New York Dolls’ rhythm guitarists, Sylvain Sylvain died Wednesday after a two and a half year battle with cancer. On January 14, an official statement was released on his Facebook page.
As we mourn his loss, the statement quickly leans to celebrate his vast accomplishments. “While we grieve his loss, we know that he is finally at peace and out of pain. Please crank up his music, light a candle, say a prayer and let’s send this beautiful doll on his way.”
Egypt born Sylvain Mizrahi, was born on Valentine’s Day, 1951. He fled to New York with his family, living Buffalo and Queens. Syl went to high school in Queens, along with lead guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Billy Murcia.
Sylvain Sylvain was so punk, he, along with the Dolls, paved the way before punk-rock was punk-rock. New York Dolls founded in 1971, 50 years ago. Syl and the Dolls heavily influenced the underground movement. They were labeled as “one of the most influential rock bands of the last 20 years,” by British writer Colin Larkin (Encyclopedia of Popular Music). The Dolls went on to influence punk and rock icons that are common place in our music library, including the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Kiss.
Patti Smith Group’s guitarist, Lenny Kaye, tipped his hat to Syl in the social media statement. “They [original Dolls] became a quasar in the rock firmament; embodying trash, glam, garage-to-punk, the ambisexual affirmation of music played louder.”
Sylvain’s role in the band was as lynchpin, keeping the revolving satellites of his bandmates in precision. Though he tried valiantly to keep the band going, in the end the Dolls’ moral fable overwhelmed them, not before seeding an influence that would engender many rock generations yet to come.
Lenny Kaye – American Guitarist, Composer
Despite this feat the band lacked commercial success. One thing that remains true, Sylvain Sylvain was apart of New York history. He embodied punk, fashion and influenced New York style.
The New York Dolls heralded the future, made it easy to dance to. From the time I first saw their poster appear on the wall of Village Oldies in 1972… the New York Dolls were the heated core of this music we hail, the band that makes you want to form a band. Syl never stopped. In his solo lifeline, he was welcomed all over the world, from England to Japan, but most of all the rock dens of New York City…
Still Syl. His corkscrew curls, tireless bounce, exulting in living his dream, asking the crowd to sing along, and so we will. His twin names, mirrored, becomes us. Thank you Sylvain x 2, for your heart, belief, and the way you whacked that E chord. Sleep Baby Doll.
One of the most notable music producers of the 20th century, Phil Spector, has died. Spector had been serving a 19-year prison sentence for the murder of Lana Clarkson, for which he was convicted in 2009. He died of natural causes in the California Health Care Facility, state prison authorities announced Sunday.
Born Harvey Philip Spector on December 26, 1939 in New York City, Spector’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1953, a few years after his father committed suicide.
Spector had number one records in three consecutive decades – 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and had his first hit song while in high school with The Teddy Bears, “To Know Him is To Love Him.”
Soon after Spector would produce a wide range of hits – The Righteous Brothers “You Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” “Unchained Melody,” “You’re My Soul and Inspiration,” The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” and The Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel,” among others.
Spector had a long association with The Beatles, producing their final album, Let It Be, and tracks “The Long and Winding Road” and “Get Back,” as well as the title track. He continued to work with John Lennon, producing solo work “Instant Karma” and “Imagine,” and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and 1971’s The Concert for Bangladesh.
A producer as well as creative director, Spector wrote or chose material for musicians, supervised arrangements, conducted vocalists and session musicians, and mastered all phases of the recording process. Spector would pave the way for genres of art rock, dream pop, shoegaze and noise music.
In addition to a litany of producer credits, Spector is credited with developing the “Wall of Sound” technique, which involved overdubbing scores of musicians for a fuller sound. The effect creator a “roar,” which Spector one described as “a Wagnerian approach to rock’n’roll: little symphonies for the kids.”
He last produced an album in 1980, with The Ramones’ End Of The Century. Spector was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Of note, Spector played a cocaine dealer in the 1969 cross-country drama “Easy Rider” and appeared on the 1960s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie.”
