Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

There are seminal events in music history, seismic shifts that occur when forces of personality, timing and circumstance collide to create something truly monumental. Sometimes, they are individual moments, like when Chuck Berry wrote his genre-defining “Maybelline,” John Lennon met his future collaborator Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan plugged in and launched a musical revolution.  Other times, the milestone involves a gathering such as Woodstock or the Harlem Cultural Festival, known informally as the Black Woodstock, which became the subject of the recent award-winning documentary Summer of Soul. Both of those events took place in 1969, a year that saw a flurry of festivals; that s...

Los Angeles singer Tom Waits has always viewed his favorite denizens of the night with a charming romanticism. But with Rain Dogs Waits’s derelict characters have taken on gritty, three-dimensional life. On "Cemetery Polka" a sad accordion and rude trombone flesh out his vivid portrait of a wildly eccentric family. And the tinkling, aimless piano in "Tango Till They’re Sore" is well suited to the rambling imagination of the song’s narrator. But Waits is most coherent when he sticks to shattered dreams and tin-can sounds of alleyways. On several songs he uses makeshift percussion instruments to create a kind of hobo’s orchestra. His gift for idioms has always been impressive, but now, with a ...

Joni Mitchell’s last album, Wild Things Run Fast, reflected the maturity of a woman who had chased away her romantic demons. Now, Dog Eat Dog, her first release in three years, reveals that the 42-year-old musician has experienced a political awakening. The 10 new songs, which tackle such subjects as corporate greed, African famine and right-wing evangelism, may alienate her loyal listeners. But with its clever pop arrangements and engaging vocals, the album includes some of Mitchell’s most exuberant work in years. On the playfully syncopated title track she decries the “prime-time crime” of “bigwig financiers,” while in "Tax Free" actor Rod Steiger impersonates a raving evangelist who warns...