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Hop82

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  5. JJ Grey & Mofro

    in Get the Word Out

    Posted · Edited by Guest

    One of my favorite cd's this year, Country Ghetto. I saw them in concert not too long ago, and we absolutely loved them!

    www.Mofro.net

    click on music, they have three little players with samples from all three of their cds.

    www.myspace.com/mofroband

    A Review from their website;

    Modern Guitars Magazine: Country Ghetto Review

    Country Ghetto is the latest release from the swamp rock band previously known as MOFRO. Their first album on Alligator Records, as well as the first with JJ Grey fronting the band name, it’s even more of a fusion of styles than their previous two efforts. It seems any direction MOFRO takes is a good one. Their first record, 2003's Blackwater, was steeped in funk and boogie. Much of it was like a melding of the styles of Sly Stone, Jon Spencer, Dave Matthews, and Prince, with a flavor of deep southern swamp rock and blues, an extremely original style for sure. 2004's Lochloosa was more funk and boogie, and, as some like to call it, "front-porch soul", along with an indication that the band was becoming more focused, and maybe just a tad more serious about music in general.

    Country Ghetto is a continuation of all that and more, and probably their best record to-date. It takes the listener back to the steamy swamplands northeast of Jacksonville, Florida, where JJ Grey grew up. Though the dark and melancholy swamp rock sound is prevalent still, add in an air of political awareness and tales of the bleak adversity that wetland living is, and combine that with country rock dynamics and flagrant soul and R&B flavors. That’s Country Ghetto. These are JJ Grey’s stories, sang with an incredibly high level of passion.

    A huge fan of Otis Redding, Grey often pours himself out in that poignant and intense manner. The song "A Woman" is about as soulful as a white boy can get, and incredibly similar to the renowned soul singer’s potent wail. "The Sun Is Shining Down" continues down that soulful road, yet in more of a gospel direction. His Van Morrison influence also prevails in this one. The album’s opener, "War", is a funked up rocker dealing with an awareness of uncertainty and greed in the world, a scenario that haunts us all. In it, Grey sings: "No one gonna do what’s ‘right’. All we’ll do is fight. There’s a war goin’ on, and the one’s about to die are safe at home." It’s very reminiscent of Sly Stone in places. In "Circles", Grey utilizes a vintage sounding electric piano as the main instrument. His vocal is exceptional in this melancholy, bluesy ballad. In the title song, he sings of life in a "Country Ghetto", of poverty and genuine contentment. He lets the listener know that he wouldn’t change his upbringing for anything. The song's groove is both contagious and hypnotic. "Turpentine" is a boogie rocker done with grit and rock driven passion.

    JJ Grey is a fine raconteur of tales of true grit, Southern hardship, and blatant realism. His music is a hodgepodge of styles, all leading to a point of gritty swampland funk and roll, done with incredible passion and pragmatism. Yet it’s peculiar, that even though Amazon.com had once assessed his first CD, Blackwater, as one of the best of the decade, many still haven’t heard of him or his band. The invisibility of good music, these days, is a blatantly clear injustice. Alligator has a tendency to detect artists who have great possibilities, yet haven’t had the opportunity to be properly exposed. Country Ghetto is an opus worth exposing. JJ Grey has the potential to be one of the greatest songwriters of the era. Out Now! Country Ghetto "intriguing and fortuitous... Grey's a songwriter with a sharp wit and a knack for skewering the hypocrites, jive politicians and carpetbaggers who litter the landscape. The MOFRO vibe travels freely among swamp funk, blues, rock and soul, and does so with a certain down-and-dirty swagger that's as real as it is appealing." (Billboard)

  7. Bruce and the E Street Band new album!!!!!!!

    in Music News

    Posted · Edited by Guest

    It was a free download from itunes yesterday. I really like it. Love the lyrics. Can't wait for the tour either.

    Here are the lyrics, I got them from another blog I read.