According to the Phil Spector biography “Wall of Pain,” he sometimes kept a gun on the studio recording console, fired a shot during an acrimonious recording session with John Lennon and pressed a pistol barrel to singer Leonard Cohen’s neck.
Spector has been in California State prison for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Spector said Clarkson’s death was an “accidental suicide” and that she “kissed the gun.” His first trial ended in a hung jury, but was later convicted of second-degree murder in 2009.
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, “Inmate Phillip Spector was pronounced deceased of natural causes at 6:35 p.m. on Saturday, January 16, 2021, at an outside hospital. His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.”
Universal Preservation Hall will present a live-streamed concert of Misty Blues on February 12 at 8 p.m. This serves as a celebration of their 10th album, None More Blue, and over two decades together.
After the performance of their new album, the band will perform the “Queens of the Blues” soundtrack as a Black History Month celebration. The Queens of the Blues movie shows the lives of four African-American female blues artists: Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Ruth Brown, and Koko Taylor. All four of these women made an undeniable impact on blues, jazz, and popular music throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
All compositions on None More Blue were written during the pandemic and show the connections the band was able to maintain despite a remote environment. The album release date is February 14.
Misty Blues, led by lead singer/band founder Gina Coleman, was a 2019 International Blues Challenge finalist. The band has performed original and traditional blues with hints of jazz, soul, funk and tent revival gospel since 1999. They have recorded and shared the stage with Charles Neville and opened for contemporary blues artists like Tab Benoit, John Primer, Albert Cummings and Michael Powers. The band recently earned an Independent Blues Music Award nomination for the best contemporary blues song. The band’s original recordings have wide radio airplay in the U.S. and U.K.
Thrash/hardcore band War Orphan, featuring guitarist Rich Cipriano formally of Sick Of it All and Reach fame, drummer Dante Renzi (Reach) and vocalist David Bason (Barfbag and Lords of the Drift), have released a new single titled “New Core,” which nostalgically looks back at the bands come up in the hardcore scene.
Guitarist Richie Cipriano elaborates further on the origins behind the song:
New Core is a song about growing up in the hardcore scene and making the decision not to leave it behind as you get older
Richie Cipriano, War Orphan
This song follows their recent explosive statement of a song “F*ck the NRA“, a tribute to fellow hardcore band The Exploited.
War Orphan released their debut in 2020, the politically charged trash punk EP Closer to Death Than Life. The EP delivers as a fearless protest record that doubles down on the angst which defines the hardcore scene with a particular focus on attacking rightwing extremists and the current presidential administration. Bason channels the seething dissatisfaction with the political establishment that has lead to unrest over the past few years, seeking to tackle systemic racism with “Autonomous Zone” and a deceitful president with “Prop up the Polls,” among other topics that have never been relevant and important.
War Orphan began when longtime friends Dante, Richie and David graduated from recording songs just to make each other laugh to taking it seriously. Singer David Bason is based in LA. Missing his New York friends, he would leave guitar player Richie Cipriano voicemails making fun of heavy metal. Richie and Dante would track record metal songs to the voicemails and send them back. Thus, was born Bloodbath and Beyond, what started a just a funny inside joke to kill time.
Afterwards, Richie called and said he had a song they should take seriously this time. Bason was on board and the EP was tracked, mixed and master in a matter of weeks. War Orphan came about organically and their music shows it.
For their first live performances of 2021, the Disco Biscuits have announced a live, two-night run that will be livestreamed from Ardmore Music Hall.
Friday, February 5 and Saturday, February 6 will be the first live performances from the Philadelphia jam titans in 2021, and the first time the Disco Biscuits play the independent venue in Ardmore, PA.
Both live shows will be broadcast for free via Ardmore Music Hall’s YouTube channel & streaming partners nugs.tv. Tips for the band & venue staff are encouraged. Event merchandise and VIP ticketing are also available, which includes a signed custom foil poster, virtual soundcheck access, & both nights of audio recordings.
Ardmore Music Hall will welcome a very limited, socially-distanced & masked audience of 20 guests per night. Fans can enter the “Golden Ticket” Raffles & Silent Auctions for a chance to win tickets to each respective show. At the conclusion of each of the raffle drawings, a handful of winners will receive a pair of tickets per show, and an online silent auction for additional pairs of tickets will go live.
