News & Updates — psych

Happy birthday to one of the greats, Curtis Mayfield! Singer, composer, guitarist, record label owner, businessman, civil rights hero, movie musician, talent scout, psych-soul songwriter, Black Power icon, Chicago legend and so much more.

The Cuban-born, West Coast-based hard-hitting percussionist Armando Peraza is best known for his work with the Santana band, George Shearing and Cal Tjader. He played congas, bongos and timbales, was a songwriter and dancer and made a killer album under his own name for Skye Records. Born in Havana, he was orphaned and took to boxing and baseball. After some time as a boxing coach he became a musician at 17, joining the band of Albert Ruiz and other Cuban groups. It may have been just another hustle at first, but it set him off onto a globe-trotting career! He...

Here's a salute to the recently deceased Jaki Liebezeit, the human metronome for Can, among other projects. After playing free-jazz in Germany in the mid-to-late '60s, including an ensemble led by Manfred Schoof, as well as with Globe Unity Orchestra (with a young Peter Brotzmann on sax!) he decided to go with a decidedly more disciplined "motorik" beat as a founding member of Can, a band of Stockausen's students that were really into the Velvet Underground and "world music" and forged a whole new template for out-rock. Indeed, Can are synonymous with the "Krautrock" history. Brian Eno called Krautrock's "motorik"...

Happy birthday to that bitter bastard genius, the incomparable Miles Davis!! From bebop to cool jazz to modal to out-funk/fusion to pop, Miles played it all and never cared what the critics thought of him! My personal favorite era was his '70s hard-avant-funk, some of which sounds so brutal that it borders on proto-death metal!