Music Reviews (Index)
Please click on the “READ MORE” option below to see the artists whose work I have reviewed.
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Please click on the “READ MORE” option below to see the artists whose work I have reviewed.
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Posted by: Jae-Ha Kim
Category: Go Away With..., Interviews, Music
Tags: "Bad Blood", "Music of my Life", Breakers Palm Beach Hotel, Cecconi's, Chilean sea bass, Czech Republic, Dorchester Hotel, foie gras, Hawaii, Kahala Hotel & Resort, La Caprice, Le Cirque, Monkey Bar, Mr. Chow, Peninsula Hotel, Poland, Romania, Wa Sushi & Bistro, Wajima
Music legend Neil Sedaka is back on the road performing concerts to promote his latest album, “Music of My Life.” Based out of New York and Los Angeles, the 71-year-old singer-songwriter loves to travel, whether it’s a family vacation to Hawaii or a staycation in his beloved Big Apple. Next on his list of places he’d like to visit? “It seems I’ve been everywhere, but I’ve never been to Eastern Europe,” Sedaka says. “(I’d like to travel to) Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania one day.”
Posted by: Jae-Ha Kim
Category: Books, Interviews, Music
Tags: "How to Walk Away", "When I Grow Up", anorexia, Blake Babies, Juliana Hatfield
During the 1990s, Juliana Hatfield was the It Girl for alternative rock. More accessible and cooler than Courtney Love, Hatfield had a knack for penning clever songs with her group Blake Babies. She was an indie sensation that girls wanted to emulate and boys wanted to date. What her fans didn’t know was that Hatfield was battling both an eating disorder and depression. She contemplated jumping out a window — not, she says, to commit suicide, but so that she could escape her depression.
Posted by: Jae-Ha Kim
Category: Books, Interviews, Music
Tags: "At Seventeen", "Society's Child", Janis Ian
Four decades before 15-year-old Miley Cyrus caused a media uproar for posing for photographs that implied she was nude, Janis Ian — then also 15 — wrote the critically acclaimed song “Society’s Child.” A thoughtful look at interracial dating, the song was deemed too controversial to play on many radio stations across the country. A few years later, Ian would become a pop star, thanks to her best-known song, “At Seventeen,” which told the universal tale, “Dreams were all they gave for free, to ugly duckling girls like me.”
Though Beyonce Knowles has earned fame as an actress and a spokesmodel, she is first and foremost a singer, as she showcases in the entertaining concert film The Beyonce Experience Live. Polished, effortlessly glamorous, and a strong showman, Knowles is the Diana Ross of the 21st century. The singer-songwriter is equally comfortable belting out a rocking dancing number or crooning a heart-wrenching ballad.
For all intents and purposes, Noel and Liam Gallagher are Oasis. So in Oasis: Lord Don’t Slow Me Down, it doesn’t really matter that the rest of the band (which includes Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums) wasn’t in the lineup when the group made it big in 1995 with songs such as “Wonderwall.” The two-disc DVD offers a documentary as well as a concert filmed in the group’s native Manchester, England, in 2005. In its heyday, Oasis was at the top of its game.
Thirty-one years after Heart released its breakthrough album “Dreamboat Annie,” the Seattle-based band has made a DVD companion to that record. The concert performance for “Heart: Dreamboat Annie Live” was recorded in April 2007 at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles. The rest of the DVD includes documentaries on the band, along with interviews with Ann and Nancy Wilson–the sisters who are Heart.
Released more than a decade past its peak in popularity, Pearl Jam proves it still has what it takes to captivate an audience with the concert film Immagine in Cornice. Culled from footage taken throughout the band’s 2006 tour of Italy, the film captures the preternaturally youthful Eddie Vedder mesmerizing audiences with his full, rich voice.
Posted by: Jae-Ha Kim
Category: Music
Tags: "The Bangles: Return to Bangleonia", girl groups, Susanna Hoffs, The Bangles
During their career peak in the mid- to late 1980s, the Bangles were so famous that Saturday Night Live’s Dennis Miller was parodying lead singer Susanna Hoffs’ precious sideways glance. “The Bangles: Return to Bangleonia” is the female quartet’s live concert offering. But oddly enough, it isn’t a gig from that era, but rather a concert recorded in 2000 at the House of Blues in Hollywood.
Posted by: Jae-Ha Kim
Tags: "Only Happy When It Rains", Absolute Garbage, Butch Vig, Garbage, Shirley Manon
Released in conjunction with a CD of the same name, Absolute Garbage is a collection of 15 music videos from the rock band Garbage. Fronted by Shirley Manson, whose smooth and distinctive voice is equally adept at purring as it is growling, the group also includes drummer Butch Vig, guitarist Steve Marker, and bassist Duke Erikson. But make no mistake about it: The visuals are all about the photogenic Manson.