All guests will be required to produce negative COVID-19 test results before confirming their attendance. Additionally, the venue will uphold all safety guidelines and protocols mandated by local governance, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the CDC. More details can be found on the event page below.
Governors Ball Music Festival announced it’s 2021 dates tentatively scheduling its 2021 edition for September 24-26. The festival generally takes place in June but is optimistically hoping by September that COVID-19 will be under wraps enough for the festival to take place.
The Governors Ball is a widely known and loved festival that takes place in Randall’s Island in New York City. Usually it has an attendance of sound 150,000 people and takes across four stages and over 70 acts. There is also a food program that is part of the festivities and it features the City’s best eats and highlights its incredible culinary diversity. It also hosts visual art, beverages, art installations, statues, high flying inflatables, and pop up performances.
Organizers of the festival released a statement saying that, “We’ve decided to move the 2021 show to a time of year that is both more realistic and safer for all and while there are still question marks and unknowns in the World, rest assured that we are working closely with City and State authorities to ensure that the next Gov Ball will be a safe and amazing experience. We’ll be back to our regular June dates starting in 2022.”
There isn’t a lot of information on the 2021 version of Governors Ball but there is some on their website. The lineup will not be the same lineup as the cancelled 2020 festival lineup. They haven’t announced who is on the lineup yet but have dropped a hint saying, “The lineup will be brand new! (Note: this is not a hint).” They are also saying the festival will return to it;s normal June dates in 2022. People who I held onto their tickets from the 2020 festival, but I can no longer make the new 2021 dates. Can I get a refund by requesting a refund for their ticket purchase but they must do so by Wednesday, January 27th at 11:59:59pm EST. If the festival doesn’t end up being feasible because of COVID-19 all tickets will be available for a refund.
The hope is with vaccines rolling out and many experts predicting a return to live music events in the Fall the festival will be able to take place in September. For more information on the Governors Ball and it’s new dates visit their website.
On December 31st, 2020, it’s safe to say most of us had our guard down. After living through one of the most tragically eventful years in recent memory, we may have been operating under the false pretense that 2020 and all of the misfortunes that came with it were over. However, for the hip hop community, the final blow of 2020 had just been announced, and that was the passing of enigmatic, masked MC, MF DOOM.
Daniel Dumile, best known by the stage name MF Doom, was without a doubt, the most powerful voice in the underground rap scene. MF Doom spent nearly two decades dominating dusty- lo-fi beats, entangling complex rhymes, and his unexpected word choices. Releases such as Operation: Doomsday, MM…FOOD, and Born Like This cemented Dumile as a legend in the underground rap scene.
News has surfaced that may help us fans along with the grieving process. Stones Throw Records has received permission to release the long-awaited Madvillany 2. Madvillany, one of Dumile’s most notable releases, a collaborative project with legendary producer Madlib, may be receiving the public release of its long-awaited sequel, Madvillany 2.
The announcement of the pending posthumous release was first made during a recent episode of Pete Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds’ shared podcast, Juan Ep is Dead. Stones Throw Records founder, Peanut Butter Wolf, confirmed during the interview that MF DOOM was working on the highly-anticipated follow-up and, that Stones Throw had received the late MCs Family’s approval to release the project.
“DOOM was always telling me ‘It’s 85% done, it’s 85% done.,’ said Wolf during the interview. As of right now, Wolf and the label are unsure of what to do with the tracks, however, they do plan on releasing them as the long-awaited sequel, Madvillany 2.
Amidst the ongoing pandemic, ‘virtual concerts’ have come to be a familiar set of words. Fortunately, The State Theatre of Ithaca is joining in on the trend with its first virtual concert, “Boogie for the State – A Virtual Shakedown.”
Poster art for “Boogie for the State – A Virtual Shakedown.”
On Feb. 28, The State Theatre of Ithaca will live stream their show on both their Facebook page and YouTube channel. Over a dozen local artists will perform for the concert.
