"It Doesn't Matter"
Who Dat?
The most talented member of CSN-without-the-Y, Stephen Stills was riding high on a solo career with tracks like "Love the One You're With," "Black Queen" and "Change Partners." During sessions for his third solo record, Stills recorded with an ad-hoc studio group of crack players - wandering in and out of sessions was very big in the '70s - who gelled so well together that they decided to form a real group.
In addition to Stills, Manassas included ex-Byrds singer/g
Joel BernsteinThere isn't much mystery to Graham Nash.
Not that that's a bad thing at all. In fact, if you want to know how the British expat with the distinctive tenor vocals feels about anything - political and social issues, fellow musicians, his wife and children even religion - it's all right there in his songs. And in straightforward language.
Beginning with the Hollies and continuing through the revolving-door lineups of Crosby, Stills & Nash...and Crosby, Stills, Nash &am
Marc Baptiste/ courtesy www.baduworld.comLast week, Rocks Off had the distinct pleasure of chatting with R&B Earth mother Erykah Badu as she looked after her brood at her South Dallas home. The first part of our interview appears in this week's print issue and online here. Here's the rest.
Rocks Off: How have you managed to stay so independent within the structure of the major-label music business?
Erykah Badu: I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything in particular. I just do what
Cactus Music
2110 Portsmouth, 713-526-9272
www.myspace.com/cactusmv1. Ryan Bingham, Roadhouse Sun
2. Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey & the Groo-Grux King
3. Steve Earle, Townes
4. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
5. Elvis Costello, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
6. Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood, Live at Madison Square Garden
7. Neil Young, Archives vol. 1
8. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Demos
9. Bob Dylan, Together Through Life
10. The Flatlanders, Hills & Valleys
Sound Exchange
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Crosby, Stills and Nash
Demos (Atlantic/Rhino)​These are resurging times for this harmonic trio. They're in the midst of a 40th anniversary tour (which stops in Houston at the Woodlands tonight), were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June, and are headed into studio with Rick Rubin for a new album of covers.
Demos is a collection of just a dozen tracks featuring early, working versions of songs that would end up becoming CSN (and sometimes Y) warhorses, as well as appear on variou
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Claude Levi-Strauss died last week at the age of 100. He was one of the great minds of the 20th century, who took the tools of anthropology and used them not simply to observe and record the detailed facts of cultures but also to investigate meta-matters of philosophy and structure.
In fact, he was the father of structuralism, through which he examined, among many other things, why the myths from so many different cultures seem so similar. As he moved through this examination, he came to bel
