Author: Bodhi

Human Dewey Decimal System for all things music and movies, purveyor of useless knowledge.

Categories
Concert Preview Miscellaneous

LOLLA-land: the immaculate birth and rebirth of Lollapalooza as told by MTV

Paramount+ and MTV Poster for "LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza"

I am a firm believer that 95% of festivals are no longer cool.

The market is oversaturated, the bar for small bands is too low and the commodification and democratization of stardom has made big bands seem blasé.

Plainly stated, music doesn’t feel important any more.

I’m not seeing many, if any, baby bands that feel like they’re going to set the world on fire – and I am certainly not seeing many big artists that will go down in the annals of history.

And festivals feel the same.

Coachella is a ‘wannabe influencer’ petri dish, Reading & Leeds have pop acts gracing their stages and Glastonbury is now Coachella with more mud.

And worst of all, there’s Lollapalooza…

What was once a haven for everything alternative has become yet another destination, Coachella-lite festival.

But it wasn’t always that way – once, it was a bright, shining beacon of transgression in a sea of country-club, khaki approved pop.

MTV Time Machine

Streaming on Paramount+, “LOLLA: The story of Lollapalooza” charts the rise, fall, and rebirth of Lollapalooza from Perry Farrell’s Glastonbury inspired dream to the multi-million dollar Chicago festival.

It’s a long and bumpy ride that stretches from equipment frying heatwaves that enraged a baby-faced Trent Reznor to stuffed shirt meetings to introduce collaboration with the Austin City Limits team.

But narratively aside, the footage of yesterday’s Lolla was what I fell in love with.

From Body Count to Ben Folds Five, the early days and death knells of Lollapalooza were diligently captured by MTV camera crews and Fans alike.

I grew up hearing my dad’s Lolla-land adventures from the 90s, a former festival devotee, and I so badly wanted to step foot in that sea.

And while time travel certainly isn’t an option, it was an option to sit down and watch this with him – courtesy commentary provided.

We’ve all seen the videos of Eddie Vedder monkey bar-ing it across the stage, but it’s different to see that video with live feedback from your old man who was there.

So, not only did I get my trip in the way back machine, I got to know a little bit more about my dad during his 20-something-ne’er-do-well heyday.

Speaking of Dads…

Jane’s Addiction comes to Red Hat:

2024 Tour Poster for Jane’s Addiction supported by Love and Rockets, from Live Nation

Do you have a reformed alternative parent?

Does said parent need a kick in the ass to remember they’re still alive?

Do you have the music taste of a middle-aged man?

If so, I have wonderful news for you:

In what I can only describe as an alt-rock wet dream, Jane’s Addiction’s original line up of Perry Ferrell, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins are returning to the stage supported by Love and Rockets.

So, if you’re looking to kill time on a Tuesday Night with your Ma and/or Pops, watching them revert back to whatever college delinquents they were, this is the show for you.

Besides, what’s more rock-n-roll than ignoring the looming 9-5 Wednesday morning wake-up call to go to a show?

Live a little, Live loud – Bodhi.

Categories
Classic Album Review

Kravitz and Cree: “Street Faërie”

album cover for "Street Faerie," by Cree Summer (1999)

If any album can convince you to get a belly button piercing, it’s going to be this one.

Most of us know Cree Summer as the raspy-voiced woman behind our childhood cartoons as “Numbah Five” from “Codename: Kids Next Door,” or Susie Meyerson from “Rugrats” amongst many others.

My Gen X-ers know Summer as the ever-spunky Freddie on “A Different World.”

However, my favorite incarnation is the scratchy and soulful singer of the here-and-then-gone 1999 album “Street Faërie.”

Summer’s lyrics walk the line between fresh and cynical, intimate and erotic, poetic and plainspoken in a way that feels almost reminiscent of Erykah Badu’s work.

She effortlessly weaves that earth-mother-barefoot-beauty with a decidedly tough, no-nonsense sensibility.

“Street Faërie” was produced by Lenny Kravitz, whose fingerprints are sonically all over the album.

From lush arrangements to backing vocals, he added tangible shape and color to Summer’s vision.

Forget Don Henley and Stevie Nicks; Kravitz and Summer create auditory leather and lace together.

