Tampa Calling

Here’s a heads-up for world-music fans, or lovers of lushly melodic pop music. Milton Nascimento, 65-year-old icon of Brazilian music, will release his first album in five years, Novas Bossas, on Sept. 30 through Blue Note in the U.S.

I listened to an advance download, and the music is flat-out gorgeous. Nascimento’s ethereal voice, including his legendary falsetto, is in terrific shape. He’s joined by Paulo and Daniel Jobim (son and grandson of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim).

The 14-song CD includes old and new songs, and updates the bossa nova genre. It doesn’t rely exclusively on that gentle undulating bossa beat, but mixes in samba, ballads, etc. Keep an ear out.

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To my ears, Billy Joel’s artistic hot streak lasted two years, 1977 and 1978, when he released far and away his best LPs: The Stranger and 52nd Street. (For the record, I think 52nd Street wins by a nose as the top Joel album). The rest of his discs are marked by a few good songs and a handful of great ones, surrounded by average material (and early on, at least, substandard production).

Sony has seen fit to issue this 30th Anniversary Edition 31 years after the fact in a three-disc box set that includes a remaster of the original album; a previously unreleased 1977 concert from Carnegie Hall; and a DVD that includes a making-of doc and a 1978 live show culled from the BBC program The Old Grey Whistle Test.

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I just stumbled across some stats that really show how CD sales have tapered off in the last decade or so:

1994: Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album went triple platinum (in excess of 3-million in sales). It reached No. 8 on the Billboard 200.

2006: Petty’s Highway Companion fell short of gold (500,000 in sales) while reaching No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

Both CDs came out when Soundscan technology — which records sales via bar codes — was available. So for the mathematically impaired, this means that Petty’s most recent disc charted four positions higher than his release a dozen years ago, but sold less than one-sixth the units.

Next time you hear about an act entering the Top 5 on the Billboard album sales chart, don’t assume that its moving a lot of copies.

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A few years ago, I went to a Steve Winwood concert at Jannus Landing, stayed about 30 minutes, and left feeling like he was some sort of robotic construct, a Stepford musician. So last night I was in no particular hurry to get to the Forum to see him open for Tom Petty.

We arrived just as he kicked into “Higher Love.” Winwood and his band — guitar, saxophone, drums, percussion and Hammond organ — did a far more organic and funky version than the high-gloss recording. The quintet, performing in close quarters as opening acts usually do, really connected and found a cool, rolling groove.

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I first saw Tom Petty in the very early 1980s, and have probably attended seven or eight of his shows. The guy (and his band) have never let me down, never delivered anything short of a high-quality concert. And some of those concerts were nothing short of terrific. I can’t say that about many (any?) other of the hundreds of performers I’ve seen and reviewed over the years (decades).

Same thing happened last night at the St. Pete Times Forum. Petty and his five Heartbreakers delivered an enthusiastic two-hour set, exquisitely paced with moments that ranged from exalted energy to pensive reflection.

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Last night a Ruth Eckerd Hall, sitting at her piano on a stage decked out to look like a living room, songwriting legend Carole King came across as a pretty hip, sweetheart of a grandma. She pronounced proudly that she’s 66 years old.

When King exhorted everyone to sing along to the chorus of “Natural Woman,” she raved to the audience, “You guys are great!”

No we weren’t. (Although I did feel liberated crooning, “You make me feel like a natural woman.”)

After awhile, I was half expecting Carole to break out the chicken soup.

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A reader named Ron Michael took serious offense at my preview of this week’s Dave Matthews show (which ran in last week’s CL). He sent me an e-mail, but I figured I’d give him a more public say. I applaud his passion, although he’s considerably off base in some of his more personal attacks on me. At any rate, I invite you folks to weigh in as well.

Here’s what I wrote:
Jam at the Amp
By now, I realize it’s a waste of effort to point out that Dave Matthews is a substandard talent, especially in proportion to the adoration he receives from his hordes of fans.
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The gutter that runs beside the road of rock history is littered with artists who squandered their talent, who flamed out, washed up, went in the tank. The reasons are many, the most popular being some manner of self-destructiveness. Artists who were real good at that sort of thing — from Hendrix to Cobain — left this mortal coil with their legacies intact.

But that’s an old rock ’n’ roll saw.

For today’s discussion, I’m interested in a more subtle type of squandering, the type whose reasons are not always easy to pinpoint. Often times, it’s little more than running out of ideas but continuing to hang on. In the process, they’ve ruined their legacies, or at the very least put them in serious peril.

So who in rock annals are the biggest talent-squanderers, who have authored the biggest falls from artist grace? Let me nominate a few, and pick a winner. As always, feel free to weigh in.