    Radio Nowhere

    I was trying to find my way home,

    But all I heard was a drone.

    Bouncin’ off a satellite

    Crushing the last long American night.This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?I was sitting around a dirt dial

    Just another lost number in a file.

    Been in some kinda dark cove

    Just searching for a world with some soul.

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    I just want to hear some rhythm.

    I just want to hear some rhythm

    I just want to hear some rhythm.

    I just want to hear some rhythm.

    I want a thousand guitars.

    I want pounding drums.

    I want a million different voices speaking in tongues.

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    (Sax solo)

    I was driving thru the misty rain

    Yeah, searching for a mystery train.

    Bopping thru the wild blue

    Trying to make a connection with you.

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    This is radio nowhere.

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    Is there anybody alive out there?

    I just want to hear some rhythm (you swoon.)

    I just want to hear some rhythm (you swoon.)

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    I just want to hear you swoon.

    http://www.brucespringsteen.net/

  8. Songs About Real People/ Tribute Songs

    in Music Discussion

    Posted

    Keb Mo - for BB King

    He’s a king, without a castle or crown

    And every night he lays his body down

    In a different town

    But one thing stays the same

    Everybody knows his name

    People may laugh or cry

    As his stories are told

    To the tell truth like this

    A man must be bold

    And the people are glad

    For the things he shares

    Everybody knows he cares

    By the light of the moon

    Comes a flood of emotion

    Riley B King, he’s the king of the ocean

    He’s royal blue

    Like the deep blue sea

    Riley B King

    Out of the darkness, and into the light

    To fight the peaceful warriors fight

    Such a beautiful sight

    And the way you feel

    Watching him with Lucille

    And the heart of the man

    Is open wide, and he closes his eyes

    And he looks inside

    To a love of the world

    Through the song he sings

    Giving it everything

    By the light of the moon

    Comes a flood of emotion

    Riley B King

    He the king of the ocean

    He’s royal blue like the deep blue sea

    Riley B King

  9. Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007

    in Concerts

    Posted · Edited by Guest

    I don't see a thread on this? Did anyone go?

    I watched the live stream from MS Music. It was amazing!!!

    Here is a write up about it, if anyone is interested.

    ********************************************

    Notes and Photos From Crossroads Guitar Festival

    Category: Music

    "I do this for fun," Eric Clapton confessed in an interview the day before he hosted and headlined the second Crossroads Guitar Festival, an eleven-hour marathon of solos and joy, on July 28th for 28,000 people at Toyota Park in Chicago. The sold-out event was held to benefit the Crossroads Centre, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility Clapton founded on the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1997. (Sales of the two-DVD set filmed at the inaugural Crossroads, a three-day affair in Dallas in 2004, have raised about seven million dollars for the Centre.)

    But the true theme of the day was Friends and Idols. The heart of Clapton's hour-and-a-half set was a dynamic reunion with singer-organist-guitarist Steve Winwood. Together, they revived four songs from their 1969 album as Blind Faith. Clapton also paid tribute to a lifelong friend who couldn't be there, George Harrison, with an electrifying version of "Isn't It a Pity" from Harrison's 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass.

    Clapton generously stacked the bill with players who have been his deep influences, close companions and frequent collaborators — many of them all at the same time, such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck and Robbie Robertson. Doyle Bramhall II, who has played with Clapton on records and the road for several years, and Derek Trucks, who has been a sensational addition on slide guitar to Clapton's latest touring band, both got their own afternoon sets, as did more recent Clapton friends and favorites John Mayer and sacred-steel fireball Robert Randolph.

    (Read on for a full report and David Fricke's six Crossroads highlights featuring Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan with Robert Cray, Johnny Winter with the Derek Trucks Band and more.)