Her vocals are equal parts delicate and forceful, uniquely free of her signature spoken rasp, whereas his guitar has that tell-tale driven ’90s crunch laced with powerfully ’70s swagger.

While the album reeks of what I can only imagine is Lenny Kravit’s spicy cologne, it feels like a disservice to dismiss it as his pet project as some reviewers have.

As far as content goes, it’s all Summer – from “Curious White Boy” to “Naheo,” she pulls from her reality to find the beauty in mundanity.

Her songs run the gamut from interracial dating to period sex, each one handled with a deeply personal intimacy that brings the listener deeper into a wonderland entirely of her making.

Despite what the title may suggest, the whimsical “Street Faërie” keeps both feet firmly planted in reality.

– Bodhi

Categories
Concert Review Festival Coverage Miscellaneous Music News and Interviews

Outlaw Music Festival 2024: Cheers to the Old Gods and the New.

We’re witnessing the musical changing of the guard and it could not be a more excitingly bittersweet time to love music.

The 2024 line-up for the Outlaw Music Festival was nothing short of legendary rolling into Raleigh’s Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek; Celisse, Alisson Krause & Robert Plant, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson all taking the stage.

But as best laid plans are apt to do, the line up fell through.

The danger, you see, is in relying on octo- and nonagenarians for your entertainment is the general precarity of old age.

Friday, June 21st Willie Nelson’s team released a statement announcing the country singer’s departure from four of the ensuing tour dates due to medical concerns.

In his place, son Lukas Nelson and the Nelson Family Band stepped in with an abridged tribute set.

But it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to let the younger Nelson take the stage in his father’s wake.

If anything, it reaffirmed what we already knew about Willie’s songs — they’re timeless country-western staples for a reason.

And more importantly, Lukas Nelson is far too talented to stay in his father’s shadow.

Freed from the albatross of an elderly father, Nelson’s voice quite literally soared through the shortened tribute set – simply put, he sounded like his father for a new age.

Waffling between original compositions and Willie-standards, Nelson was able to effortlessly bridge the divide between new fans and old, bouncing between the soulful growl present on Promise of The Real track “Find Yourself” to his father’s signature warble on songs like “Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain.”

Speaking of soul, I would be remiss not to mention one of the freshest faces amongst the lineup: Celisse.

The Oakland born singer and guitarist easily won over unsure and unfamiliar audiences with more than just sweet talk and charm, she won them over with her sound.

Bombastic in every sense of the word, her belt and her shred equally silenced the normally rowdy “lawnies” of Coastal Credit Union – her cover of Bill Withers’ “Use Me” met with earthshaking applause and shouts.

For a woman who has been making music for well over a decade, touring as supporting acts for some of the biggest acts in folk and easy listening rock both old and new – Brandi Carlisle and Joni Mitchell, to name a few – I have a sneaking suspicion that Outlaw Music Festival is only the beginning of her just desserts.

So yes, Bob Dylan and Robert Plant were once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list artists to see, but perhaps more importantly, I walked away with not just hope, but a feverish excitement to see what the next wave of Americana, Soul and whatever-the-hell-else-you-want-to-call-it will be.

Long story short, it is sad to see the old god’s fade away, but my god, I cannot wait to see the nebulous eruptions of the new.

– Bodhi

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Concert Review Miscellaneous Music News and Interviews

Justin Timberlake and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Oh, Justin Timberlake.

It’s been a rough year or so hasn’t it, bud?

From Brittany’s slightly dubious tell all to an ill-fated romp in the Hamptons, he’s has had a tough go of it as of late.

And my, what a sight to see.

Celebrity implosions, especially of such long standing figures, are always a spectacle – but I’ve yet to see one that reeks of desperation quite like Timberlake’s.

From the hallowed halls of the Mickey Mouse Club to Gen X thirst trap World Tours, Timberlake has a knack for keeping himself in the spotlight.

For better or worse, the common man has a half-baked notion of what — or rather, who — he is.

But there’s something that feels different about this latest scandal.

Perhaps it’s because I had the pleasure of seeing him at PNC Arena a week before his DUI.

Or maybe it’s the comical coverage of the incident — considering the pouty celebrity mugshot, perp walk and the beautifully oblivious cop making the arrest.

