baltimoresun.com - Music & Nightlife

Getting warmer

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Piano-playing pop singer Vanessa Carlton's evolving repertoire will warm up the Recher Theatre

Meet the Band: Deep Sleep

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Hometown Baltimore

CD Check

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

New on CD

John Mellencamp Life Death Love and Freedom (Hear Music) As the title indicates, this is John Mellencamp at his most serious - and his most forlorn: "Life is an abstraction, and it tries to fool us all, and it's working so far, it seems," the normally feisty Hoosier sings on "Young Without Lovers." On "A Ride Back Home," the 56-year-old is ready to lie down in a pine box: "I was showin' some promise once upon a time/But it's gone now, and it ain't comin' back." There's a full band backing him up and a supple roots-rock groove with T-Bone Burnett producing and playing guitar, but the songs are uncommonly intimate, as if Mellencamp were singing them to himself, between puffs on a cigarette in a darkened room, doing penance for forcing TV viewers to hear his "Our Country" Chevy commercials hundreds of thousands of times. And Life Death Love and Freedom is just about good enough to earn him forgiveness.

The B-More sound

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

DJs like K-Swift defined the club music synonymous with the city

DJs like K-Swift defined the club music synonymous with the city

Baltimore Club scene loses voice

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

DJ 'K-Swift' dies in accident at home

Khia Edgerton, a pioneering DJ who as "K-Swift" became one of Baltimore's top radio personalties and a major player in the local music scene, died early yesterday morning after a pool accident at her home. She was 29.

Miley Cyrus' album reveals desire for fun, rest

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Miley Cyrus Breakout Sun grade: B- On the second studio album she's released under her own name (as opposed to that of Hannah Montana, her Disney Channel alter ego), 15-year-old Miley Cyrus offers up a rendition of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" that says more about Cyrus' real-world existence as an overworked young media star than she (or her handlers) probably intended.

Musical rules were made to be broken at An die Musik event

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Music history is filled with composers who methodically followed the rules - this chord can't follow that chord, this type of theme must be balanced by that type of theme, this structure must be built only that way.

Reunited Dru Hill hasn't quite found its flow

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Quartet often overstuffed songs with seemingly endless vocal riffs and melismatic runs that bordered on parody

Billy Joel bids farewell to Shea Stadium

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Billy Joel and an all-star lineup of friends bade a stirring farewell to Shea Stadium on Friday during an electrifying, sold-out final show.

Summer concerts draw crowds

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Area groups, businesses bring music, culture to local venues

When Michael Fiore visited local wineries in Long Island, he discovered that the owners had brought in bands and disc jockeys to entertain people with music as they drank their wine.