Music
It would be hard to name another successful artist so passionately demeaned by the music press.
Lamb of God’s show at the MassMutual Center was as spirited, fierce, and technically dazzling as any that the group has brought to these parts over the past two decades.
I am grateful that Al Jardine (at 82, he’s showing signs of age) and Brian Wilson’s band are still bringing Wilson’s brilliant legacy to audiences.
Two very influential and brilliant Cuban musicians, Albita Rodríguez and Chucho Valdés, join together to make a fine album; Chilean guitarist/vocalist/composer Camila Meza serves up a potent mixture of jazz and lyrics concerned with social justice.
Fans who at least followed the band through its heyday in the late ’80s and early ’90s couldn’t have predicted the Mekons would wind it back in 2025 behind a new album just as galvanizing as their past catalog.
Could it be that Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp is the big kahuna of our symphonic music?
We are all part of a community with a deep commitment to this extraordinary but way-too-often unappreciated musical art, and the late critic Francis Davis believed we should work together and share what we know. His poll was one important way to do just that
So what am I saying? That the system is imperfect, corrupted by bad voters like me (there must be a few others who didn’t listen to even close to everything on this list — show of hands?)
A particular guttural sequence of phrases from accordionist Ted Reichman suggested a musical cadence, and I felt myself respond with the jazz fan’s involuntary noise of appreciation: “Unh!”
Arts Appreciation: Ozzy Osbourne — He Was One of Us
Ozzy also gave us all the inspiration to overcome whatever dipshit, fucked up, and idiotic things we did, because he did just that, and generated plenty of good in the process.
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