Either way you spin it, there’s something distinctly and pitifully funny about Timberlake’s snafu.

Rockstars and rappers go through their own legal issues and brushes with the law, but when it happens to a pop star, people pay attention.

Even more so to someone of Timberlake’s caliber.

For people 35 and over, he’s been a tried and true standard for a large part of American pop-culture.

From childhood to adulthood, he’s been a prominent spotlight feature, and he’s desperately grasping at the edge of the stage as he’s being played out.

As far as the soundscape of popular culture goes, he’s by and far left behind.

His stage show proves it to, sadly: asses really only left seats for old standards like “Sexy Back,” “Suit and Tie” and “Cry Me A River” — even more so for the throwback reliant DJ opener.

Not to besmirch the opening band, but there’s something wrong with your act if more people are amped for a DJ playing the dancehall classics of yesterday than your set.

Consistently, he’s released albums every four to five years since 2002. Yet, his sound hardly changes.

Since he’s left NSYNC, the only evolution I can truly see is a semi-annual media scandal of either infidelity or inebriation.

When your entire career is based upon the affection of young girls, what happens when those girls grow up?

What happens when you grow up?

Somewhere within the pandering, paltry pastiche of the “Forget Tomorrow” world tour and the relatively tame release “Everything I Thought I Was,” you’ll find the answer.

It was a good show, don’t get me wrong.

Justin Timberlake is an entertainer first and foremost, to which he most certainly delivered.

But as the times catch up with the now 43-year old, fading pop star, the whirling dervish of past and present controversy seems to loom large over him.

From Britney to Janet, inebriation, infidelity and unknown world tours, perhaps Timberlake should take to the mirror himself and truly reckon with his next steps.

Because let’s be fair, humoring an aging audience in flights of fantasy feels like a desperate cash-grab preying on the hardwired need of women past a certain age to feel relevant — to feel important.

In a world where artists are more accessible than ever, feeling more real than ever, the thin line between artifice and artistry has never been more apparent.

And artists who are unwilling to step beyond their predestined imagery are not only doing their audiences a disservice, they are doing one to themselves.

The official “Mirrors” music video from Justin Timberlake’s official YouTube Vevo page.

-Bodhi

Categories
Miscellaneous Music Education

“Burning Down the Haus:” Punk Rock, Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Oppression is a funny thing, but then again so are humans – the more your press and restrain a spirit, the stronger it grows.

East Berlin was no different.

Pirate Radio blossoms across the airwaves, ringing throughout the darkened corners of tenements and squats – The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, The Clash, Buzzcocks, and Ian Drury burst through the wall with a blast of pure, unadulterated adrenaline.

It was a shockwave to the restricted, highly controlled world of the DDR, a select group of kids saw their break in the clouds to build a new reality from the ground – or rather, boots up.

Beyond adopting the leather, studs and ‘can-do’ d.i.y. spirit of the movement, these kids began to form bands – circulating outside contraband and inside underground paraphernalia within a loosely organized, but painfully tightknit community across the DDR far beyond East Berlin.

Tim Mohr chronicles the burgeoning punk movement within the DDR from the first girl to spike her hair to the fall of the wall and the birth of Krautrock through “Burning Down the Haus.”

More than glimpse behind the Iron Curtain, Mohr paints a moving portrait of rebellion and reinvention in life or death situations, a revelation spurred on by chains and spikes.

When I first read this post, I wasn’t in a really good place; I was struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to find the drive to keep pushing forward in a world that feels exceedingly futile. In many ways, this book helped me see beauty in the human experience again.

These kids were angry, and rightfully so, but they found hope for a better world within their anger.

They turned that anger into action, they turned life itself into an act of defiance.

These young punks weren’t just surviving the impossible, they made an active choice to live in the face of inscrutable danger.

Beyond the music, beyond the fashion, beyond the shows and squats that’s what stuck with me long after reading – and I hope it will stick with you too.

For those of you looking for an auditory companion to the listening experience, the “Too Much Future” compilation album of DDR punk from 1980-1989 is what I found most aligned with the reading.

Be forewarned, the material is explicit…but if you’re expecting kisses from grandma on a punk album, I can’t help you.

