Caroompas

It’s fun being in a band. I know this because I’ve been in a band in one form or another since I was 16 years old, and now I’m nearly as old as Yoda was at the end of “Return of the Jedi.” So that’s quite a few years and quite a few bands. I got my inspiration, as did most of my generation, from the Beatles. There is something about the sight of millions of girls screaming to get at those guys with guitars that inspires even the shyest of young men to forgo sports, academics and all other diversions and practice those chords, sing those songs.more...

“It’s magic,” said one presenter at Moscone Center in San Francisco yesterday.
 
Actually, it’s called the iPad. If it has anywhere close to the effect that the iPod and iPhone had on the market, the music business is going to shift even more into the Steve Jobs camp and away from the old model (not that there was ever a question about that anyway).
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I swear there are times when I’m driving on I-680 around Concord and I get the urge to take the Willow Pass Road exit so I can go to Tower Records and browse the aisles, just to see what’s out there. And then I remember: oh yeah, there is no Tower Records any more. I haven’t purchased music from a brick-and-mortar store in years. Still, old habits die hard. And that’s true for the sellers of music as well as the buyers.more...

Welcome to the last day of the rest of your year. I’ve heard many, many people exclaim how grateful and relieved they are to bring 2009 to a close, and in many ways I join them in their sentiment. Still, for me it’s been a pretty good, even great year, though it’s been fraught with many of the same financial precipices as we’ve all shared as a national community. But this is a music column, not a financial one, so let’s take a look at what I believe will be the biggest musical news of 2010, the end of the album as we know it.more...

Let me get right to it: these are words I never, ever thought I’d be writing in my brief time on this planet – Bob Dylan has released a Christmas album. Here are some even more surprising words – it is for my money the very best Christmas album I have ever heard. It has liberated me from the confines of the Bing Crosby/Nat King Cole Christmas album prison I have endured my whole life. Those records have defined the season’s songs for me, and kept me from having anything to do with them. I don’t have the artistic wherewithal to recreate the power of that music.more...

Sept. 24 — Let’s take a look around the musical landscape and see what’s coming up this week and in the near future, eh? We are striving for eclectic here, because I know this space focuses a lot on blues. When I venture too far from the blues, I tend to sound even more ignorant that I am, which is not easy. At any rate, as a public service, here are some shows at home and abroad you definitely want to check out:

Martinez, this weekend:more...

August 20 — When we left off last week, I had been cuckolded by my first wife, tried and failed at reconciliation, and was invited to Point Richmond to play in a bluegrass band, where a background singer was also invited. Her name was Barbara, and she made her entrance the way she always did – with boisterous exuberance, dominating the very air molecules and lighting up the darkest corners of wherever she was. more...

You know that Armando’s features all kinds of music: jazz, bluegrass, blues, etc. And you know that it’s one of the premiere nightclubs in the Bay Area, a place where musicians of all stripes and degrees of success want to perform, because of the amazing people who come to see the music there. You know all that. No need to repeat it here.more...

Well, it’s that time again… American Idol auditions are over, the silliness and goofiness of the fringe contestants are over, and the final 36 have been put into the annual meat grinder that is the premise of this cruel and unusual show, one of the most popular in American television history. A reminder: I came to this show last year, an evolution in a sense, when it just sort of happened that my spousal unit and I needed some common TV ground on Tuesday night.more...