Nowhere Man

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/nowhere-man/

Take It As It Comes

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years by Greil Marcus.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/take-it-as-it-comes/

Living in the Past

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll by Mark Edmundson.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/living-in-the-past/

It Don't Come Easy

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Fire and Rain: The Beatles, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970 by David Browne.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/it-dont-come-easy/

Mr. Tambourine Man

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/mr-tambourine-man/

Running Down a Dream

Click on the orange link below to read a review of 33 Days: Touring in a Van. Sleeping on Floors. Chasing a Dream. by Bill See.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/runnin-down-a-dream/

It Won't Be Long

Click on the orange link below to read a review of the YA fantasy novel The Girl Who Became a Beatle by Greg Taylor.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/it-wont-be-long/

Life is What Happens

Click on the orange link below to read an interview with John M. Borack, the author of John Lennon: Life Is What Happens.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/life-is-what-happens/

On the Road Again

Click on the orange link below to read a review of the rock memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon by Robert Hilburn.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/glory-days-2/

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Click on the orange link below to read a review of When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus (Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/when-i-paint-my-masterpiece/

Silence is as Good as Gold

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise by Garret Keizer.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/silence-is-golden/

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles. Fun or overly scholarly? (You might be surprised.)

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/yeah-yeah-yeah/

Into the Mystic

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Greil Marcus' book When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/into-the-mystic/

Just like Romeo and Juliet...

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/juliet-naked-by-nick-hornby/

Catch a rising jazz star in Sacramento on Wednesday, June 17th!

Ava Lemert is a jazz star on her way up and you'll have a chance to catch her headlining a show at Harlow's nightclub in downtown Sacramento on the evening of Wednesday, June 17th. This show begins at 8:00 p.m.

Ava is a singer, saxophonist - both tenor and alto - and song writer who offers the listener a lot of variety in her work. You might find her covering Alicia Keyes' "If I Ain't Got You," or singing classics like "Summertime" or "Over the Rainbow," or her jazz-rock-soul renditions of "Just One Look" and "More Today Than Yesterday."

It looks like a fun time will be had by all, and I'm hoping that Ava will find it in her Beatles-loving heart to throw in a jazzed up cover of a tune by Those Guys. "All My Loving" anyone?

For more information, go to the website listed below or contact Ava by e-mail at: ava@avalemert.com .

http://www.avalemert.com/

Ladies of the Canyon: A Review of the book Girls Like Us

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller

This is, quite simply, a fabulous book about the careers of three key singer-songwriter-musicians of the '60s and '70s and beyond; and the three just happened to be women. There was a big surprise for me in the reading, as I had read earlier that author Weller interviewed both Carly Simon and Carole King. She did not have the opportunity to directly interact with Joni Mitchell.

Based on this, I fully expected this to be a book strong in details about Carly and Carole, and weak on information about Joni. This was not the case... As someone else said, Weller spoke to virtually every musician, friend and intimate in Joni's life and it shows!

The next surprise is that I was sure the tales of Carly and Joni would sizzle like steak fajitas, while Carole's life story would sit to the side like a bland order of re-fried beans. Instead, both Joni and Carole come off as fascinating early hippie-earth mothers, who happened to be blessed with both tremendous intelligence and natural musical skills. (Despite my initial doubts, Weller fully and effectively makes the case for Carole's stature in modern rock and music history.)

Carly, sadly, comes off as a patrician - daughter of the extremely wealthy founder of Simon and Schuster - who married a fellow patrician. This, of course, was James Taylor, whose father ran the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "James was a... lifelong-privilege man."

Here, Carly's career appears to be a product of social connections, luck (she was often said to be the least talented of the singing Simon Sisters trio) and blatant use of her long-legged sex appeal. "(There was) a sex-teasing leitmotif in every one of Carly's early albums."

Also, a lot of Carly's story is devoted to James' drug use and abuse; a topic that simply does not make for interesting reading. The days of wine and roses, this is not. Concerning Carly's patrician status, Jac Holzman, founder and president of Electra Records said that he and the singer "were from similar backgrounds - haute Jewish New York, although she was certainly more Brahmin."

Further, Weller notes that Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone wrote of Carly with-faint-praise-turned-full: "She has the whitest of white voices and uses it well, singing... with her faultless enunciation. Her almost literal note-for-note phrasing of songs is... ingenuous."

Weller has to be given props for finding the fascinating details you won't find in other musician/band bios. I'll provide just one example here... Weller writes of a young man who cleaned apartments in the Bronx in return for using the occupants' pianos. While most immigrant families managed to scrimp and save enough to purchase a piano, this young Italian immigrant's family was just too poor to do so. We came to know him as Bobby Darin, and one of the tenement flats he regularly cleaned belonged to the parents of a young woman who came to be called Connie Francis!

Weller may not be quite as talented when it comes to describing the turbulent culture and times of the '60s and '70s, but then this is still a rock and folk-music tale after all and not a pure historical overview. All in all, this is a fabulous read that adds heft to the musical reputations of Joni Mitchell and Carole King, as it somewhat dilutes the career of one Carly Simon.

Images: Amazon, Powell's Books.

Those with a sharp eye...

Those with a sharp eye will note that the photo in the post, below, is labeled as Buffalo Springfield. In fact, it is actually a picture of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Why it has the wrong title, I do not know.

Above is a photograph of the actual Buffalo Springfield.

Photo: flickr (bob3052)