– Bodhi

Categories
New Album Review

Jesse Daniel Sings My Kind of Country

Album Cover for "Countin' The Miles" by Jesse Daniel

Indie-Country-Outlaw Jesse Daniel comes out of the gate swinging with 2024 release “Countin’ The Miles.”

I have had the distinct pleasure of seeing Daniel and Co. in Dunn, NC last year to which he did not disappoint, and this album is no different.

A Coastal California cowboy of his own making, Daniel revels in an artful preservation of the country sound, an amalgamation of genre conventions everywhere from Buck Owens to Waylon Jennings.

Simply put, Jesse Daniel makes damn good country.

That being said, Daniel is a live artist through and through – the album is good, but it pales in comparison to what he and his band are able to accomplish on stage.

Tracks like “Golden State Rambler” and “Cut Me Loose” are fun, driving tunes – but something is missing from them.

The chicken-picking on “Cut Me Loose” is jaw dropping in a decidedly Jerry Reed manner, but cut on a slick digital master feels slightly hollow.

Some music needs the grit of a tape, some music needs an amp’s fuzz or the shuffle of a crowd to truly sing and I think that’s the case for Jesse Daniel’s latest effort.

It’s a good album, it’s a danceable album – but it’s too clean, it’s too good.

A hardscrabble man in his own right, Daniel cut his teeth drumming in punk bands before falling into a spiral of addiction and brushes with the law.

The tumult of his past lends itself to a genuine, hard earned grit absent from most mainstream country, but he loses that edge in the utter perfection that “Countin’ The Miles” is.

“Countin’ The Miles” may be some of his finest songwriting to date and his band has never sounded cleaner, but as a long-time listener it only feels like the tip of the iceberg as far as his music is concerned.

This album is a perfect first foray into not only his catalogue but the genre itself; approachable and digestible, Daniels makes no qualms about what he’s there do to.

But Jesse Daniel is an artist who needs to be seen – or rather heard – to be believed.

So strap on your dancing boots and go find him at a honky tonk…or for those of us more locationally challenged, I suppose his live album “My Kind of Country Live at the Catalyst” will have to do.

– Bodhi.

Categories
Miscellaneous Playlists

Reel-to-Reel Presents: “Club Paradise”

Official Music Video for “Ape Man” by The Kinks from YouTube.

Because it looms large over this movie, we’re getting it out of the way right now: I miss Robin Williams, too.

Released in 1986, “Club Paradise” is an incredibly fun and equally incredibly cynical film, despite what critical reception may suggest.

Trailer for “Club Paradise” from YouTube.

Directed by Harold Ramis and written alongside Brian Doyle-Murray, “Club Paradise” follows retired Chicago fire fighter Jack Moniker in his attempts to turn a seedy club in a troubled former banana republic into a destination resort.

Supporting William’s wayward fireman is Jimmy Cliff as Ernest Reed, the reggae-singing bandleader of the club, and Peter O’Toole as the former colonial governor of the island.

With Cliff and O’Toole acting as relative “straight men” against the unfettered energy of Williams, the three are released upon an equally chaotic supporting cast of vacationers including the likes of Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin and Twiggy.

“Club Paradise” by Jimmy Cliff from YouTube

With the film being so openly on “Island Time,” the soundtrack revels in reggae and reggae-inspired rock, especially leaning on the talents of the under-appreciated Jimmy Cliff.

With songs written for the film, namely the titular “Club Paradise,” Cliff’s crooning is written into the film as musical numbers within the club.

Beyond the delectably ’80s reggae, the film also pulls from a variety of Caribbean acts like The Mighty Sparrow from Grenada but also more colonial influences from England with Elvis Costello and The Kinks.

“Seven Day Weekend” by Elvis Costello & The Attractions and Jimmy Cliff from YouTube

While there is most certainly a deeper socio-economic analysis you could do of the film’s politics around rejuvenating a downtrodden island, and the smell of neocolonialism lingers around every corner, that’s really not the point of the film — it’s a fun movie set in a pretty location.

We all know the real motive behind the film — a paid vacation on a tropical island and a tax write off — but that’s alright with me.

So turn off your brain and take a mental vacation to Club Paradise — you won’t regret it.

