After listening to Bill Champlin’s latest album No Place Left to Fall, I think I now understand why he left Chicago. Champlin sounds so free and alive on this record. Chicago had become creatively stagnant, releasing only two albums worth of new material in the last twenty years. I’m sure the steady income from touring was nice and all but playing the same set year after year probably took its toll on Champlin. The new album is full of energy and ideas and it’s an absolute joy to listen to. It’s Champlin at his finest, running the full gamut of styles from laidback funk/R&B (Total Control, Tugging at your Sleeve) to acoustic pop (Look Away), gospel (Looking for You) to Chicago-esque ballads (Never Been Afraid, All Along).

The musicianship here is top notch with Champlin on keyboards & Hammond B-3, Bruce Gaitsch on guitar, Billy Ward on drums and George Hawkins Jr. on bass. The standout track for me is “No Place Left to Fall”. It’s tastefully restrained with Champlin and band holding back and keeping things at its bare minimum during the whole track. I love that tension that is built during the song and really serves the track well. It takes a truly mature musician to know not to “play out” on every song.

other favorites include: “Total Control”, “The Truth”, “Looking for You” and “All Along”.

retroGrade: A
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Bill Champlin – No Place Left to Fall
released in the U.S.: August 2009
record label: Dreammakers
official website: BillChamplin.net

TRACKLIST:
1 Total Control (Champlin, Graydon) 05:19
2 Tuggin’ on Your Sleeve (Caruso, Champlin, Champlin) 05:53
3 The Truth (Champlin, Gaitsch) 04:16
4 No Place Left to Fall (Caruso, Champlin, Champlin) 04:10
5 Lover Like That (Champlin) 05:39
6 Lookin’ for You (Champlin, Matkosky) 04:24
7 Never Been Afraid (Carlsson, Champlin) 04:56
8 Angelina (Champlin, Gaitsch, Hawkins) 06:16
9 Look Away (Warren) 06:34
10 I Want You to Stay (Burnett, Gaitsch) 04:51
11 Never Let Go (Carlsson, Champlin) 04:25
12 Stone Cold Hollywood (Champlin) 04:41
13 All Along (Champlin, Gaitsch, Hawkins) 06:41

listen to a sample of “Total Control” via Lala.com

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Catch Bill Champlin live in November :
Fri 11/06/09 San Juan Capistrano, CA The Coach House
Sat 11/07/09 San Diego, CA Anthology
Tue 11/10/09 Santa Cruz, CA Moe’s Alley
Wed 11/11/09 Mill Valley, CA Throckmorton Theatre
Thu 11/12/09 Tuolumne, CA Black Oak Casino
Sat 11/14/09 Santa Rosa, CA The Last Day Saloon
Sun 11/15/09 Newcastle, CA Constable Jack’s
Thu 11/19/09 Portland, OR Jimmy Maks
Fri 11/20/09 Langley, WA Mukilteo Coffee Roasters
Sat 11/21/09 Langley, WA Mukilteo Coffee Roasters
Sun 11/22/09 Seattle, WA The Triple Door
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just to update those that are wondering.. retroblog.net has finally made it over to the new webhost. It would have been MUCH easier if my former host allowed cpanel backup/restores but like I mentioned before, they “conveniently” had the feature disabled. to make matters even more difficult, they disabled access to the mysql databases as well. So essentially, I had to manually transfer all my files via FTP and then transfer all my archived blog posts using the WP import/export feature. It took a lot more time and effort, but at least NOW I’m no longer hosted on that “sinking ship” of a web hosting company.

It’s absolutely bizarre. support tickets go unanswered. no replies to emails. Their client support area on their company website doesn’t properly work either. what is the deal?? I couldn’t get a straight answer from these people. weird stuff. So it was definitely THE TIME to jump ship.

I did put in a request to cancel my account but I suspect my request will go unanswered as well.

When a band catches that mercurial wave of mainstream popularity, the modus operandi for most is to NOT rock the boat and keep riding the wave. And that basically sums up Paramore’s latest release, brand new eyes. The followup to their hit album Riot! is pretty much more of the same which will please most fans and will most likely continue to broaden their appeal. They’ve got that hook-laden pop/punk formula down pat.

Paramore sounds confident and comfortable in their role as a female-fronted Green Day clone. The one-two punch of album openers “Careful” and “Ignorance” feel like an overeager attempt at proving to their fans that they haven’t gone soft just yet. But things begin to click by the third track “Playing God” which features a great chorus with the memorable lines: Next time you point a finger I might have to bend it back or break it, break it off. Next time you point a finger I’ll point you to the mirror.

