| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 01/04/2016 : 17:05:44
In 1980 Nile released his self-titled debut album which according to one critic remains Òone of the most thrilling post-Byrds folk-rock albums of all timeÓ.
Listen a bit...BACK HOME...well worth it. From his "Streets Of New York"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Ih6ifBDIw
WILLIE NILE
Listen and read on..Streets Of New York 2006, considered by many to be his best LP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk-G3MIjMY0
Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Nile came from a musical familyÑhis grandfather was a vaudeville pianist who played with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Eddie Cantor; his uncles played boogie-woogie. He listened to the music of Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Fats Domino, brought home by his older brothers. Nile himself began playing piano at age eight and took classical music lessons until he was a teenager, when he taught himself his first rock & roll song. He soon began to compose short songs and continued the habit into his college years, when during the summers he made trips into New York City to frequent hootenanny clubs like Folk City and the Gaslight.
Nile studied philosophy at the University at Buffalo where he received a BA in 1971, before heading for Greenwich Village. After graduation, Nile took an apartment in the Village; however, during his first winter in New York, he contracted pneumonia, which put him out of commission for about a year. He continued writing songs while recuperating, determined to make a name for himself as a latter-day troubadour. He pursued that throughout the 1970s, becoming a regular in the Village folk and rock scenes and getting tabbed by some as the next big thing to come out of that long-thriving artistic community.
He began hanging out at clubs like CBGB's, where he would see bands like Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, and Blondie.
Upon establishing a residency at the Village club Kenny's Castaways, Nile began drawing ever-growing crowds, which in turn led to his first record deal. Following a flurry of critical acclaim, he found himself courted by representatives from close to a dozen record companies; he chose Arista Records, and went into the studio with a band that included Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Group. After two acclaimed albums, a self-titled 1980 effort and 1981's Golden Dawn, Nile fell prey to protracted legal problems that derailed his career for a number of years; although he continued to write, he did not perform live or record again until a 1987 performance in Oslo, Norway with Eric Andersen.
A videotape of Nile's performance in Norway prompted a Columbia talent scout to sign him to the label in 1988. Production on Nile's album didn't start for two more years; issued in 1991, Places I Have Never Been featured guest appearances by Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III, Roger McGuinn, and members of the Hooters and the Roches. The album received strong reviews but sales were unimpressive, and Columbia dropped Nile. The independent Polaris label issued the four-song EP Hard Times in America in 1992, but Nile didn't release another studio recording until Beautiful Wreck of the World in 2000. (In the interim, Nile issued Live in Central Park, a document of a 1980 performance in New York, in 1997.)
Streets of New York
Nile played Europe and toured the East Coast while he waited until the time was right to go back into the studio. He finally emerged re-energized on 2006's Streets of New York, with guest appearances by Larry Campbell and Jakob Dylan, which marked the beginning of a regular recording schedule. He issued two concert offerings in 2007, Live at the Turning Point (his first release for River House Records, which would become his steady label) and Live from the Streets of New York. In 2009 Nile released a new studio set, House of a Thousand Guitars, and beefed up his touring schedule. Nile issued the acclaimed The Innocent Ones in 2011 and followed it two years later with the rocking and street-smart American Ride in 2013. Early 2015 brought a change of pace for Nile with the release of If I Was a River, a primarily acoustic set dominated by his piano work.
Forever Wild
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd86Lyv9lZ8&list=PLeUXoszDLtdO-7Y96d5v6ZvMjnfQuFNlt
Golden Down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-LEvz3O-dY
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 01/04/2016 : 17:25:10
AllMusic Review by Dave Thompson
Welcome To My Head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkwpMl-Qlz0
If early 2006 is remembered for nothing else, it will go down in history for the two greatest urban Americana albums of the 21st century to date -- Dion's Bronx in Blue and Willie Nile's Streets of New York, a swaggering braggart of a disc that is to the modern Apple everything that Lou Reed's New York was 15 years before.
The opening "Welcome to My Head" sets the stage, raising the curtain on a fantasy vision of the city nightlife that sums up every dream Broadway and beyond have ever instilled in the mind of the outsider, and set to a crunchy guitar melody that is as real as the streets that stretch out from there.
It might be Nile's first album in six years, but it sounds as though he's been planning it his entire life -- even the songs that slip outside of the city concept ("Asking Annie Out" is the first) share the crowded, bustling air of the more "relevant" rockers, while "The Day I Saw Bo Diddley in Washington Square" paints the scene so firmly that you'll see him, too. Even more impressively, the backing rarely motors in the directions you'd expect. Fiddles keen and a mandolin pounds, while Nile borrowed his band from as far afield as John Mellencamp and Rosanne Cash. Further captivating imagery spills from "Faded Flower of Broadway," celebrating a primitivist artist who still sells her paintings on the street at 80 years of age and, though it's a cover, a pounding "Police on My Back," purposefully cut in rent-a-Clash mode as a tribute to Joe Strummer, and just as powerful as its illustrious forbear. One song steps away from New York entirely -- the impossibly eerie "Cell Phones Ringing (In the Pockets of the Dead)" was written following the Madrid train bombings of March 2004. Of course, there's barely a soul in the city who won't be able to identify with the emotion that lies behind the lyrics, or the nightmare scenario that peels out around them. But that is not the only song on this album that one could say that about; indeed, if you haven't been to New York recently, Nile might just have saved you the fare.
Streets of New York is that powerful.
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Faded Flower of Broadway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdbLoWk2FaU
On Some Rainy Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNUSUwNG7ag
Cell Phones (Ringing In The Pockets Of The Dead)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB38yqy1osc
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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| lemonade kid |
Posted - 01/04/2016 : 17:08:34
If I Was A river...
AllMusic Review by Mark Deming
Listen and read on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi_qwHdddsM&list=PLeUXoszDLtdPTHHU9Rqgw2zF6LWZnY-nl
Willie Nile's style has never been monochromatic, either as a songwriter or a performer, but over the course of a recording career that was launched in 1980, two things have been consistent -- the guy clearly loves rock & roll, and he sure likes guitars (Nile even released an album called House of a Thousand Guitars). So was anyone out there expecting Nile to make an entire album of contemplative, midtempo acoustic numbers built around the guy playing piano? In many respects, If I Were a River upends the average fan's expectations about a Willie Nile album (especially after 2013's decisively rockin' American Ride), although the dramatic force of Nile's songwriting and the passion of his vocals should be more than familiar to anyone who has been listening to his music over the years. Nile has never been afraid to write on a broad emotional scale, and some of the tunes, such as "Song of a Soldier," "Let Me Be the River," and "I Can't Do Crazy (Anymore)," sound a bit overdone when the spare arrangements allow all their melodramatic nooks and crannies to be revealed, which might not be the case with a full band kicking up a fuss behind him. Nile has dressed up a few of these tracks with discrete overdubs -- acoustic guitar, mandolin, synthesizer -- but little here distracts from Nile's voice and piano, and If I Were a River feels like the singer/songwriter album (or MTV Unplugged performance) Nile didn't get around to making in the '80s. The songs allow Nile to indulge his warmer and more sentimental side, though the results seem more like a change of pace than a radical reappraisal of his style, and if he's not afraid to play to the upper balcony, he sounds comfortable on these sessions, with plenty of heart and soul backing up his work. If I Were a River doesn't sound like a typical Willie Nile album, but it certainly has the stamp of his talent and his personality, and it shows he's not afraid to try new things, which isn't often the case for an artist more than three decades after they began making records.
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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