    Clapton made sure he did not miss any of the fun. He was there at noon, joining the show's host Bill Murray for a brief, comic duet on Van Morrison's "Gloria" and personally introducting the first act of the day, Louisiana slide-guitar marvel Sonny Landreth. And when Clapton wasn't stepping out to jam — as he did with Landreth, Sheryl Crow (a version of J.J. Cale's "Tulsa Time") and, in the Chicago-blues finale, Guy, Mayer, Jimmie Vaughan and Hubert Sumlin — he was at the side of the stage, drinking in the virtuosity and smiling gratefully at the thanks and tributes offered by the performers throughout the show. The highlight of B.B. King's appearance, with an all-star crew including Vaughan, Sumlin and Robert Cray, was the bluesman's touching, gentlemanly toast to Clapton.

    "I'll probably embarrass him, but I just need to do it, Eric," King said, lifting his red plastic cup of water. "I've been around the world, I've met kings and queens. But I've never met a better man, a more gracious man — my friend Eric Clapton. May I live forever," added King, 81. "But may you live forever and a day. Because I don't want to be here if you're not around." The crowd roared its approval.

    The thrills started while the parking lot was still half empty — Clapton and Landreth's dueling Cajun-fire solos in "Hell at Home" — and are too numerous to recount here. You will be able to do that later; the show was filmed for DVD release. What follows is six of the day's highs, one for each of the strings on Clapton's Stratocaster:

    1) Johnny Winter with the Derek Trucks Band, burning fret wood on Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." Trucks later said that Winter had missed soundcheck the day before, and the closest thing to rehearsal they had was a short runthrough in Winter's Winnebago just before the set. But on stage, Winter, sitting on a chair and hunched over his guitar, tore off squealing lines with his metal slide that meshed viciously, and perfectly, with the vocal-like shriek of Trucks' bottleneck responses.

    2) Jimmie Vaughan with Robert Cray, swapping Strat sting in the uptempo instrumental shuffle "Six Strings Down." You could clearly hear, in the Texas bite of Vaughan's soloing, the inspiration Clapton found and treasured in the Lone Star electric blues of Freddie King and, later, Vaughan's brother, Stevie Ray.

    3) The U.S.-U.K. country-picking summit of Vince Gill and Albert Lee, who played two songs with such jaw-dropping speed and spiked-treble precision that Sheryl Crow, who then joined them on stage, remarked in amazement, "I can't do anything that fast."

    4) Jeff Beck's entire set, a near-hour of instrumental fusion napalm. The details in Beck's attack — the high strangled notes, the seagull-cry feedback, the rubbery, shivering growls — are pure amp tone and natural string-bending. It was worth watching the close-up shots on the video screen to see him finger-picking the strings while manipulating his vibrato bar with the same hand. His closing number, the Beatles' "A Day in the Life," has become a fixture of Beck's live shows, and rightly so. At Crossroads, his exquisite transformation of the original recording's psychedelic grandeur into pure, arcing melody and English-blues viscera would have brought the roof down, if the venue had one. As one fan put it to me after Beck's set, "You have to tell everyone Jeff Beck burned the place up!" There, I did it.

    5) Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood soloing in knotty, heavy-rock tandem in Blind Faith's "Had to Cry Today." With the doubled tumble behind them of drummers Ian Thomas and Steve Jordan, you could have sworn Ginger Baker had snuck onto the bandstand when no one was looking.

    6) Clapton dedicating "Isn't It a Pity" to George Harrison ("This is for someone I wish was here"), then giving Derek Truicks long solo time after the last verse, with Trucks taking off on a searing — and soaring — break that sounded like heated prayer. On a day full of extraordinary solos, this was true rapture.

    Check out the Crossroads Photo gallery

    http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/15716163/crossroads_guitar_festival_2007

  10. Concerts You've Attended

    in Concerts

    Posted

    Elvis

    KC & The Sunshine Band

    The Beach Boys

    Fleetwood Mac

    Queen

    Garth Brooks

    The Rolling Stones

    Neil Diamond

    Michael Bolton

    Rod Stewart x2

    Ricky Martin

    Keb Mo

    Blind Boys of Alabama

    James Cotton

    The Derek Trucks Band

    Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (openers for Derek Trucks)

    Taylor Hicks. x too many to say.