“The Boogie Shakedown” is a backyard party that local musicians organize and perform for their friends and family. From 1998 all the way up until 2020, there’s been an annual “Shakedown” that attendees are always excited about.
“I still vividly remember attending my first Boogie Shakedown back in the late 90’s. It was the first time that I ever saw the Sim Redmond Band perform! We were all just a bunch of kids, getting together, having fun and making incredible music. Twenty-plus years later, I think our children look forward to The Boogie even more than the adults,” said Executive Director Doug Levine.
Levine also states that he intends to start this year off with something people “could look forward to” after an extremely tough year.
Much like the past “Boogies,” this virtual show will consist of seasoned artists who have performed for it in the past as well as talented new-comers. Some of the artists confirmed are Plastic Nebraska, Sim Redmond Band, Johnny Dowd, Maddy & Suave (Maddy Walsh & The Blind Spots), Mary Lorson & Billy Cote (Madder Rose), Common Railers, The Small Kings, The Rungs, Janet Batch, The Sutras, Don Bazley and The Moles.
The State Theatre of Ithaca is a nonprofit organization that owns and operates the last remaining historic theatre in Tompkin’s County. The community annually donates contributions to keep the site alive and well. Their purpose is to preserve history and promote live music, community and performances. Just last month, they reached their goal for “Save Our Seat,” a fundraiser to help with budget concerns during these unprecedented times.
We are excited to partner with The State Theatre to bring the Boogie back to life in 2021. Not being able to hold the Boogie last year, for the first time in 21 years, was unfortunate, and I am really looking forward to helping organize this event, even if it’s being done virtually. The Boogie Shakedown always signified the beginning of summer, of live music festivals, outdoor gatherings with friends and family.
said Brian Fiorello, founding organizer and host of The Boogie Shakedown.
The State Theatre Virtual Concert starts at 7:00 p.m. and is free to anyone wishing to experience a Virtual Shakedown. The theatre promotes the show to “stay home. Tune in and boogie down.”
After being out-of-print and unavailable online for nearly three decades, the Mommyheads’ innovative and experimental 1992 sophomore release, Coming Into Beauty, has been remastered for physical and digital formats.
The remastered edition of Coming Into Beauty will be available digitally on February 12, 2021. On the album, the Mommyheads fused rich melodies with avant-garde techniques, making for a one-of-a-kind listening experience, covering uncharted indie pop territory.
The album defies cohesion and plays more like an early Frank Zappa record in its playful photo-book sprawl. Album opener “Wedding Day” melds breezy, gorgeous fingerpicking with harmonies both angular and angelic at once, all whilst Elk belts a surrealistic semi-story about the crushing weight of marriage and boyish passion. “I Started Breathing” is arguably the album’s focal point. The tune gently strides along the spare ukulele and rattling percussion, boasting chord changes that have more in common with Brazilian pop and bossanova records than anything indie.
Pairing the druggy, melancholy Brooklynite romance (“and your friends they went to see the Dead / and they left you at home to work instead”) with frayed Bouzouki-laden choruses, the song is an understated achievement of pop invention. It’s both authentically strange and heartbreakingly sweet; unsettling and lulling.
Coming Into Beauty remains the most potent document of the Mommyheads at their most unhinged and daring. Fans of both experimental records and melodically-rich pop alike will find the album’s enigmatic nature fascinating and infinitely rewarding.
Howard Johnson, renowned tuba player, founder of the original Saturday Night Live Band and a musical mainstay of New York’s jazz community for more than half a century, has died at age 79. A muse to Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, and Carla Bley, Johnson was an inspiration to multiple generations of players.
photo by Nancy Olewine
Johnson died at home in New York on Monday, Jan. 11 following a long illness, according to his longtime partner, Nancy Olewine.
An accomplished player, composer, arranger and raconteur, Howard gigged on tuba, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, electric bass and pennywhistle. For more than 50 years he was an important fixture in multiple scenes, moving fluidly among genres. In addition to working with a litany of NEA jazz masters including Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Charlie Haden, Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette, and Randy Weston, Johnson also played with pop and rock icons such as John Lennon, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Taj Mahal, Levon Helm and scores of others.
