years ago for getting shot in the leg while trying to corral a purse-snatcher in his adopted hometown of New Orleans, Davies looked like he'd eased into retirement. If he's been missing, it certainly wasn't because he couldn't rock anymore. Surely one of rock's most underrated all-time greats, the former leader of the Kinks is back with solo record "Other People's Lives," and a tour this year. At 62, he still has plenty of energy, both on-stage and in his new material -- much of which he played Thursday, mixing well with Kinks' nuggets.
Martin Introduces The HD-35 Nancy Wilson "Heart" Signature Edition Guitar
After more than 30 years as guitarist, songwriter and singer for Heart, Nancy Wilson knows fine acoustic guitars. Much of the credit for the beauty and tone of the Martin HD-35 Nancy Wilson Signature Edition guitar goes to Wilson herself, who collaborated closely with Martin on the design. A rare combination of premium solid tonewoods gives the HD-35 Nancy Wilson Signature Edition distinctive tonal character. The top of beautiful Engelmann spruce - a tree that grows in the Northwest, where Heart got its start - combines with forward-shifted scalloped braces for full, powerful tone. The sides and the three-piece back wings are East Indian rosewood, while the center wedge is "heart" bubinga, a beautiful and unusually hard African tonewood that provides outstanding projection. A Pisces fish Yin Yang design is inlaid in rare pink heart abalone, mother of pearl and red composite beneath the Old Style "C.F.
Blue Ridge Overhauls Milk Campaign
Blue Ridge Paper Products Inc. has chosen 16-year-old Britney Christian of Southern California to be the face of the new Milk Rocks! marketing campaign. Christian, a rising star in the pop/rock music world, has a debut album, All or Nothing, which will be released in August.
Milk Rocks! is a multifaceted campaign promoting the benefits of milk as a healthy alternative to sugar-based drinks. It stresses the benefits of a healthy, active lifestyle and self-esteem and incorporates positive life principles throughout the campaign. Milk Rocks! will officially launch next month when school resumes throughout much of the country.
Game company Baffle Gab and premier guitar manufacturer, Epiphone, are sponsorship partners in the campaign. .
Rock critic Paul Nelson dies at 70
Paul Nelson, a pioneering rock critic whose interest in folk music led to an early connection with fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan, has died. He was 70. Nelson was found dead July 4 in his New York apartment. The cause of death was heart disease, according to the New York medical examiner's office. An editor and reviewer for Rolling Stone, Circus and Creem music magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, Nelson started the Little Sandy Review folk music journal while he and Dylan were students at the University of Minnesota in the early 1960s. Nelson was known for his eclectic music tastes, evidenced by his bold signing of early punk rockers the New York Dolls when he worked for Mercury Records in the 1970s. Unlike other early influential rock critics such as Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau and Dave Marsh, Nelson had faded from the music scene in recent years, only to reappear last year in Martin Scorsese's PBS television documentary on Dylan, "No Direction Home." Nelson was interviewed extensively in the film about the singer's roots in Minnesota and Dylan's breakout performances after moving to New York.
|