    Toby Lightman ( opener for Taylor Hicks )

    The Greyhounds "

    Elliott Yamin

    The Little Memphis Blues Orchestra

    I've probably forgotten some also...

    Getting ready to see

    James Morrison/Ben Folds/John Mayer this monday. very excited about it too. Love James!

  15. BEATLEMANIA -Youtube style!

    in Music Discussion Classic

    Posted

    hey thanks for the videos. I too am amazed at what you can find on you tube. It's endless, I love it.

    I found this while browsing google videos one day

    Yer Blues; John Lennon, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, and Eric Clapton. They look soo young!

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=912375689786125846&q=yer+blues&hl=en

  16. The Little Memphis Blues Orchestra

    in Album Reviews

    Posted

    Ok guys I am new to all this, so forgive me if I post any music fopahs. ;)

    Right now I am in love with a band called The Little Memphis Blues Orchestra. Nov 21st they just released their self produced, self titled cd on itunes.

    I think this a great debut cd. a few covers but mostly orginial tunes. It's not perfect but it's got some great songs. A few of my favorites are Second Best, Southland, and Sweetwater, and of course Nobody knows you. Found is also a good one, sung by Brian less, this guy needs some teaking but I dig his voice. Ok I like them all. lol

    I've seen them live and they are a great jam band. If you like southern rock or blues you just might like these guys. Check them out. You can find them under blues on itunes. Right now the cd is #2 on album blues chart there.

    The Little Memphis Blues Orchestra

    (LiMBO)

    Band members;

    Brian "little Memphis" Less, Sam Gunderson, Zippy Dieterich, Jeff Lopez, Mitch Jones

    tracks;

    Meatman

    Southland

    Sweetwater

    Found

    Nobody know you when you're down and out

    Second Best

    Bad Boy

    She's into something

    myspace page: www.myspace.com/littlememphisbluesorchestra

  17. Best love song?

    in Music Discussion

    Posted

    Hey guys I'm new here. I agree Tupelo Honey is one the best love songs ever. But my new favorite love song is something that hasn't been released yet.

    The Right Place

    (Bryan Adams/Jim Vallance)

    Taylor Hicks

    If it’s lovin that you want

    Well it’s lovin’ you’ll receive

    Cause you’ve come to the right place baby

    The door is always open, if you need some company

    You’ve come to the right place baby

    Heaven knows that I can’t read your mind

    We can turn it around, darling one step at a time

    Angel, oh angel, can’t you see

    That I can’t live without you, so baby won’t you help me please

    When there no one left to trust

    Well I think that you’ll agree

    That you’ve come to the right place baby

    When you’re down on your luck

    Well just look around you’ll see

    That you’ve come to right place baby

    Sometimes you don’t know, what you’ve got until it’s gone

    But then you look around, and it was right there all along

    Cause Angel, angel, you’ve got to understand

    That I don’t want to be without you

    Oh won’t you help me if you can

    I ain’t asking for the world

    I just want you to believe

    That you come to the right place baby

    When there no on else to hold you

    Well I’ll be there yes indeed

    Oh you’ve come to the right place baby

    Yeah you come to right place

    Oh you come to right place baby

    Yeah you’ve come to the right place.

    Yes indeed

    ********************************************

    If you are interested you can hear it at TaylorHicks.com. (can you post links here?) song previews on the bottom right. just click over to The Right Place. Curious to see what you all think. I know it's American Idol but I really like this dude.

  18. Amy Winehouse

    in Get the Word Out

    Posted

    Hi guys,

    first post for me here.

    I just heard Amy for the first time tonight. I really like her songs so far. I've only heard two from this album, Love is a losing game and Rehab.

    They have a very crisp clear retro sound, awesome! I happen to love that. think they're both very good! Love her voice. Cant' wait to hear the rest of her cd.

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