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Right now the popular music scene has seen a revival of country and folk acts. Oddly enough, a few older punk rockers are making some interesting strives with the likes of Drag the River, Tim Barry, Saw Wheel, Wayne the Train Hancock & Hank Williams III leading the way. Ask anyone of them who have influenced their music, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts, they’ll say Steve Earle. One of the greatest living songwriters on the planet, Steve Earle was in town on July 9th to bring not only his brand of rebellious folk country, but the music of his friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt.

It was a seated affair, which at first seemed odd, but as he took the stage armed with a nothing but an acoustic guitar and a shining spotlight, it seemed only fitting that we sit back and take in the knowledge he was about to bestow upon us.

During the course of the evening, Earle explained how he met Van Zandt in 1972, and how shy he was to even speak to him. He recounted the story of how Van Vandt “took up the whole first row” at one of his shows and heckled Earle to play "Wabash Cannonball". Earle confessed he didn’t know it, but decided to shut him up by playing the Van Vandt song "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold".

Those in attendance were lucky to hear songs that did not make it onto his newest album Townes. Steve had picked 28 songs the night before recording for his 2-disc set, but was only able to record 15 songs for the finished product. You could hear it in his voice through the stories he would tell, that Earle felt Townes Van Zandt deserved much more recognition than he got, and that he was grateful to be playing his friend’s songs to a new audience every night. As Earle said, “Van Zandt was a blues singer”, but not in the traditional way of blues where you state the problem, repeat the problem, and come up with no real solution. Van Zandt said there were two kinds of music. “The blues and zippity doo-dah, and this ain’t no zippity doodah”.

Of course Earle also ran through his classics, tracks taken from 1986's Guitar Town, 1990's Copperhead Road,  1995's Train A Comin as well as many other of his releases.

The almost 2 hour set saw the crowd singing enthusiastically along to “Devil’s Right Hand” and “I Ain’t Never Satisfied”. Little can be said about this show other than inspiring.

So, please do yourself a favor and check out Townes, along with Steve’s other classics from his extended discography. Also feel free to dig even deeper into the Van Zandt catalog, you won’t regret it. Earle was spot on in every way that night, and hey... He even said our food was better here in Quebec than in Ontario. The man knows what he’s talking about.

 Everything is Borrowed is the fourth album from Mike Skinner aka The Streets. I actually heard about The Streets last year through a guy I worked with. He gave me a copy of “The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living”, The Street's third album released in 2006. I immediately became a fan of this UK rapper and producer. I was excited to get my hands on his new album. It is definitely different from the last one. “The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living” had a Hip Hop sound. This album has more of a pop sound, mixed with rock and old school jazzy sound, it's a lot of different elements which initially threw me off guard but suits his rap & singing style.

Once I got used to the sound I can honestly say I enjoyed his latest effort. I really like what he raps about. He talks about issues of love, spirituality, the earth & its environment. His song “The Way Of The Dodo” coins the issue of the global warming and points out in the hook “It not earth that's in trouble, it's the people that live on it.” 

Another song I like is “Everything is Borrowed” and it’s chorus of “I came to this world with nothing and I will leave with nothing but love...everything else is just borrowed.” I like that he can be deep and entertaining at that same time, which is something that I can relate to. It's definitely a good way to make the listener pay attention to your message.

Overall a good album, if this was a Limelight review it would get 3 out of 4 limes.

As I got to Metropolis around 7:15 p.m., I noticed that the place was already packed. I still managed to get a decent spot not too far from the star that hung to the right venue wall. Around 7:30 the show got started with Devon Anthony (John Legend’s little brother) opening up for him. Anthony sounds a little like his older brother but with a different style; he has more of a dub reggae vibe mixed with a typical neo-, Chris Brownish R&B style. His songs were focused on acts in the bedroom and the women loved it. They especially loved when he took off his shirt to reveal a tight body (with built, tatooed arms) for his last song. It was perhaps a little cheesy, but it won over the ladies. The act didn’t do much for me and definitely didn’t win me over as a fan. It was an unoriginal move.

Next up was India.Arie. Miss Arie gets on stage and opens up with a prayer, something she likes to do before she starts the show. It’s actually one of her interludes from her newest album, Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics. Instead of waiting until the end of her set to sing her breakthrough song Radio, the singer sang it first and after she was done asked the crowd who knew her for more than Radio, and a large portion of the crowd cheered. She then asked how many just knew her for the song, people who were too shy to admit that they don’t know much more about that, to stay silent except for one brave soul who admitted to it. India Arie, being in such  great spirits, said that it was all good either way and that for her performance, she would take us through her fourth album (Testimony Vol. 2 Love and Politics') and sing a few songs from her other three.

She sang a few songs from her new album and while singing "I am Not My Hair" from her third album Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship, proceeded to take off her wig, a large head full of dreadlock which she had a large wrap around. After letting out a big a sigh of relief from taking the hot heavy wig from her head, she brushed her short short hair and continued on with the show.   

