Live! (on tape)

Let’s focus on the positives of the music world. Our favorite artists now have more time than ever to create new music. (Unless they lost their day job… or they need to get a day job to make up for lost touring income… welp, that positivity didn’t last long, did it?)

But hey, Lucinda Williams has a new album out today called Good Souls Better Angels, and new Lu is always good news. This record is gritty, greasy, gutsy and guitar-driven. Check it out on Spotify. Read the profile in the NYT. Here’s a track from it called “Man Without a Soul”:

It isn’t difficult to figure out who Lu has in mind with lyrics like this:

You bring nothing good to this world
Beyond a web of cheating and stealing
You hide behind your wall of lies
But it’s coming down, yeah, it’s coming down

Want more new album good news? X has a new album! It’s their first disc in 27 years, and it features the original lineup of John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake (best drummer name ever). Read more about it and stream the entire disc on Slicing Up Eyeballs, a great website for middle aged modern rockers.

The Pretenders also have a cool new song out. Here’s the video:

Liz Longley put on a great show last Friday. It was in Liz’s living room in Pennsylvania, when it was supposed to be in list members Dave & Jacqui’s home in Ft. Thomas, but Dave & Jacqui made the best of it:

An Apple a day

Folks are going cuckoo for the new Fiona Apple album too, and rightfully so. Title track is below, and here’s a lengthy New Yorker profile.

The new releases from Laura Marling, Half Waif, Watkins Family Hour, Peel Dream Machine, The Chats, The Strokes, Lilly Hiatt, Catholic Action, and Why Bonnie are also worth a spin.

Coming up: the usual suspects

I’ll let you fish for yourself on the virtual gigs. NPR, Billboard and several other outlets have a running list of all the shows on the interwebs – YouGram, InstaFace, BookTube, etc. And if you’ve read this blog, you know about most of the standing gigs:

• Grateful Dead Fridays at 8 on their YouTube channel.
• Jesse Malin Saturdays at 4 on YouTube
• Bill Janovitz Saturdays at 4:30 on Facebook
• Josh Ritter does a gig Tuesdays at 8 on YouTube.
• Radiohead streams a concert Thursdays at 5 on YouTube.
• Amanda Shires (with Jason Isbell) does “Iso-Lounging” pretty much every day at 6 on YouTube.
• Rob Fetters plays every weekend on YouTube (link via his website)

Speaking of Mr. Fetters, when he cancelled his gig at Roebling Point Books, they refunded the money that same day. Classy move! We’ve already discussed TicketBastard’s B.S. “refund” policy. Other promoters seem to be following their lead. The National’s Homecoming announced that refunds would be coming “in the next few days” on 4/3, and then on 4/20 there was another email saying we’d get a refund “within 30 days”. C’mon, man, millions of folks are out of work, and you’re going to sit on their hard-earned cash (Homecoming tix were about $120 for the weekend) for months?

Wait, I was supposed to stay positive, wasn’t I? Better fire up The Hold Steady batsignal:

That helped. I’m feeling much better now…

Gigs, interviews, and clips…

Jesse Malin also talks about PMA – Positive Mental Attitude – in this 8-minute interview on WFUV.

Instagram is the worst of the virtual venues… the viewing area is tiny already, and then all the comments cover up half of that area. But this Waxahatchee set is stellar:

Here’s an R.E.M. gig from 1984: https://youtu.be/kRTH8eqZbPM

Shameless self-promotion

The new episode of the 97X Rumblings from the Big Bush podcast features an interview with Robin James, a 97X listener who is now a philosophy prof. at UNC-Charlotte and is working on a book about 97X.

Have a great weekend!