Posts Tagged The Roots
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August 17, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
My Life In Seven Songs
Song 1: Once In A Lifetime, Talking Heads The drums push forward, the bass pulls back and this isn’t really a song, it’s a bunch of ideas falling over themselves, cascading, oscillating, evading melody in favour of finding a groove. The words are catchphrases, evangelical, delightful. A tune existing in its own space, in its […]Archive
June 27, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Got Live Cos I Want It: 10 Important Live-in-Concert Albums In My Life of Listening
I know I’ve written about live albums before – several times, and I always will, I love live albums! – but I thought I’d give you a list of the ten live albums that I consider the most important. That is to say important to me, these lists are a chance for me to remind […]Archive
April 25, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Taking The Power Back: Ten of the Most Important Hip-Hop Albums in my Life
We all know that lists are subjective – that is the point of them. So I’ve decided to do a series of top ten albums across genres. They’ll appear sporadically. And rather than call them “Top Ten” I will call them ten of the most important – sorry if that sounds pretentious. It’s not meant […]Archive
April 11, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Driving in America: A Soundtrack For Your Voyage(s) in The United States
Music is with me every step of every day – and on my first visit to America I was amazed to see Grateful Dead CDs in every house that I visited. I figured it to be a bit like finding Dave Dobbyn or Crowded House or Bic Runga or Exponents CDs in New Zealand homes. […]Archive
March 30, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
It Was The Best Gig Ever # 13: The Roots, San Francisco 2012
Me and my brother-in-law drove down to San Francisco – left the rest of the family back in rural California, decided to take a couple of days out for ourselves. The aim, at first, was to see The Cult. But we drove down with no tickets, no accommodation, and turned up to find it sold […]Archive
December 5, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
Cody ChesnuTT’s Bizarre and Brilliant Headphone Masterpiece: A Weird But Classic Debut (Double) Album
Released in 2002 it was Cody ChesnuTT’s debut – arriving, seemingly, out of nowhere, the album is a Big Serve: 36 tracks, two discs, everything from Brother With An Ego which is less than 15 seconds long – through to 6 Seconds which lasts for around four and a half minutes. Cody ChesnuTT became known […]Archive
October 15, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 615
Warpaint, The Fool (2010) For me with Warpaint it really all started here – yes, the EP before this debut album is great (and I got to that after) but it was The Fool that sold me on the sound of the band after the promise of some of the early, vital/viral YouTube clips. Such […]Archive
January 10, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
Questlove: Soul Train – The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation
Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation Questlove Harper Collins Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is one of the greatest drummers around and with a trainspotter’s knowledge across so many styles and genres of music – as both player/participant and as observer/listener – he’s already proved himself a talented writer across a range of […]Archive
November 9, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 796
The Roots, …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (2014) My least favourite album by The Roots – easily. But a bad Roots album is still good, right? Well, er, nearly…in the case of this there are really only a couple of decent songs (rather worrying, especially when one is actually a Nina Simone song they’ve […]Archive
August 13, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
Stubs: #129 – The Roots, San Francisco, 2012
I had seen The Roots twice in New Zealand – but was pretty keen on the idea of seeing ‘em in America. They had started on the TV show by then, so it was unlikely (remains unlikely?) we’ll ever see them down our way again. And I was over there on holiday. I had to […]Archive
June 17, 2015 by Simon Sweetman