EAT. SHOP. PLAY. Discovering the Best in the San Fernando Valley
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BY BILL BENTLEY Fabulous Thunderbirds, Best Of: Early Birds Special, Benchmark Records Start with their cover songs. It's often the quickest way to find out what a band is really like. It shows where they come from. With the Fabulous Thunderbirds, … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Blind Boys of Alabama, Take The High Road, Saguaro Records The Blind Boys of Alabama could no more go country than Mickey Mouse join a metal band. It's just not what they do. But what's extremely interesting is how close gospel is … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Hot Tuna, Steady As She Goes, Red House Records When you wait 20 years between studio albums, you better blast out of the gate with plenty of gusto, have some great new songs and sound like you are ready to conquer the world. … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Mark "Pocket" Goldberg, Off The Alleyway, MPG Records Some albums seem to defy description. They don't quite fit in any one category, no matter how much some might try to put them there. Mark "Pocket" Goldberg's alluring Off The … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Semi-Twang, Wages Of Sin, ST Records In Milwaukee it's often said that there's a bar on every corner. And in those bars, most likely, a band will end up playing sooner or later. That's a lot of bands, so the city was known for a … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Brett Dennen, Lover Boy, Dualtone Records There are a handful of young singer-songwriters now who feel like they're redefining the style, bringing fresh blood to it in a way which electrifies that crowd. Brett Dennen is one of the … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Dengue Fever, Cannibal Courtship, Fantasy Records The sound of Dengue Fever is like an hallucination, spurred on after spending a week riding the city buses around Los Angeles. Take all those audio elements, throw them in a blender, … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Paul Simon, So Beautiful Or So What, Hear Music By now, Paul Simon has proven everything one person needs to prove. He has written songs that will live forever, made recordings likely never to be equaled, and shown a creativity that … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang, Sing It Loud, Nonesuch Records When it comes to singers who walk their own road, listen to the sounds in the wind to pull down and inspire their songs and then, even when it doesn't seem possible, … [Read more...]
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BY BILL BENTLEY Tracy Nelson, Victim Of The Blues, Delta Groove Records Don't mess around with Tracy Nelson. She recorded her first album for Prestige Records in 1964 with Charlie Musselwhite, still a young woman from Wisconsin, and began a long … [Read more...]
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