Concert Review: Johnny Marr/Meredith Sheldon Singer-songwriter Meredith Sheldon, currently touring with Johnny Marr, set the tone for the night with her opening set. Performing solo with just an electric guitar, her original songs didn’t register with the audience, but one performance did: a cover of the Replacements’ 1984 classic “Answering Machine.” If anyone had any doubts, that song made it clear that this early show … Read More
Songs that Saved Your Life: by Simon Goddard [xrr rating=4.0/5]I don’t think there is a greater Smiths fan out there than Simon Goddard. In the exhaustive redux of his 2002 tome on the music of Morrissey and Marr, Goddard deeply chronicles the intricacies of the band’s five-year history, reviewing the band’s contentious history in a song-by-song format, abutted with comprehensive appendices that investigate the band’s songs on record, … Read More
List Inconsequential: The Greatest Greatest Hits Collections (Pt. 3) 20. Talking Heads – Sand in the Vaseline: Popular Favorites “This ain’t no Mudd Club/ Or CBGB,” though Sand in the Vaseline is virtually as authentic as any performance Talking Heads ever put on at their old Manhattan haunts. In fact, that lyric is even delivered in a live cut of “Life During Wartime,” one of two live tracks that … Read More
The Smiths: The Smiths Complete [xrr rating=5/5] “Reissue! Repackage! Repackage!/ Reevaluate the songs!/ Double-pack with a photograph/ Extra track and a tacky badge.” Ah, but let’s not be too hard on Morrissey. No doubt when he penned these lyrics all the way back in 1987 as part of Strangeways, Here We Come, he did not envision that one day the vulgar picture being painted would … Read More
