Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

Consider J. Alfred Prufrock not as a fictional character from a T.S. Eliot poem but as a CD reviewer. Let us go then, you and I, and make our way through this spring cleaning of recently purchased CDs for review, using Prufrock’s narrative from his one and only love song to describe other music. [...]

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“Chavez Ravine” by Ry Cooder
During a recent conversation, I listened while one of the participants described the process of choosing a restaurant specializing in food of a particular ethnic group. It began with a description of always checking the clientele and staff to determine whether to eat the food (large numbers of both elements [...]

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“Getting To Know…Bad Blood” by Bad Blood
DATELINE LOUISVILLE, KY, FIRST WEEK OF MARCH 2007: I was bicycling down Bardstown Road with local artist Noah Church, whose outstanding paintings are currently on display at that street’s hookah bar known as Café 360 (we stopped there to see them, along with the mural he painted on the [...]

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“Slavin’ Over A Hot Girlle” by Medeas Kitchen
Some CDs, unfortunately, have a way of falling through the proverbial cracks. 2000’s “Slavin’ Over A Hot Girlle” by the Vallejo and neighboring cities’ band Medeas Kitchen is one of them.
The apostrophe-free band name may or may not refer to the woman from ancient Greek myth who [...]

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“Ornette” by Ornette Coleman
One of the truly surreal moments of this year’s Grammy Awards broadcast was Carrie Underwood accepting her Best New Artist award from Natalie Cole and Ornette Coleman. Ornette COLEMAN? He was on the program to accept a lifetime achievement award, which gave the audience the rarest of treats: the [...]

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“Bookin’ At The Library” by the Leo Cavanaugh Trio
The appropriately-named Bob Dylan bootleg recording known as “Stealin’” ends with a song titled “The Cough Song.” It is a guitar and harmonica instrumental piece that abruptly stops at the point where Dylan begins to cough, followed by someone’s laughter. Dylan mentions that the cough [...]

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I first became aware of Chris, Dan, and Darius Brubeck in 1978. I had turned on the television to watch whatever was on PBS and found a documentary on the making of the “Two Generations of Brubeck” recording. The program included music and profiles of the above-mentioned brothers and their father Dave. THAT [...]

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Joy Harjo’s recent CD, �She Had Some Horses,� provides witness to the contemporary arcs of Native story. It is a spoken version of a book first published in 1984 with a few extra musical tracks from her recent CD, �Native Joy for Real.� Through her voice, singing or talking poem stories, I felt affirmed as [...]

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“Inside Out” by Hans York and “The Dance Goes On” by The Volker Strifler Band will remind even the most casual listener of other songs and other artists; this aspect, unfortunately, is not a strength for either recording.
York’s 2005 release “Inside Out” features his primarily modal acoustic guitar work accompanied by bass, keyboards, [...]

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The maxim “Form is just an extension of content” is attributed to the late American poet Robert Creeley, whose poetic forms were usually short, precise, and direct. He was a contemporary of the Beat and Black Mountain College groups of poets, mostly affiliated with fellow Black Mountain poet Robert Olson. Creeley’s work habits [...]

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Ezra Pound�s greatest contribution to 20th Century literature may have been his three-word declaration regarding writing: �Make it new.� Had Pound lived in contemporary times, he probably would have presented his poetry in a format similar to Bob Dylan�s oeuvre (an ironic comparison, given Pound�s anti-Semitism), using guitars, a band, and a constant reworking [...]

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Joni Mitchell wrote a song titled “Amelia” that contained a line about one’s life becoming “a travelogue of picture postcard charms.” I think I am beginning to understand what she meant.
Last week, for example, my wife and I decided to spend a few days in Pacific Grove. While having breakfast on the second [...]

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�Sunrise In New York� by Kevan Leonard Carter
�Stealth Jazz� by Muziki Roberson
�Respect Movement� by King Wawa
I do not know much about hockey but I am aware of the term �hat trick,� used whenever a player scores three goals in a game and usually accompanied by fans throwing their hats onto the ice. Here, [...]

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One rarely hears much about the actor Harry Dean Stanton these days. A shame. His career reached its peak during the mid-1980s with his roles as the prodigal red cap-wearing brother in Paris, Texas and the one of the titular characters (and �character� is an understatement: each of his scenes was an explosion [...]

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Recently I got a voicemail message from my friend Ray, who was taking an extended road trip on his way to his sister�s house in Indiana. �I�m standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona,� he said, �where there�s a statue of Jackson Browne and people are having their picture taken next to it, like [...]

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