Reel-to-Reel airs every Friday starting at 8 a.m. only on WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1, Raleigh, NC.

No man is an island – Bodhi

Categories
Miscellaneous Music Education Non-Music News

Shaken Nerves and Rattled Brains – “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind”

Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at his piano at a tilted back angle with a foot propped against the keys.
Poster for "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind" directed by Ethan Coen

Every rockstar has their peccadillos and predilections, but very few have eclipsed the trouble conjured by Jerry Lee Lewis.

From drunken rages, pill-induced furies, mysterious deaths and all around rambunctious activity — Jerry Lee Lewis was a man possessed — in every sense of the word.

Released in 2022, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” presents Ethan Coen’s attempt at reconciling the man’s frankly tricky legacy with his indelible, foundational rock and roll.

A scant 73-minutes long, the documentary is entirely comprised of archival material: television footage, photographs and recordings all championing the wild man of rock. In other words, it’s one hell of a highlight reel.

Beyond the obligatory 70s Johnny Carson appearances, Coen keeps the private and intimate life of the Lewis house just that — private.

There’s no mass-reckoning with the man behind the piano and there’s no unmasking of “Killer” — it’s a portrait of Jerry Lee Lewis as the piano shaking, party making pioneer — no more and no less.

Honestly, I expected more from Coen on his solo debut, a tricky story told by a filmmaker who seems to revel in the trick.

The juxtaposition between the sane and insane — or rather, the insane and mundane — that makes the Coen Brothers’ films so enticing is noticeably absent in this first-person portrayal of Lewis’ meteoric rise, fall and unlikely return from the ashes time and time again.

If anything, Coen seems to pull his punches towards Lewis, falling back on the routine excuse: “It was a different time.”

In conversation surrounding the scandalous marriage to 13-year-old cousin Myra Brown, Coen and his team seemingly absolve Lewis of fault.

By the age of 22, Lewis had already been married twice, the first of which happening just after his sixteenth birthday.

While there’s no blanket statement absolving Lewis of his sins, the inclusion of the factoid is eyebrow-raising in comparison to his child bride.

Similarly, his notorious temper is treated with similar grace; a violent feud with Elvis boils down to nothing more than career misgivings and undo praise no different than Little Richard and James Brown with no mention of Lewis’ drunken threat to shoot Presley while on a visit to Graceland.

Similarly, one of the many incidents of gun violence against his band members is only mentioned in a brief talk show appearance and largely written off as just another legendary quirk.

For a man of such scandalous, tabloid-type character, Coen seems to skirt much of it for reason’s I’m not quite sure of.

It’s a good film and a highly entertaining watch, but that’s where the buck stops with “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.”

Coen isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or run a mass expose on Lewis; he’s simply spotlighting the tour-de-force of the pioneering rocker.

For fans willing to brush aside their personal quibbles and those who are new to the spectacle of Jerry Lee Lewis, Coen’s documentary is a wonderful, cursory glance at the life of a legend.

– Bodhi

Categories
Band/Artist Profile Classic Album Review

Chicks Dig Squeeze And So Should You

Cover for "Argybargy" by Squeeze

I never thought Squeeze would be a divisive band, but I thought wrong.

Whenever the band appears in conversation, it’s accompanied by a chorus of groans.

According to a certain subset of the population, Squeeze is a girl’s band.

Did the band garner an audience of young women? Of course they did; they were halfway decent-looking young men singing love songs.

But how does that change the sonic validity of a group?

Historically, teenage girls have always been on the cusp of greatness with who gets their fandom.

Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, Duran Duran, Madonna and Taylor Swift all captured teenage imaginations and were partially propelled to stardom because of it.

Now, we socially recognize the legitimacy of some of these artists as important to the fabric of pop-culture, but that was only until they gained a more adult audience.

So, what makes Squeeze different?

They ran in the same circles as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, being produced by the former and the latter appearing on 1981’s “Tempted” and “There’s no Tomorrow” and 1982’s “Black Coffee in Bed.”

The Official Music Video for “Tempted” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
Audio for “There’s No Tomorrow’ by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.
The Official Music Video for “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze from the Squeeze YouTube page.