It’s a bit unfortunate that producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance) and the band chose to master this sucker “loud”. Granted the brick-walled, in-your-face sound is standard for this genre, but man, it’s brutal on the ears. Ear-fatigue is a given when listening to this album for an extended period of time. But even so, the band is poised to widen their already massive fanbase with radio-ready hits like “Where the Lines Overlap”, “Looking Up” and “All I Wanted” which features Hayley Williams channeling her inner-diva (think: Kelly Clarkson).

retroGrade: B+

Paramore – brand new eyes
released: September 2009
record label: Fueled by Ramen
produced by: Rob Cavallo

TrackList:
1 Careful (Farro, Williams) 03:50
2 Ignorance (Farro, Williams) 03:38
3 Playing God (Farro, Williams, York) 03:02
4 Brick by Boring Brick (Farro, Williams) 04:13
5 Turn It Off (Farro, Williams) 04:19
6 The Only Exception (Farro, Williams) 04:27
7 Feeling Sorry (Farro, Williams, York) 03:05
8 Looking Up (Farro, Williams) 03:29
9 Where the Lines Overlap (Farro, Williams) 03:18
10 Misguided Ghosts (Farro, Williams, York) 03:01
11 All I Wanted (Williams, York) 03:45

watch Paramore at the mtvU Ulalume Festival performing “Brick By Boring Brick”:

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Paramore:
Hayley Williams: vocals
Taylor York : guitar
Zac Farro: drums
Josh Farro: guitar
Jeremy Davis: bass

current tour dates:
Tue 11/03/09 St. Louis, MO The Pageant
Wed 11/04/09 Kansas City, MO Uptown Theater
Fri 11/06/09 Saint Paul, MN The Roy Wilkins Auditorium
Sun 11/08/09 Denver, CO Fillmore Auditorium
Tue 11/10/09 San Francisco, CA Warfield Theatre
Wed 11/11/09 Hollywood, CA Hollywood Palladium
Sun 11/29/09 Helsinki, Finland Helsinki Ice Arena
Mon 11/30/09 Stockholm, Sweden Arenan
Tue 12/01/09 Copenhagen, Denmark VEGA House Of Music
Thu 12/03/09 Hamburg, Germany Gruenspan
Fri 12/04/09 Berlin, Germany Huxleys Neue Welt
Sun 12/06/09 Cologne, Germany Palladium
Mon 12/07/09 Paris, France Casino de Paris
Tue 12/08/09 Tilburg, Netherlands 013
Thu 12/10/09 Glasgow, United Kingdom S.E.C.C.
Fri 12/11/09 Birmingham, United Kingdom The NIA
Sat 12/12/09 Dublin, Ireland The O2 Dublin
Mon 12/14/09 Cardiff, United Kingdom Cardiff International Arena
Wed 12/16/09 Manchester, United Kingdom Manchester Evening News Arena
Thu 12/17/09 Brighton, United Kingdom The Brighton Centre
Fri 12/18/09 London, United Kingdom Wembley Arena

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Let me start by saying that I like Taylor Swift. She’s cute, she’s young and she’s got a great sense of humor. But I’m sorry, the girl can’t sing live. It’s pretty obvious she needs a team of producers, studio engineers and pro-tools experts to help keep her vocals in-tune. Check out her appearance from last night’s Dancing With the Stars. ouch. I personally recommend turning down the volume while watching this.

hopefully her upcoming hosting gig with Saturday Night Live will showcase more of her comedic ability than her singing ability (or lack thereof).

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It’s time once again for Retroblog.net’s Friday Free for All. For today’s edition, I thought we should explore the vast underworld of bootlegs a bit. thanks to the almighty internets, the sharing of rare and interesting boots exploded these last few years. here’s just a random sampling of some that I have on hand at the moment.

Enjoy the tracks. and feel free to post a list of some of your favorite boots.

please note the sound quality will vary here due to these being “bootlegs” obviously.

GTR – Away (No One is to Blame) from the unreleased NeroTrend album (1987). This features Max Bacon on lead vocals and Steve Howe on guitar. Steve Hackett left the group at this point and Robert Berry was his replacement.

Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello – So Like Candy demo from the Flowers In the Dirt Sessions boot (1988). This is a great version that features both McCartney and Costello singing lead.

Todd Rundgren – Slut from the Vancouver August 25, 2006 boot. a great audience recording. It’s a rough and loose rendition with Tony Levin on bass and Jerry Marotta on drums.

Lindsey Buckingham – Go Insane from the Coach House December 10, 1992 boot. an awesome solo performance of his early eighties hit. definitely an improvement over the original recording which sounds a bit dated now due to the heavy use of the Fairlight sampler.

