Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

Roy Rogers was kind enough to answer a few questions for Listen & Be Heard about his participation on The Hot Spot soundtrack in 1990. Our e-mail discussion is presented below in its question-and-answer format.
LISTEN & BE HEARD: The music for The Hot Spot all sounds spontaneous and live. The John Lee Hooker biography [...]

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One of my favorite musician biographies is Boogie Man by Charles Shaar Murray. The titular character is, and could only be, former Vallejo resident John Lee Hooker. Murray’s book is sequenced like a really cool mix CD: while not always presented chronologically, its narrative presents Hooker’s journey from living in Mississippi, moving to [...]

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L&BH’s Cyndi Combs was kind enough to e-mail me information regarding this year’s North Beach Jazz Festival, held this past July 26-30. I was interested in Saturday’s “World In The Park” segment of the festival; however, I was unable to attend it.
I was particularly intrigued by a San Francisco-based jam band on Saturday’s [...]

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Last week someone threw a copy of Hood Rebel by E.B. Daddy Of Da Hood into my backyard. Whether a gift from the music review gods or a throw-back from a listener expecting something different, this CD immediately became number one on my to-do list. I took it into the house and wondered [...]

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A hot week. “Sweaty and cranky” is never a good combination for listening to CDs followed by writing a review of the music; regardless, I ventured toward the stack of CDs on my shelf to pick one that might fool me into believing the current temperature had been lowered a few dozen degrees. [...]

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Listening to music, one learns to move beyond focusing on the singer or soloist and to pay attention to whether the band is playing “with” or “at” each other. This focus is at the center of listening to that jazz moment of truth known as the piano trio. The best-known trios seem to work [...]

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I was ten yards away from the Listen & Be Heard Poetry Café, on my way to pick up a new CD to review, when the woman walking ahead of me turned around and asked whether she could give me her card. I told her I could always use another card; she gave hers [...]

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Markus James and the Wassonrai performed in People’s Park on June 3, 2006 as part of the Berkeley World Music Festival. I was there, standing in a spot somewhere between the band on stage in front of me and the pickup basketball game on the court behind me. Any curiosity of mine regarding the [...]

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While driving home from this year’s Berkeley World Music Festival, I kept replaying in my mind the music I had heard earlier by Markus James. I was not familiar with his music prior to that afternoon, which probably made its impact on me all the stronger. His music is based in both the blues [...]

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About ten years ago I had an idea to put together a band called The Hip Waders and do a series of unannounced gigs at bait shops. All band members would, of course, wear hip waders. I had a lot of free time on my hands back then.
Fortunately, the trio who performs as [...]

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Maybe, as Gil Scott-Heron once sang, the revolution will not be televised (ah, those pre-CNN days…), but its musical aspects are downloaded from the Internet on a daily basis. As an once-alternative-now-mainstream way to hear, share, and sell music, this revolution has moved from the early days of mp3.com to file-sharing sites like Napster [...]

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[The following is from a transcription of an exclusive interview by the Faux News Network, whose motto is “We report, you decided long ago not to question anything we say.” This transcription was found in a dumpster near their corporate offices; at this time, the interview has not been broadcast.]
Interviewer: Mr. President, your approval [...]

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Page nine of Lewis Buzbee’s new memoir/history of bookstores, The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, was where he had me hooked. It is where he begins to describe one of his visits to a bookstore, a visit brought on by nothing more than the want of a new book. He calls it “book lust.” [...]

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Recently going through a drawer filled with cassettes, I found one containing KPFA’s broadcast of the first gig by Angela Wellman & New Roots at the 2002 Vallejo Jazz Festival. I had been listening to the festival’s music on my car radio before Ms. Wellman’s band began playing; once home, I grabbed a blank [...]

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Consider the groove. Think of the kind of music that gets a group of listeners to nod/tap/shake their collective heads/feet/booties. Think of this music as a spiritual communion, a sharing with those making the sound and those hearing it. Think of the essence of this music: a steady and solid rhythmic base, [...]

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