Todd Rundgren

Marshall Crenshaw: From "The Hellhole"

by Doug Collette
September 6, 2025

In something of a reflection of its sardonic title, Marshall Crenshaw's From “The Hellhole" is not an album of all-new, never-before-recorded original material. It consists instead of revamped versions of recordings the Detroit native 'completed' for release in various forms in recent years (not the least of which is the now out-of-print #392: The EP Collection ...

Alma Tree: Sonic Alchemy Suprema

by Karl Ackermann
January 31, 2024

New York native Ra Kalam Bob Moses grew up in the same building as Max Roach, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. Early on he saw performances by many of the best jazz drummers in history, including Roy Haynes, Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Ed Blackwell. As a teenager in the mid-1960s, he played with ...

The Band: Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition 2CD

by Doug Collette
May 23, 2021

In order to more fully appreciate the 50th anniversary edition of the Band's third studio album, Stage Fright (Capitol, 1970), it is best to resist the temptation to go off on tangents regarding the revisionism visited upon the release. The supervision administered by the group's guitarist/songwriter Robbie Robertson may be as questionable as that visited upon ...

Lyle Workman: Uncommon Measures

by Mike Jacobs
February 19, 2021

If there's a major takeaway to be had from listening to guitarist Lyle Workman's Uncommon Measures, it's the palpable sense that all of his impressive musical experience has been poured into it. And to that end, Workman certainly doesn't bury the lead. The epic opening track “North Star" can single-handedly make sense of Workman's entire decades-long ...

2020's Travel Songs - Part 1

by Ludovico Granvassu
January 9, 2021

In this year of painful confinement music has been a much needed source of solace, with its capacity to take us beyond our times and across space. Here some of the best “travel songs" that we've been digging this year, while planning on taking them on a real road-trip as soon as possible. Happy ...

Artisti Vari; Hal Willner: Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex

by Maurizio Comandini
September 14, 2020

Il maledetto killer invisibile, che tutto il mondo sta combattendo, si �� portato via uno dei produttori pi�� importanti della storia della musica moderna: il geniale, imprevedibile, incontenibile Hal Willner se ne �� volato in cielo ai primi di aprile di questo anno terribile. Ha lasciato il pianeta mentre stava assestando gli ultimi colpi d'anca a ...

The Archive of Contemporary Music

by Karl Ackermann
March 24, 2020

In Lower Manhattan, sits a musical gold mine. It's the motherlode of recorded music though the small, brightly colored sign above a grey steel door provides only a cryptic clue. The dusty window display of rare 78 RPM records, broken into erratic pie charts serves as a vestige of the past and a cautionary tale about ...

Take Five with Ed Palermo

by AAJ Staff
October 9, 2019

Meet Ed Palermo Ed Palermo is an arranger, composer and alto saxophonist mostly known for his big band and their interpretations of the music of Ed's hero, Frank Zappa. Coming out of college in Chicago, his initial plan was to become a great jazz tenor saxophonist in the vein of Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman and Dave ...

Ed Palermo

Ed Palermo is not a “business as usual” musician. After all, when most people think of “big bands” they think of Duke and Dorsey. But go to see Ed Palermo’s Big Band and you might hear Zappa, Hendrix, the blues of Paul Butterfield & Mike Bloomfield or one of Ed’s own compositions, loaded with lush turns and unexpected twists.

Gil Evans wonderfully articulated Palermo’s unusual approach to traditional instrumentation:

“I first heard Ed Palermo’s music in a small club in the SoHo section of Manhattan. He was using the instrumentation of a traditional big band yet his arrangements and songs were anything but that. When I thought the music was going a certain direction, it would suddenly turn a corner. Ed has the ability to keep that important balance between cohesiveness and unpredictability. Ed Palermo’s music is alive and represents now.”