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When I was a kid, some of the older kids in my neighborhood in Queens were making noise about a concert they were going to see at Shea Stadium. Part of the excitement was just the fact that Shea was hosting a concert. And part of it was the band - this amazingly […]

I love music. I love live music. I love lots of live music. I just don’t love it all at once. To me, that’s one of the problems with the big summer music festivals - when the music is coming at you all day and into the evening, it doesn’t matter […]

Music has probably been used as a weapon of war for as long as we’ve waged wars. The Scots marched with their highland pipes and drums because they believed the music would pump up their warriors – and if their enemies got a little freaked out by the sound, well, so much the better. […]

As Alex Ross points out in his recent article in the New Yorker, we’re being increasingly told that China is the future of classical music. The numbers are staggering – 30 million piano and/or violin students (conservatively – more enthusiastic numbers-crunchers say as many as 100 million); conservatories 10 times the size of Juilliard; and […]

So I’m trying to figure out just what I think of live albums. My initial reaction is: not much. At least, not in rock music. If you like an artist or band enough to go see them live, odds are the recording of that very same event just won’t live up to […]

Today’s Smackdown is about Coldplay, but for me, you can’t talk about Coldplay without also talking about Radiohead. 40 years ago it was the Beatles or The Stones. Now it’s Coldplay or Radiohead – two British rock bands with big ambitions, grand ideas, and apparently unlimited time to muck around in the studio. […]

What’s new? Well, a bunch of music venues are new – Drom, Le Poisson Rouge, the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the High Line Ballroom. And there are new locations for some old ones – both Galapagos and the Issue Project Room are moving from their Brooklyn neighborhoods (Williamsburg and Gowanus, respectively) to DUMBO, where […]