Johnson played an important role in forming and shaping the sound of the Saturday Night Live band during the show’s first five years, 1975-1980. Donning an Egyptian headdress or nurses’ uniform in some of the most beloved early sketches featuring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin, his weekly SNL appearances lent Howard visibility rare for a jazz musician or in-demand sideman.
He appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 documentary The Last Waltz, was featured in a Miller Lite beer commercial in 1984, and made a Sesame Street appearance with James Taylor (in the decades since, it wasn’t uncommon for excited kids to point at Howard and shout “Jelly Man Kelly!”)
Howard would leave SNL, telling musical director Howard Shore that having a too-steady job leads to complacency, resulting in bad music. Musicians in that situation “start defending their turf, they start feeling like they have something to lose, and they keep narrowing and narrowing their perspective. I don’t want to get caught up in stuff like that.” In several interviews, Johnson recalled Shore’s reply: “Well, if you feel that way about it, then you’re the man for the job. Get me a bunch of other troublemakers like you and we’ll have a great band.”
Complacency was never a possibility for Johnson. In fact, from his earliest years in New York, the breadth of his capabilities led some critics and audiences to believe there must be more than one Howard Johnson: It was just too hard to imagine that in an often highly compartmentalized music scene that the same guy could be appearing with the avant-gardist Archie Shepp, hard-swinging drummer Buddy Rich, and sitting in with bluesman B.B. King.
In fact, Johnson crossed paths with legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix at a B.B. King gig. He and fellow tubist Bob Stewart took their instruments up to Ungano’s [an Upper West Side club] to jam with B.B. King. Just the presence of that much low brass was enough to cause a stir, and right before they went on, Jimi Hendrix arrived with a group of women. The audience was distracted, buzzing and cracking jokes, not knowing what to expect from a couple of tuba players.
Howard and Bob took to the stage, one on either side of B.B., and showed everyone they know their way around the blues. Though there were no mics, they made themselves heard, with power to spare. Afterward, Jimi sought out Howard to congratulate him, saying, “You brothers just did the god-damnedest shit I ever heard! Ain’t nobody laughin’ now!”
Johnson appeared on hundreds of recordings spanning Gato Barbieri, McCoy Tyner, Muddy Waters, Roswell Rudd, Phoebe Snow, David Sanborn and Freddie Hubbard. He backed vocalists as diverse as Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Ella Fitzgerald, Yoko Ono and Albert King. Johnson can be heard on many movie soundtracks, especially those of Spike Lee; he spent several years with the NDR Big Band in Hamburg; and released four albums as a leader, including three with his multi-tuba brass choir Gravity.
While he played an arsenal of instruments, the tuba was his greatest love.
photo by Albie Mitchell
A tuba can be thunderous, it can be a rough-and-tumble instrument. People don’t think of it as anything delicate. I never thought there was anything the tuba couldn’t do, and I’ve been pretty satisfied with what I can do with a tuba.
By 2006, when New York Times critic Nate Chinen declared Howard Johnson “the figure most responsible for the tuba’s current status as a full-fledged jazz voice,” the life’s work of the multi- instrumentalist had been in progress for more than four decades. Johnson burned with the fire of bass-clef innovation since well before 1963, when he took an offhand remark from Eric Dolphy as a call to action to move to New York.
As a teen, Howard had discovered that he could push the tuba’s range to previously unheard heights—more than six octaves—surpassing the trombone on the high end and edging into trumpet territory. In a 2000 interview, Johnson noted that he was motivated to excel by a pecking order among high school band members, with those who took private lessons outranking those who learned at school, and the self-taught—like Howard—at the bottom.
When one of the private students asked him how high the tuba could go, “I was very embarrassed that I didn’t know,” he recalled. Thus, he began to experiment, noticing some of the highest notes were “very pretty; they sounded like they had kind of a French horn quality. So I added that new octave to my warm-ups.” He was surprised to discover that none of his bandmates could play anywhere near that high. “At that point, I’d probably been playing about six or eight weeks. I was highly motivated. I didn’t want to look like a fool,” Johnson said. “It was at that point that I decided not to let anybody tell me what the limitations were of the tuba or of the music.”