Argybargy:

For all intents and purposes, they ran with a cool crowd and played cool music. But because of their designation as a radio pop band for teenagers, they lost their luster.

I was going through my own record collection, and I stumbled upon my beat up copy of “Argybargy,” the band’s third studio album released in 1980 – and I fell in love.

It was a dollar bin lark because I liked “Pulling Muscles (From the Shell)” — a slightly dirty ditty about naughty diversions at the beach — but I never really listened to it until I pulled it from the stacks.

And goddamn was it good.

With “Argybargy,” the band enjoyed a brief flash of global domination and to quote Chris Jones of the BBC, “If you’re going to own at least one Squeeze album, this has to be the one.”

It’s jazzy, it’s fun, there’s almost a doo-wop flair to the dueling vocals of Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford and there’s a delightfully working class flair to the stories they tell — even with inconsistent songs — across the board it was a fun listen.

The album did well; they found an audience as young and spunky as their sound and they found their stride – good for them, because other bands would kill for a glimpse of that success.

So yeah, chicks dig squeeze (this chick certainly does) and maybe you should, too.

Perhaps we put too much weight on how popularity affects the “coolness” of something — a prevalent WKNC conversation — but I beg that something is popular for a reason…

You can call Squeeze whatever you want — New Wave, Pop, Airheaded-Teenie-Bopper-Love-Songs — whatever you want, but if the music sounds good and the band is respected by contemporaries, maybe we should respect it, too.

– Bodhi

Categories
Classic Album Review Music Education

Power on Dylan, or: The Power of Dylan

Cover for "Sings Dylan" by Cat Power

A look at “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.”

By 1966, Bob Dylan and his apostolic audience were at odds and that tension boiled to a head during one pivotal set at Manchester Free Trade Hall, not the misbilled Royal Albert Hall.

In 2022, Cat Power brought Dylan’s words back home, this time in the right venue.

Power, the notorious alternative folk songstress of ’90s acclaim, while known for being obtuse and inaccessible, feels remarkably accessible in this recording.

Released in 2023, as far as cover albums go – which she is no stranger to – this one is almost painfully straightforward.

Equal parts faithful reconstruction and self-aware reimagining of Dylan’s last supper, the album playfully tugs at the frayed edges of folk’s second death knell – Farcically, Dylan had already “killed” folk alongside Mike Bloomfield the year before at the 1965 Manchester Folk Festival.

Following the set song by song right down to the acoustic/electric split half-way through, Power effortlessly waltzes between her own delicate, ghost-like phrasing and Dylan’s nasally-spoken slide.

But as a listener, I’m not entirely sure what keeps Powers back from the precipice of empty pantomime she teeters on.

If anything, “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” feels reverential to the point of becoming defanged.

Whether it be the mix or the crowd, there’s a heavy silence that hangs over both the acoustic and electric portions of the album, miles away from Dylan’s caustic bite and his audience’s simmering discontent.

Warning: This Clip Contains Explicit Content.
Bob Dylan’s 1966 “Judas” Incident from YouTube.

It’s a beautiful album and a wonderful showcase of both Power’s vocal stylings and Dylan’s lyricism but it feels empty above all else.

The moment is too self-aware, too self-referential.

Her audience sits in rapt attention, intimately acquainted with each dip and turn of the score, even attempting to recreate the “Judas” moment…only for it to be on the wrong song.

It’s Power’s response to the Judas heckle that says everything about the auspices this project was conceived under; “No, Jesus,” she responded dryly before launching into a haunted rendition of “Ballad of a Thin Man.”

We all know what that moment meant for the future of music, for the folk messiah to betray the movement he helmed…it changed everything – and that is the albatross that hangs around Power’s neck throughout the set.

Because we know now what that concert meant and what he means to music, we can’t possibly recreate it in earnest – it’s holy, now…it’s larger than us.

But it shouldn’t have been.

“Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” is a wonderfully accessible foray into Bob Dylan’s discography and the stylings of Cat Power. But beyond a well mixed, well arranged reproduction, Power doesn’t bring anything new or fresh into the conversation.

A good cover album, which, technically this is, should expand upon the material or revive the energy that captured audiences originally – and from where I stand, Power dropped the ball on both.

When in doubt, play it loud – Bodhi