I’m Caught One More Time

Bill Shapiro introduced me to Astral Weeks.  I was unfamiliar with Van Morrison’s sublime album prior to hearing an episode of Shapiro’s weekly Cyprus Avenue program on KCUR in the late 1970s.  Shapiro played a significant role in my education in boomer rock by the likes of Morrison, Bob Dylan, the Band and Joni Mitchell on other episodes of Cyprus Avenue. 

I was saddened to learn of Shapiro’s death last week.  Even before perusing the outpouring of grief on social media, I knew I wasn’t the only person profoundly affected by Cyprus Avenue.   I discovered the program was a reliable sales driver when I worked in music retail in Kansas City during the 1980s and witnessed appreciative audiences at the concert series he curated at the Folly Theater in recent years.

While I’m grateful for Shapiro’s influence on my impressionable ears as a young listener, I eventually lost interest in his show.  Shapiro’s imperious tone was grating and his relatively conventional taste contained few surprises.  His 1991 consumer guide Rock and Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD is an instructive document of his inclinations.  I may have parted ways with Shapiro, but he and I will always have “Cyprus Avenue”.  To quote Shapiro, “‘nuff said.”


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Here are my latest concert recommendations for The Kansas City Star.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Mark Chesnutt- Tradition Lives

I grew increasingly frustrated as I watched Mark Chesnutt perform with Lorrie Morgan and Joe Diffie at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in January.  My subsequent review was positive, but I longed to be transported to a proper Chesnutt concert at a honky-tonk in his home state of Texas.

Rather than gripping a notepad and a penlight, I wanted to hold a longneck in one hand and the waist of my dance partner in the other.  My daydream of careening across a dance floor to “Brother Jukebox” was heavenly. 

Tradition Lives, Chesnutt’s first album in six years, is filled with sturdy country songs about drinking, cheating and heartbreak.  “So You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore,” an ode about a breakup with booze, is my favorite track. 

The veteran traditionalist has no use for crossover pop moves or for the sort of arty innovations that made Sturgill Simpson a sensation among the NPR set.  Yet formalism doesn’t seem stodgy in the hands of Chesnutt.  I favor hip-hop, jazz, metal and R&B these days, but hardcore country like Tradition Lives will always sound like home to me.


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I reviewed Twenty One Pilots’ sold-out concert at the Sprint Center.

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I wrote an extended preview of Flight of the Conchords’s show at Starlight Theatre for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I continue to drive the Matt Otto bandwagon at Plastic Sax.

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Marc Meyers reports that jazz pianist Don Friedman has died.

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”How Many” is Miguel’s response to recent events.  (Tip via BGO.)

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If I manage to embrace the distortion that makes speakers sound as if they’re blown out, Mike Dillon’s Functioning Broke might become one of my favorite jazz-based albums of 2016.  RIYL: Steve Reich, Elliott Smith covers, early Keith Jarrett.

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I get choked up by Allen Toussaint's cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” at the conclusion of his lovely posthumous album American Tunes.

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In 2014, I suggested that Schoolboy Q's Oxymoron resembled "a poor man's version of Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city."  The rapper's new  Blank Face LP sounds like a bankrupt response to To Pimp a Butterfly.  The project also has the dubious distinction of housing “That Part”, arguably Kanye West’s worst-ever feature.

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The messy mix on the reissue of Van Morrison’s ...It’s Too Late to Stop Now doesn’t spoil the fun.

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Hiromi’s Spark is RIYL: bombast, Rush, being buried by notes.

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BadBadNotGood’s IV is mildly disappointing.  RIYL: Mulatu Astatke, hype, John Klemmer.

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At his best, Kenny Garrett is among the most essential living jazz musicians.  He’s astoundingly awful at his worst.  Do Your Dance! runs the gamut.  RIYL: John Coltrane, embarrassingly amateurish cover art, middle school talent shows.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)