Carlo | June 19, 2012
Last Friday, I sent off a chapter about Motown and its relationship to Cleveland soul music. It went to an editor at an academic press in the South who said he’d get back to me about it first week in July. Here’s hoping. Motown’s Fateful Shadow is the longest chapter I’ve written yet, and it’s […]
Carlo | August 27, 2011
Last time I posted I was into writing for Lodging Hospitality again, in addition to writing occasionally for Hotelnewsnow. Since then, I’ve been to Dallas and reported my LH stories; vacationed on Cape Cod, where I spent some summer time with my parents when I was a little boy; continued to work on Invisible Soul, […]
Carlo | December 30, 2010
I didn’t want the year to end without mentioning the Horse Flies, an upstate New York band I’ve been following for 20 years. The band played at Beachland Ballroom Dec. 17 and generated a gang of encores. They worked through material from “Until the Ocean,” their latest album, and they’re beginning to focus on a […]
Carlo | July 31, 2010
Haven’t written anything for my blog it seems like forever, and it’s the end of the month, a change. July was hot, indeed. It was also great: I can’t remember a nicer summer in Cleveland, which is indeed getting warmer. But this evening there’s a coolness, a dryness absent all July, suggesting fall is in […]
Carlo | June 11, 2010
Yes, that’s a cliché, but Justin Carr has given it new life with a 17-minute DVD about Cleveland’s role in rock. In it, I talk about the city and its rock tradition, along with Rock Hall head Terry Stewart, legendary promoter Mike Belkin, and Billy Bass, a remarkable DJ known for his farsightedness at WMMS […]
Carlo | March 7, 2010
In rock ‘n’ roll, comebacks are by no means a sure bet. Some bands never go away, even when they should, like the Stones and the Who. Some go acoustic and minimal, like Ray Davies of the Kinks. Others devolve into their leader, like Roky Erickson, whose 13th Floor Elevators yielded the barbed-wire breakup song, […]
Carlo | February 10, 2010
I’ve been neglectful of my website. It’s been nearly a month since I updated. I’ve been very busy, but it’s time to catch up. In mid-December, my wife suggested I e-mail as many people as I could think of to tell them I wanted to engage more. Being semi-retired can be lonely, even when there’s […]
Carlo | November 6, 2009
Weird to think of “Leonard Cohen Live in London” alongside “Allman Brothers at Fillmore East,” but both are paradigms of the live album, capturing artists at the peak of their powers. Cohen’s was recorded in 2008 when he was 73, near the start of his nearly two-year-long tour; the American leg this fall was his […]
Carlo | November 1, 2009
I keep running into other lucky ones who attended the Leonard Cohen concert at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland Oct. 25; we all stand in awe (here’s my preview). In more than three hours, Cohen and his amazing troupe of cosmic musicians rekindled my belief, that I’d thought retro, in pop as conveyor of truth. […]
Carlo | October 14, 2009
Willie Nile may be the most stirring hard rocker you’ve never heard, and his new album, “House of a Thousand Guitars,” ranks with his best—except for the title track, a musical roar that name-checks guitar heroes in an uncharacteristic, sadly retro burst of self-indulgence. Otherwise, “House” is wonderful, sparked by the infernally infectious hoedown of […]