The vibe of her performance was amazing. You could feel her essence, in-between the change of dresses and head wraps. For one of her songs she went into the crowd and rocked out with them. She also shared her talent for playing the flute. She sang "Brown Skin" and gave props to all the good men in the world. She really took the crowd on an enlightening journey.  At the end she brought her mother on stage, who looks much like it could be her sister, and then she sang. Her voice is amazing and you know where India gets her talent from.

After India was done I felt fully satisfied and looked forward to seeing John Legend for the second time.

After a reasonable short break, John Legend stepped onstage. The stage set-up was amazing: there were women dressed with long sparkly tops and shiny tights and long hair weaves. Legend came on looking dapper in black pants and short sleeve back shirt and white tie. He started things off by singing  "Let’s Get Lifted" from his first album, 2004's Get Lifted. He then began performing songs from his third album, last year's Evolver. He even paid tribute to Michael Jackson by singing "Human Nature". He also covered Bob Marley’s "Turn The Lights Down Low". He sang "Slow Dance" from his second album Once Again and brought a girl on stage to dance with him.  It was more of a slow grind but the crowd loved it and I’m sure that girl had a fantasy fulfilled with Mr. Legend. Both Devon Anthony and India.Arie joined John Legend on stage for a song each, both very enjoyable experiences.

The thing I liked about John Legend’s perfomance was that he didn’t perform his songs like the album. He made full use of his band and piano and gave the songs a new sound.

The show ended the same way like when he was here in 2005, which my friend at work hoped for and that was him performing in his black wife beater. For his encore he came on and performed the Grammy Award-winning "Ordinary People" from Get Lifted.   

Overall I enjoyed the show. It was a great, soulful R&B performance.

I'm sure at one point or another, everyone reading this has been swayed by an alluring sticker on the front of an album. It may be something simple like a highlight of the singles, or a description of what the band sounds like. In truth, I'm all for these stickers when they tell me what the band sounds like, because if I'm going to throw hard earned money at something, I want to know what I'm going to be getting. So, when I was at CJLO and saw a sticker on the front of Corpus Christi's album, The Darker Shades of White, proclaiming that the album was "for fans of Killswitch Engage, As I lay Dying and Atreyu," I got a bit excited. Granted two out of three of those bands have considerably slipped in the quality of their music, but I figured, "Eh, why not?" , and thusly took the album home.

As I was popping it into my computer, set to write a review, I decided to look at the names of the tracks I'd be listening to, so I turned the CD over, and I saw something that made me very nervous. The album was released on Victory Records, which I affectionately call "One Trick Pony Records".  

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but Victory Records has done a slow, downward slide from meaningful and progressive label to a sad shell of its former self, releasing three archetypes of albums. First, we have the generic hardcore, featuring such bands as Arise and Ruin, Emmure, and about one hundred other bands. Second, there's the "My Chemical Romance/Taking Back Sunday/emo-ish" bands encapsulated by Aiden, Hawthorne Heights, Bayside, Silverstein, Funeral for a Friend, and so on. Finally, there's Between the Buried and Me albums, which, let's face it, are in a class all their own and as (pardon the pun) progressive as Victory can muster. This is a bit simplistic, but sadly, not too far off.

So, you may ask, "where, if in any of these categories does this Corpus Christi album fall?" The answer is an old category which Victory knows all to well. While my back was turned, Victory seems to have added a fourth type of genre to their roster, and that genre is... (drum roll) "melodic hardcore", which really is only a skip away from the hardcore they'd been releasing as of late, and harkens back to when they were putting out albums from the likes of Atreyu, Nodes of Ranvier, and Refused. Now there’s a whole new group of these melodic hardcore gents on Victory’s active roster.

For what its worth, the band refer to themselves as a “Christian metal” band. But, unlike a band like Still Remains, they don’t make intensely overt references to their religion in their lyrics. In fact, their lyrics are rather dark with lines such as, “Humanity only breeds death, yet we continue to believe in each other“, and “The urge for escape, the taste of cold steel on my lips, the rope around my neck”. As we all know, nothing says Christian values like suicide and a deep seated hatred for all mankind.  

But what about the music on The Darker Shades of White? Where does the Cincinnati natives’ album play into all of this? Well, it hits all the right mixes of heavy, fast riff-age, the correct amount of double bass, and even provides ample amounts of clean, melodic and growling hardcore vocals. For all of these reasons, the album is pretty good. It is, as the sticker stated, comparable to Killswitch Engage, or As I Lay Dying. But, this album is almost too formulaic suffering from a copy/paste form of music writing which is all too common among all bands landing in the general “hardcore” bin.

Basically what it boils down to is if you really like melodic hardcore, specifically melodic hardcore that doesn’t really deviate much from other bands in the genre, then this Corpus Christi album is for you. Likewise, if you just have a passing interest in it, you’ll probably get one or two spins out of the album, but after that you’ll probably lose interest in it. And thus… “One Trick Pony Records” strikes again.