Daft Punk Random Access Memories
34
www.CascadeAE.com| June 2013
F
or the past 40 years the music legend has invited fans to celebrate with him over the July 4th holiday. Once again, the annual event will be held at the Fort Worth Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas on July 4th, but this year they are celebrating Willie’s 80th birthday. Returning to help Willie celebrate will be such stars as Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, David Allan Coe, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Ray Price. In addition, Academy Award and Grammy winner Ryan Bingham and rising star Justin Moore are scheduled to perform. Beginning in 1973 in Dripping Springs, Texas, Willie’s 4th of July Picnic has become a Texas tradition unlike any other. At its start, the hippie movement was well under way when a 40-year-old Willie Nelson decided to hold a music festival in a field in Dripping Springs. Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Tom T. Hall headlined the festival that brought over 40,000 people to the inaugural run of what would become a Texas tradition. In 1975, just a few days before Willie’s third annual picnic, the Texas Senate honored Willie by declaring July 4, 1975, as Willie Nelson Day in Texas. It was a big deal in 2004 when Nelson announced that he was bringing his picnic to one of his boyhood homes – Fort Worth. With a six-decade career and a catalog of more than 200 albums to his credit, the iconic Texas singer-songwriter Willie Nelson has earned a permanent position in pop music’s pantheon with songs that combine the sophistication of Tin Pan
Alley with the rough-and-tumble grit and emotional honesty of country music. He brought pop and country together on the radio in the early 1960s with unforgettable songs like Crazy (Patsy Cline), Hello Walls (Faron Young), Funny How Time Slips Away (Billy Walker), Night Life (Ray Price) and others and, by the mid-1970s, had become a superstar in his own right as a prime mover of a revolutionary and thriving outlaw country music scene. The Red Headed Stranger, Willie’s first album for Columbia Records in 1975, catapulted the artist to the front ranks of popularity across America and around the world. A seven-time Grammy Award winner, Willie is a co-founder of Farm Aid, an annual series of fundraising events which began as an all-star benefit concert in 1985 to raise money for American family farmers. He continues to lobby against horse slaughter and produces his own blend of biodiesel fuel. An old-school road-dog troubadour with new school wheels, Willie plays concerts year-round, tirelessly touring on Honeysuckle Rose III (he rode his first two buses into the ground), taking his music and fans to places that are always worth the ride. Following on the successful 2012 CD release Heroes, Willie Nelson and Family are back with a diverse, heartwarming CD release titled Let’s Face the Music and Dance. Willie has put together some old favorites (Twilight Time, South of the Border) with a balanced combination of jazzy, bluesy, popish/rocky, country and Latin influenced tracks. Perhaps at 80 he’s reminding us once again to not try to box him in some category of music or style. After all he’s just Willie! by Pamela Hulse Andrews
Photo courtesy of DigitalNewsRelease
A
fter the most extensive marketing campaign I have seen in years, and the considerable pre-release fervor, I decided to pick up Daft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories. For those unfamiliar with Daft Punk, they’re a French electronic music duo who have been creating electronic dance music for the better part of the last 20 years. Their unique sound has been a huge influence on the genre and pop music in general, but I fear that their latest album has been a step backwards. Fans of their earlier work looking for Homework Part 2 or a sequel album to Discovery will be sorely disappointed, as Random Access Memories moves in a completely different direction. Gone are the inventive high-energy riffs of albums past, in favor of a mashup between ‘70s funk grooves and minimalist electronic beats. Although I did generally enjoy the album, when it was over I couldn’t recall a single standout track. Around the fifth song it all begins to sound sort of like elevator music, where it becomes nothing more than background noise, even when listening was the sole activity I was doing at the time. This album stands in stark contrast to the other big names in electronic dance music right now, and I think it does so to its own detriment. The music is well composed and the production is immaculate, like all Daft Punk releases, but I can’t help but think the music is lacking the excitement and energy of the Daft Punk I’ve been listening to all these years. Overall I’d rate Random Access Memories at a 6/10, it is worth a listen but isn’t anything amazing or revolutionary. by Andrew Danfelt
Willie Nelson at 80
Blind Pilot to Headline at Hullabaloo Festival
T
he NorthWest Crossing Hullabaloo, a Bend street festival set for June 28, is kicking off summer in style with headline musical act, Blind Pilot. This American indie folk band is based in Portland and made its network television debut on The Ellen Show earlier this year as one of her favorite bands. Their debut album from 2008, 3 Rounds and a Sound, reached 13 on the Billboard Top Digital Albums chart. Blind Pilot, which is known for such tunes as Go On, Say It and Story I Heard, released their second album We Are The Tide in 2011. The band gained attention in 2008 when they went on a self-produced bicycle tour of the West Coast to promote their first album, and later when they opened for the Decemberists and made some large festival appearances, such as last year’s Lollapalooza in Chicago. Their act will begin at around 8:30pm on June 28 at the NorthWest Crossing Hullabaloo, preceded by several other local and regional musical acts. Blind Pilot www.nwxevents.com