The Torture Never Stops proves how reality rarely lives up to expectations. We didn’t have cable back in ’81 when this concert was shown on MTV (you know… back when the M stood for music). Since that Halloween night I’ve lived with the regret that I didn’t get to see FZ stun America with his genius as he took the fledgling music channel to new heights while unknowingly convincing them they should never do another live broadcast. For the next 20-something years I saw a few grainy clips which had been recorded on ancient VTRs but mostly this magic concert existed only in my thoughts as the night Frank was able to give the music industry the finger, something I’ve always treasured. Now the Zappa family trust has released the show under the title The Torture Never Stops and I regretfully ...

  Steve Winwood‘s voice is like glue. It can hold a song together where other less talented, less gifted voices would merely sound like cats crying outside your bedroom window at three in the morning. It’s no different on his latest release, Nine Lives, as Steve’s voice is the primary instrument and its saving grace.     After getting beyond the almost unforgivable cliché title I was happily surprised to find some really good songs and a lot of good music on this nine-cut CD. Nine Lives. Nine tracks. It sounds like some dork record company exec came up with that beauty and wouldn’t let go. I really loved Traffic, I think Blind Faith was much better than history gives it credit for, and “Gimme Some Lovin’” is classic rock at its finest. But Steve Winwood’s solo efforts have always been hit and miss ...

  Mike Keneally calls Wine and Pickles “The album I didn’t know I was making over the last 10 years.” We should all be very happy that his subconscious has been working as hard as his conscious self, because Wine and Pickles is pure unadulterated pleasure. Subtitled “being a collection of unreleased things, rarities and all sorts,” W&P is one of those rare releases where the whole of the work is much greater than its pieces and seems to speak to something much greater. Like in “Fantastic Voyage,” it feels as if we’ve been shrunk to microscopic size, injected into MK’s brain and allowed to wander a path made up of his wildly creative and highly electric/eclectic synapses. Wine and Pickles is a generous compilation that doesn’t have that feeling of “let’s put out anything left in the vaults and try to ...

  Though the canon of great singer-songwriters is littered with examples of artists who don’t possess traditionally attractive voices, it’s possible there’s no element in songwriter’s craft that’s more important than voice. Like an actor’s face or an orator’s dramatic flourishes, a songwriter’s voice – whether commanding like Aretha Franklin or squeaky like Daniel Johnston – is the quickest identifier of his or her work, the purest and most expressive instrument, and the one that will shape much of your impression of the persona that artist has created. As such, to change that creative signature is daring, if not dangerous, something that becomes obvious the first time you hear Dylan’s nasally pinched croon on 1969’s Nashville Skyline or Neil Young’s vocoder-aided robo-voice on 1982’s Trans – two albums where the songwriter’s familiar vocal fingerprints were so obscured that listeners were left ...

  The last time I interviewed Ben Gibbard, he seemed somewhat ashamed to admit that he was a bit stung by all the lukewarm reviews that greeted Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 breakthrough, Plans. Of course, you’d expect as much for an artist who is obviously a sensitive soul, a man who finds romantic implications in every act, no matter how seemingly mundane. Not that such a backlash was in any way surprising, as the previously prototypical indie rock band was certain to receive such a backlash when they jumped to a major label and found themselves near the top of the Billboard Top 200. But Gibbard seemed so disarmingly hurt by it all; it was as if he never considered it could happen. For those who want to read between the lines, Narrow Stairs, Death Cab’s first album since the ...