Interview: Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell‘s discography, as producer and bassist, label head and general eye-of-the-storm, is vast and can be intimidating. Not all of it’s brilliant. His central concept of collision—taking...
View ArticleMahavishnu Orchestra
The Complete Columbia Albums Collection (Columbia) by Phil Freeman Buy it English guitarist John McLaughlin first emerged into the public eye in 1969 and 1970, a period he spent mostly working with...
View ArticleMiles Davis In The ’80s
by Phil Freeman [The following is the text of a paper I delivered at the 2012 EMP Pop Conference in New York last week, under the title "From the Corner to Carnegie Hall and Beyond: The Urbanization of...
View ArticleOhio Players
by Phil Freeman What happened to the Ohio Players? I don’t mean in terms of their actual careers. They had the same arc as their peers: gradual rise, phenomenal commercial success, gradual decline. But...
View ArticleThe Process
The Process Church of the Final Judgment was one of the most interesting religious organizations of the 20th century. Formed by Robert de Grimston and his wife Mary Ann MacLean in 1966 after having...
View ArticleSonny Rollins in the ’70s: Part 2
Sonny Rollins might be the greatest tenor saxophonist who ever lived. But in the 21st century, his reputation mostly rests on the albums he made in the 1950s and 1960s, on the Blue Note, Riverside,...
View ArticleThe Runners-Up: Jimi Hendrix
The Runners-Up is a monthly column, which we first tried in 2013, wherein we will analyze an album that isn’t the consensus first choice or most canonical title by a given artist, but is one worthy of...
View ArticleThat Depends @20
Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber are one of the most amazing musical ensembles America has ever produced. Their catalog is a synthesis of virtually every strain of African-American music, plus modern...
View ArticleRichard Davis
Richard Davis turned 93 last week. He was born in Chicago on April 15, 1930, and studied under the legendary Captain Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. He got his first big professional break...
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