A Few of the Best...

A Few of the Best...
JJ Grey, Lindsey Buckingham, Eddie Vedder, Richard Thompson

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Summer Music Schedules Are Out!

This is my first blog entry. Tune in, local PennJerDel music lovers!

Every year I go through the same thing. The summer concert schedules come out, and I start trying to talk people into going to events with me. This is like herding cats!!!! Can I go my myself? Sure. Half the fun is, sharing the fun, the comments, and the whole experience with other music lovers. Your music friends come and go. Sometimes you have a built-in 'music buddy', and sometimes they go off into another world, and either don't have time, or lose interest.

In April-May for instance, my annual pilgrimage to New Orleans and JazzFest happens. For a while years ago, we had a whole group. Little by little it dwindled, until the year before last, I pretty much went by myself. You do meet people there, and sometimes make plans to hook up later at selected events. You can stay in touch long after that, which is cool.

But one of the things I started thinking about this year was starting a blog to find people in the Philly area (Jersey and Delaware of course!) who love this stuff, follow music, and maybe go to JazzFest folks. This year in New Orleans I did spot a number of Philly peeps at the fairgrounds, and it's great to greet one another. But it would be wonderful to kind of have a group of people with whom one had discussed the upcoming schedule, who's playing, write musical reviews, and other cool things to look for in New Orleans.

So back to the subject at hand: the 2009 summer concert events. This is purely through my eyes, and reflecting my taste, but here goes with what I thought looked WELL worth paying attention to:

May 29 - (Trocadero, Philly)
JJ Grey & Karl Denson's Tiny Universe - OK, this one's over, but wow...what a great show I missed. Did anyone out there see this? I've seen JJ Grey at the World Cafe, and this is a musician's musician!!!! I've also seen him at JazzFest in New Orleans. Ditto Karl Denson. Grey is tight, cool, sophisticated, and way not-boring. Denson is a little jazzier but kind of fits the same description.

June 12 - Appel Farm
Subdudes - Who doesn't love these guys? I saw them in New Orleans 2 years ago. They love 'em there, and we love 'em anywhere. I think they are from NOLA, correct me if I'm wrong. But the locals there certainly love them.

June 19 - Longwood Gardens
Boz Scaggs - I was listening to Scaggs in the '70's. What a treasure. What a cool musician.

July 26 - Pocono Blues Festival Day 2 (Jack Frost) WHAT A DAY!
Ruthie Foster - holy cow, has anyone seen this all-girl band from Austin? I confess to being a tad sexist with women in the rock world, because most of them don't rock enough for me, nor do they play instruments with outstandintg skill (small handful: Chrissie Hynde-Pretenders, Bonnie Raitt, Anne McCue-awesome Aussie girl who plays with Lucinda Williams a lot, and my list of women sort of peters out there). I saw Ruthie Foster in the Blues Tent at JazzFest in 2008. Yikes! Brought the house down with her Blues-Rock laced with gospel revue. Yowza. Austin be proud!
Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials - Looked them up and sampled them on iTunes. Yes!!!!
Buckwheat Zydeco - don't need to explain this do I?
Harrison Kennedy & Fruteland Jackson - also looked them up in iTunes. Yes!!!
Chris Thomas King - didn't know him, listened on iTunes. Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!

So that's it for now. I'm really interested in hearing from music lovers, finding out who's going to some of these events, finding out who's new and noteworthy out there in the funky-rock-blues world, or who wants to go to JazzFest and share 'buzz' and information, and just exchange music info.

Peace.

August 6 - Longwood Gardens
Rufus Wainright - WXPN made much of Wainright about 10 years ago with the release of Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk. It's not usually my kind of music, but I liked it a lot. Then, I had the pleasure of seeing him live at Appel Farm a few years ago. Blew everyone right out of their socks. A mindblowing concert, and what fun it was to experience him onstage. I'll be going to this one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hiya, Kristin. I followed you here from the XPN boards. Don't miss Trombone Shorty and Orleans Ave at World Cafe Live, Thursday July 16. We've heard him twice on the Congo Square stage at JazzFest and he's the bomb. If you don't know his work, he's been playing professionally since the age of nine, when he was shorter than his trombone. Now in his 20s, having played trad jazz for many years, he leads a funk outfit and puts on one of the most dynamic stage shows I've ever seen. It's like a compendium of 100 years of stage entertainment. He lifts shtick from vaudeville, from Cab Calloway, from James Brown -- and then he stage-dives. Just too much fun.