Susanna Hoffs – Darling One from her unreleased columbia album (1994). This is from the album that Columbia Records rejected. Hoffs ended up re-recording this song (along with some others) for her 1996 album “Susanna Hoffs”. This particular version is more upbeat than the officially released one.

Yes – Cinema/City of Love from the June 19, 1994 Canandaigua, NY boot. There are a ton of boots from this tour since the band did a simulcast of each show via “ConcertSonics”. Even though the “Talk” album isn’t one of my favorites, I thought some of the performances on this tour were pretty strong. I definitely miss Trevor Rabin, though. It’s definitely way overdue for Rabin to get back on stage!!

Journey – Send Her My Love from the Detroit Raised On Radio simulcast in 1986. It’s not the greatest sounding live recording but the “Raised on Radio” tour is fascinating to me for a multitude of reasons – one of which is the presence of Randy Jackson (of American Idol) on bass for this tour. listening to these old live recordings of Journey make me miss Steve “the voice” Perry even more!

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Happy Friday, everyone!

Well, I guess it comes as no surprise since Dollhouse hasn’t been performing that well lately. But still, what other show does FOX have that’ll pull better numbers in the Friday night time slot?

At least this will give Joss Whedon the go ahead to close out the series and tie up all the loose ends. Of course, I’m assuming FOX will still be showing the rest of the episodes this season…

unsolicited career advice for Joss: please stay far away from the FOX network in the future!!

The Ausiello Files: Fox to bench DollHouse during sweeps
This isn’t a good sign: Sources confirm to me exclusively that Fox has decided to pull Dollhouse off the schedule during November sweeps. Joss Whedon’s ratings-challenged drama is expected to return in December and air back-to-back episodes on Friday night.

Bottom line: Barring a ratings miracle, Dollhouse will be shut down for good after it completes its current 13-episode order.
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New York Dolls guitarist Steve Conte has a new solo album coming out titled Steve Conte and the Crazy Truth. It’ll be released in the U.S. on October 20th and in the U.K. on November 30th though Varese Vintage Records.

I’m looking forward to hearing the new CD which features Conte on guitar & vocals, Lee “Leeko” Kostrinsky on bass and Phil Stewart on drums. New York Dolls frontman David Johansen makes an appearance on the album as well as other guests like Catherine Russell and Nikki Richards.

A CD release party is scheduled for November 11, 2009 at the Bowery Electric in New York City. And then Conte is off to the U.K. to tour with the New York Dolls.

If you’re in the U.K. be sure to catch the New York Dolls at one of the following gigs:
02Dec09 – Cambridge, The Junction
03Dec09 – Bristol, Anson Room
04Dec09 – London, HMV Forum
06Dec09 – Southampton, Talking Heads
08Dec09 – Warwickshire, Leamington Spa
09Dec09 – Liverpool, O2 Academy
10Dec09 – Edinburgh, HMV Picture House

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Thanks to an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Journey’s newly released DVD, Live in Manila, went straight to #1 on Billboard’s Music DVD chart this week. Not only that but their 2008 album, Revelation, popped back in the Billboard Top 200 at #63.

I’m impressed that they were able to sell enough of those DVDs especially when I personally couldn’t find the title at my local Super Walmart last week. (most WalMarts SHOULD have them in-stock by now.)

Anyway, Congrats to Arnel Pineda and Journey. It’s too bad they just finished up their 2009 tour. I’m sure they would have seen a huge surge in ticket sales for their live shows due to the “Oprah Effect“.

One thing to look forward to is the upcoming documentary on Pineda by filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz titled Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey. I’m not sure exactly when the film will be released but check out the two-part sneak peek up on youtube:

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There’s some good news for all the west coast Todd Rundgren fans courtesy of Doug and Mel of Rundgren Radio. Four new dates have been scheduled in California. That’s right kids, Todd will be performing A Wizard a True Star live at the following venues:

Tue 12/01/09 San Francisco, CA – Palace of Fine Arts
Wed 12/02/09 Sacramento, CA – Crest Theatre
Fri 12/04/09 Los Angeles, CA – Orpheum Theatre
Sat 12/05/09 Ventura, CA – Majestic Ventura Theater

Todd will be using the same backup band from his previous gigs in September with one exception – former Utopia member Ralph Schuckett will be replacing Roger Powell on keyboards. I’ll be interested to hear about the song choices for the opening “Utopia” set now that Schuckett is in the band.

anyway, get the latest info on the gigs by heading over to AWATSLive.com or TRConnection.com.
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Is It My Name? – from Akron 07Sep09

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Opening song from the Utopia Set – Road to Utopia:

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