Any CD whose two opening lines are – I wanna take you away from all this madness, I wanna take you away from all this crap – has to be a fun feast. And Malcolm McKinney’s BALANCING THE WEIGHT OF LIFE is an egg breaking romp through the kitchen of life. Now some of you […]

If you’d ever been to the Gaslight Café located in the basement of 116 MacDougal Street in NYC’s Greenwich Village during the 1960’s, then you probably heard some pretty famous people play there like Wavy Gravy, Phil Ochs and Robert Zimmerman. You may have also had the pleasure of hearing another great: Paul Zisholtz, a.k.a. […]

The amazing fact about Malcolm Mckinney isn’t the way he melds the soothing emotings of James Taylor (think Sweet Baby Jane, 1970, Warner Bros. Records) with the classic tonal qualities of Burl Ives (think the Hank Cochran tune A Little Bitty Tear that Ives covered in 1961, Decca Records). No, more than anything else it’s […]

Those who spend their entire lives waiting for the sunshine never learn to dance in the rain. Yet many of us go through life just searching for the sun, only to let much of life’s beauty wash by us. How sad for them, but don’t feel sorry for Reina Collins, cause the music on her […]

Perhaps not since Jean Luc-Ponte exploded onto the 70’s music scene with electric fusion violin, or maybe George Tortorelli (www.reverbnation.com/georgetortorelli) made Gainesville, Florida, home to new age music with his mid 80’s album Medicine Wind, has such a powerful and intricate musician burst upon us like Mitch Kopp (www.myspace.com/mitchkoppandthemagicpopulation). Without words, using only sound, you […]

What do the golden voiced Harry Nilsson and maverick rocker Lou Reed have in common? Some would say not much. Nilsson was considered by many to be the sixth Beatle (Pete Best being the fifth Beatle who was replaced by Ringo Starr to make the final fab four), while Reed was often viewed as one […]

Then there’s that story about the famous Miami club owner who still runs one of Florida’s most venerated music venues. Let’s call him Dan. Now back in the 1960’s, Dan was a club promoter in England, and part of his job description was to locate unknown, inexpensive opening acts for the ten and sixteen piece […]

Contrary to popular belief, the Declaration of Independence does not guarantee happiness, merely the pursuit of happiness. Our founding fathers knew that happiness was too ephemeral to guarantee, so they took aim at the chance to be happy rather than happiness itself. Thomas Jefferson understood this, and so does Joe Virga. On his CD titled […]

If Edith Piaf (1915-1963), Lotte Lenya (1898-1981) and Leon Redbone (timeless) were Mormons (think polygamist, not evangelist), their first and foremost child would be Sol Ruiz (www.solishere.com). I can say this because she is both a vocal seductress and ingenue thrashing songwriter. Dressed in a Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplinesque outfit – summer-grass green trousers, a […]

The thing that makes duos like Simon and Garfunkel, or the Indigo Girls so great is synergy: a one-plus-one-equals-three effect where the whole is even more beautiful than the individuals. It’s this synergy that makes CARNIVAL RAIN AND OTHER SLICES OF LIFE (2008) by the duo CRUSH VELVET (Carrie Lynn Kaplan and Diane Bostick) such […]