Thursday, January 9, 2025
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rock oracle

B SidesFEATURED
Jason Shrum

PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT

However, rather than determining whether albums would be labeled (nineteen record labels had already voluntarily added advisory stickers a month earlier), the Senate hearing would provide a chance to hear all sides. John Denver, for example, spoke about his own experience with censorship when his song “Rocky Mountain High” was thought to be about drugs. (“This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains,” he told the committee.) Ultimately, the PMRC won, and through a deal with the Recording Industry Association of America, labels were added to albums on November 1, 1985.  

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ALBUM REVIEWSB SidesFEATUREDINTERVIEWS
Jason Shrum

Meg Elsier Raises the Roof 

I brought my niece, Becca, as my plus one guest and didn’t know what to expect when encountering this rising star.  Meg Elsier is just 30 years old- as is my niece- and she is quickly rising up the ladder of stardom in the industry.  Nashville Scene magazine just awarded her the Best Indie/Rock Debut Album by its writers a few days ago.  Meg debuted her record, Spittake, in June. The album deserves any accolades that it gets.  I had been listening to it on my playlist for about a month before I got the news that I would have a face to face with this Berklee School of Music prodigy. 

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ALBUM REVIEWSB SidesMUSIC NEWS
Jason Shrum

Songs of a Lost World

The album is titled Songs of a Lost World and the group had already dropped two tracks from the LP on streaming services. So why did it take so long for this record to be produced?  The project has been long discussed by Robert Smith throughout several interviews. When talking to the LA Times in 2019, he put the onus on himself for the delays. “I keep going back over and redoing them, which is silly. At some point, I have to say that’s it. It’s very much on the darker side of the spectrum,” Smith added. “I lost my mother and my father and my brother recently, and obviously it had an effect on me. It’s not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like Disintegration, I suppose. I was trying to create a big palette, a big wash of sound.” From what I have heard on the pair of songs released, he and his mates have done just that.  Meaning, they have captured that classic Cure sound that I was first mesmerized by in high school.   

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ALBUM REVIEWSB SidesFEATURED
Jason Shrum

Catchfire takes you to the ‘Wild Side’

The rattling echo from the burning words and instrumentals stays with the listener even when the song is silenced.  It is now out there in the ethos for others to discover- for that is all that we can do.  We create and place our art in the world for the scavengers to find.  This track is certainly art and I am happy that I got to hear it before most.  This is a band to be on the lookout for. 

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FEATUREDLIVE REVIEWS
Jason Shrum

Bourbon and Beyond: Days 3 & 4 

Days One and Two of Bourbon & Beyond were highly organized and very strict when it came to the front gates.  The event was constantly posting on their socials and emailing out rules and regulations for standards that they wanted upheld throughout the long weekend.  You could only bring in chairs if you had a “Chair Pass”, which cost gobs of extra money, and they sold out in 45 minutes.  You could bring in a towel to sit on if your towel met specific requirements as far as size and, get this, thickness.  Water bottles had to be clear, and empty upon arrival, and not have a capacity of over 20ozs.  There were also lists of “Do’s and “Don’ts” that festival runners hammered into your brain repeatedly.  Then came day three. 

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