Los Lobos: Struggle, Survival, Soaring
Review: Los Lobos at Universal Preservation Hall on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026 Right before Los Lobos came onstage Sunday at the jam-packed Universal Preservation Hall, Sting sang in “Englishman in New York” – last song of the recorded walk-in music – “Oh, I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien.” What a perfect choice, in this time of…
Los Lobos – playing Sunday at Universal Preservation Hall – stands among our greatest rock bands.
Telling specific deep truths about particular people and places in universal ways, they make distance and differences disappear. Friends since high school in East LA, they developed a powerful hybrid style blending acoustic folk-based Mexican music of celebration and south-of-the-border blues with a high-impact rock style. It’s Latin and it’s rock, folk and funk; it…
They’ve Got the Funk
Preview: Lettuce at Empire Live on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026 The seven-months since Lettuce played the Saratoga Jazz Festival and their Empire Live show on Wednesday may feel like just an extra-long set break. But since then, the funk-jazz juggernaut toured Europe and everywhere else – sometimes with the Wu-Tang Clan or Ziggy Marley – released a…
TO THE RECORD SHELF
“…this is not ok…” by Matt Smith Matt Smith may be the most prolific and consistent of our musical exports, you know: artists from here whose stars also shine elsewhere. From regional fan favorite bands including Interstate and E.B. Jeb, Smith went to New York then wound up in Austin. He’s moved back and forth…
BOB Weir…”all the voices are now gone…”
“Wasn’t Weir great?” exulted Steve Webb. We were in Buffalo to see the Rolling Stones play Rich Stadium, third date on their 1981 Tattoo You tour; Webb to review it for the Knickerbocker News, Don Wilcock for the Troy Record and me for the Gazette. But we had lucked into tickets for the Grateful Dead…
2025: A Different (Shortened) Year in Live Music
Annual lists bear a bad reputation for the very good reason that they’re hairy blue hell to write. My (very good) years-ago Gazette editor Maggie Hartley renamed our Year Ender summaries as Rear-Enders. Tear-out-your-hair frustrating, they subject us writers to endless second-guessing: “Is this really better than that?” Multiply those doubts by the number of…
Jazz is Coming to Town
Review: “It’s A Jazzy Christmas” Saturday, Dec. 20 at Proctors GE Theatre More felt familiar than new in “It’s a Jazz Christmas” Saturday in Proctors GE Theater Saturday, and that was a good, warm, familiar thing. The place was packed with families wearing happy smiles, holiday hats and those gaudy sweaters tugged from closets about…
This one really hurt.
Joe Ely has died at 78. He and his band played one of the 10 best rock shows I’ve ever seen, at J.B. Scotts, May 9, 1981, fronting a great band co-starring guitarist Jesse Taylor, pedal steel player Lloyd Maines (whose future Chicks singing daughter Natalie was then seven years old), accordion player Ponty Bone…
More COWBELL! Wait, no…More Jingle Bells
Since before Thanksgiving, seasonal music has filled every mall, store or restaurant. Those songs work best live, however, in our annual parade of Nutcracker ballets, Slambovian rockers, cosmic and comic McKrells, Melodies of Christmas, jazzy improvisation, world music hybrids and church choirs. O Holy Night Poster provided Seasonal music natually happens in churches – including St.…
Tell me I’d hear the Beatles’ “Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand” twice in one day…
and I’d have laughed – but both hit as surprise high points in a recent Nashville visit. First, the Beatles’ German version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” rang out in “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the Frist Museum downtown, a post office turned art-deco gallery palace. That night, brother Jim…
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