Elton John — From vibrant singer/songwriter and firebrand showman to chubby old queen with a braying voice. Elton reached his artistic pinnacle in 1973 with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road — that’s 35 years ago for those who don’t feel like doing the math — and was basically done two years later with Rock of the Westies.
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As do many CDs by artists I’m not familiar with, Albert Hammond, Jr.’s Como Te Llama? languished on my ever-growing pile for at least a couple weeks, before the gentle urging of a publicist caused me to grab it and shove it in the car player. I’m glad I did.

Hammond, as I now know, is the rhythm guitar player for The Strokes, which didn’t predispose me to liking his music, but didn’t necessarily put me off either. As it turns out, I like Hammond’s wide-ranging take on indie-rock better than the more confined stylistic approach of The Strokes.

Como Te Llama?, Hammond’s second solo outing, is a grab-bag that includes garage-R&B, power-pop, reggae and any number of other iterations of modern rock. His sound lacks the polish of his band, but it’s more daring, and ultimately more satisfying. The disc is due out July 8.

By the way, Hammond’s father Albert is a soft-rock songwriter and performer. He charted a few times in the early ’70s, mostly notably with the Top 5 hit “It Never Rains in Southern California.”

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Wade just published his Top 10 favorite CDs of ’08, so far, and I figured I’d piggy-back. But I’m not going to do 10. I’ll do that in December, but for June I’ll keep it to five. Two of the five are on Wade’s list, and I have to admit that that troubles me in some vague sort of way.

In no particular order:

• Al Green, Lay it Down (Blue Note)
The Rev’s best album of the 2000s. Producer ?uestlove lays down a seductive bed of sounds, and Al really struts his vocal chops on a series of sensuous, mostly mid-tempo songs.

• Firewater, The Golden Hour (Bloodshot)
Tod A made like a Bedouin, wandering through the Mediterranean/Middle East for three years and coming back with an exotic musical travelogue — that rocks. Full review

• Was (Not Was), Boo! (Ryko)
The R&B wackadoos return for their first album in 17 years, and pick up where they left off: Witty, irreverent lyrics, passionately sung, over organic funk and soul. Full review

• My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO/Red)
I wasn’t too familiar with MMJ before hearing this one, and it took a few listens, but now I’m completely hooked. Terrific songs that brush up, but aren’t anchored to, a variety genres. There’s rarely anything overtly obvious here. An engaging mix of feels, tempos and instrumentation. Strong vocals.

• Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin’ (Lost Highway)
The fetching songstress delivers a subdued and sexy set of tunes by one of her heroes, the late Dusty Springfield. Full review

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During the 27 years that I’ve been writing about music, I’ve certainly hogged my share of hookups and swag. But last weekend took the prize. Ben Eason, CL’s CEO, asked if I would come down to a swank resort in Key Largo to help out during a retreat he takes with his business society, the Florida chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.

Come on down, stay a couple nights. My task: Lead a panel Q&A with The Bangles on Saturday morning and introduce them from the stage before their concert that night.

Um, I thought (for a millisecond), I could do that.

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Don’t know about you, but I’m amped that Pearl Jam’s coming in tomorrow night. This info hit my inbox today about Pearl Jam’s expanded program for concert bootlegs. I was mailed several of the first batch a few years ago, and the quality was terrific. Looks like it’ll be even better now:

Pearl Jam will expand their bootleg program for the upcoming 2008 tour to include three different options for fans seeking to obtain bootleg recordings of the band’s live shows. High-quality digital downloads and burn-to-order CDs of the entire show will be available following each show date exclusively via Pearl Jam’s fan club, Ten Club, at www.pearljam.com. In addition, mobile bootlegs of three live tracks per show will be released following the show on V CAST Music phones and at www.pearljamconcerts.com through Verizon Wireless.
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In the late ’70s, when I was a struggling loser just out of college and my brother Kurt was still in high school, we would spend considerable time in the bedroom we shared in my parent’s St. Petersburg home.

He was a budding drummer; I was a future music critic (but didn’t know it at the time). We’d while away hours listening to music, with plenty of focus on Steely Dan. When Kurt finally mastered the Steve Gadd drum solo on the middle section of “Aja,” we rejoiced together.

So it was particularly gratifying that Kurt was in town with his family from Tennessee for a few days when Steely Dan played Ruth Eckerd Hall last night. Big brother/little brother hitting the Dan together. He’d never seen ’em. Doesn’t get much better than that.

I suppose Fagen, Becker and company could’ve disappointed, but it wasn’t likely. As it turns out, it was another entirely worthy Steely Dan show, the third in the Bay area in consecutive years, and the second straight at Ruth Eckerd (to what looked like a packed house).

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One of the great joys of working in the alternative press is that we have a certain, shall we say, latitude in the way we conduct ourselves in the office. For CL, that translates to an office-wide Friday Afternoon Dance Party with music piped from our extensive playlists through computer speakers. It also means that if I wander in first thing in the morning jonesing to hear Bobby Womack’s “A Woman’s Gotta Have It,” Garcia can pump it out into the office.

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