He was never a novelty act who would occasionally blast notes into the stratosphere to excite an audience. Rather, he played melody lines and solos fluidly and fluently, maintaining tonal integrity and feeling. Though there was no existing repertoire in the early 1960s for his then-groundbreaking low-brass range, once in the Big Apple Johnson caught the ear—and piqued the imagination—of Charles Mingus.
The iconic bassist/composer wrote adventurous parts for him in such a high register that “even trombonists wouldn’t welcome seeing those notes on the page,” Johnson recalled in 2017, for the liner notes of Testimony, his last release fronting his multi-tuba band Gravity.
Johnson became the muse of other composers, including Carla Bley and Gil Evans, establishing relationships lasting decades. Howard almost had a second encounter with Hendrix, in a project with the great Gil Evans, who had made plans to record with Hendrix and told Howard Johnson he wanted him in the studio, too. Unfortunately, Jimi didn’t live long enough to make the gig. But Howard eventually got to have his say on one of Jimi’s greatest tunes, “Voodoo Chile,” on Gil Evans’ recordings, and was also known to play a lovely, tender version of “Little Wing” on pennywhistle.
Tuba players are challenged by the standard Johnson set. He believed the tuba is capable of a virtually unlimited sonic and emotional range, based on a player’s abilities. By demonstrating his skills, Howard single-handedly moved the instrument out of its traditional place in the rhythm sections of large ensembles into featured roles in small bands. Recognizing his impact on the tuba’s changing role in music, in 2008 the instrument-maker Meinl Weston released the HoJo Gravity Series tuba, designed to the player’s specifications.
Johnson influenced musicians by expanding their ideas of the possibilities of the instrument, and demonstrated enormous generosity of spirit, mentoring tuba players, past, present and future. He influenced jazz (and pop) composers and arrangers by bringing a heretofore ignored instrument to the front line of soloists, and changed jazz overall by altering the direction of how jazz used the bass clef—no more oom-pah-pah, but pure linear bop, swing and rock phrasing that could stand on its own against any other “typical” jazz solo instrument.
At a time when jazz-rock fusion was gaining traction, Johnson opened up the music without diluting the tradition, performing with an unwavering jazz sensibility as a founding member of the Saturday Night Live band. His writing, arranging and playing captured the attention and imagination of such pop culture icons as John Lennon, Paul Simon, Levon Helm and Taj Mahal; Johnson never dumbed it down, never resorted to spoon-feeding anyone “Jazz 101” level music. He has always been “The Real Thing,” as Taj Mahal dubbed the 1971 CD that debuted Johnson’s innovative multi-tuba brass choir, Gravity.
Even as he approached his 75th birthday, Johnson declared that he still had the fire in his belly to solo, to increase awareness of the versatility of often-underutilized horns, and to continue to have his say on the definitive way to play them. After the music master no longer made a practice of hoisting the 20-plus pound instrument to his lips—his last gigs were in 2017—he continued to feel he had much to offer as a mentor and advisor.
There’s a wonderful accessibility to Howard Johnson’s artistry. Whether playing a standard from a Broadway show, taking the lead on Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” with the Gil Evans Orchestra, or evoking early R&B beats on Don Pullen’s “Big Alice” with Gravity, his music could get under your skin and quicken your steps for days to come.
Howard’s talent, determination, and no-limits viewpoint were irreplaceable ingredients in his recipe for artistic fulfillment and professional success, and his music will continue to inspire for years to come.
Howard Johnson is survived by his longtime life partner, Nancy Olewine; his daughter, musician Nedra Johnson; and two sisters, Teri Nichols and Connie Armstrong. He was predeceased by his son, David Johnson, a musician and artist, in 2011. A memorial service will be held in 2021.
In lieu of flowers or other tributes, it was Howard’s wish that to honor his memory and support his legacy as a master of the bass clef, memorial donations be made to benefit The Howard Johnson Tuba Jazz Program Fund at Penn State.
