Best of 2002
Black Music
Les Mc Cann”Pump it Up”(Esc/Efa)
Ozomatli”Embrace The Chaos”(Interscope/Universal)
Prince“The Rainbow Chldren”(NPG/Audioglobe)
Adult Oriented Rock
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band “The Rising”(Columbia/Sony)
Robert Plant”Dreamland”(Mercury)
Contemporary Rock
Liars ”They Threw us all in atrench and stuck a monument on top” (Blast First/Mute)
Low, ”Trust” (Rough Trade)
Queen of the Stone Age”Songs for the Deaf” (Interscope/Universal)
Uk & islands
Archer Prewett ”Three” (Thrill Jockey)
Baxter Dury ”Len’s Parrot Memorial Lift” (Rough Trade)
Bert Jansch ”Edge of a Dream” (Sanctuary)
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man ”Out of Season” (GoBeat/Universal)
Eileen Rose ”Long Shot Novena” (Rough Trade)
EmmaTricca “Gipsy
Gemma Hayes ”Night on My Side” (Source/Virgin)
Joseph Malik ”Diverse” (Compost)
Paul Weller ”illumination” (Indipendente/Sony)
Americana
David Baerwald ”Here comes the New Folk underground” (Lost HighWay/Universal)
Jackson Browne, “The Naked Ride Home” (Elektra)
Jay Farrar ”Sebastopol” (Artemis/Epic)
Johnny Cash ”The Man Comes Around” (Sony)
Joni Mitchell “Travelogue” (Nonesuch/Warner Brothers)
Lambchop ”Is A Woman ”(Emi)
The Boggs ”We are The Boggs We Are” (Ryko)
Tom Waits ”Alice” (Epitaph)
Warren Zevon “My ride’s Here” (Artemis/Sony)
Weird
Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O ”Absolutely Freak Out Zap Your Mind” (Resonant)
Jazz & Borders
Eivind Aarset’s Electrique Noire ”Lights Extracts” (Jazzland/universal)
Ketil Bjornstad ”Before the light” (November)
Medeski, Martin & Wood ”Uninvisible” (Rykodisc)
The John Scofield Band ”Unber Jam” (Verve/Universal)
Nils Petter Molvaer ”NP3” (Universal)
Blues & Roots
David Johansen ”Shaker” (Chesky/Cgd)
Derek Trucks Band “Joyful Noise” (Columbia)
Gov’t Mule “The Deep End vol.2” (Ato/Bmg)
R.J.Mischo ”meet me on the Coast” (Crosscut)
Solomon Burke “Don’t Give Up on Me” (Fat Possum)
The Blasters ”Trouble Bound” (Hightone)
The Ford Blues band ”In memory of Michael Bloomfield” (Blue rock it)
Reissues & Compilations
Bob Dylan ”1975 Rolling Thunder Revue live” (Columbia)
George Harrison ”All Things Must Pass” (Apple/Emi)
Hollywood Fats Band ”Hollywood Fats band” (Crosscut)
John Coltrane ”A Love Supreme” (de luxe edition)(Impulse/Universal)
Love “Love”, ”Forever Changes”, ”Da Capo”, ”Four Sails” (Rhino/cgd)
Neil Young ”Harvest” (DVD)(Reprise/Warner/Cgd)
The Beatles ”A Hard Day’s Night” (DVD)(Miramax)
The Flying Burrito brothers ”Sin city” (A&M/Universal)
The Jam ”At The Beeb” (Polydor/universal)
The Who ”My Generation” de luxe edition (Universal)
Various Artists ”Legend of a Mind” (Decca/universal)
2003 has been italian’s worst year for music industry due to a lack of directions, lack of talents and because record executives still thinks of italian music lovers as a bunch of assholes! Mainly,to be true, this industry is pointed to kids and younger generation than the forty something I belong to but, being myself in this living hell for more than twenty years as professional journalist and indipendent producer first and actually as owner of a small record company (il popolo del blues), I daily share facts and feelings with many artists, musicians and good souls in general who feels the same way as i.
This goes straight to my personal best of 2002, a habit of this website from the very beginning of it.
I usually try not to define genres-as I mix them together on Controradio’s Il popolo del blues radio show every saturday evening live on air all over you from my hometown of Florence as well on Rai Radio Tre and on my Satellite tv Show on Rai Sat Show channel-but the definitions I chose to adopt hope to help some of you there and make this list easier to go trough.
I’m happy to confirm the supremacy of skilled musicianship in my choices and my ongoing search for great musicwriting which I happily keep on discovering in many new artists, you name them.An inclination to improvistions and free form jazz inclined music appears here and there in my choices and I’m glad to spot it in this script.
To be more specific to the best of the best I want to let you know that I was particularly hit by this Joseph Malik who my good friend Joe Black from Edinburgh often underlined to me during my staying at Susan and his’s beautiful house in modish Brighton last may. This guy Jospeh Malik mix the best of everything and is a name to remember even when spins the vinyl at the turntables, as my good pal Francesco Gazzara from “Gazzara” described to me in a poignant e mail after a gig the two of them shared together in Rome last October.
A songswriting tendence from my personal background of the half seventies is back and found a new territory in many good albums up there where older and newer generations find a place to mix each other. As an example I recall listening to a lot of old Randy Newman lately (“good old boys”, ”sail away”) and still asking why this guy is not considered for what he really is: a genius!. This is it just to name the perfect connection between past and future of the composing process.
Having strongly been back at the piano stool recently for composing a whole bunch of songs with il Popolo del Blues’ latest discovery, the sweet and dear Barbara di Prospero, I found a renewed willing of me studing songs from everybody’s catalogue and enjoyed a lot of minor talented guys from the past as the late great David Ackles as well the young new ones as the surprisingly good Gemma Hayes, a girl not to be missed on stage, as her show at Montreux Jazz festival showed me.
The blues section, as you see, is a mixture of different arts of musics, here at. This what I call it The Blues.
I remain at your disposal for discussions and suggestions.
I’m sure I missed a lot of good music even though I spent every single minute of every single hour of every single day of every single month of the year keeping on searching but this is one of the great things of every good true art form as long as it real: You never have enough in discovering it.
Ernesto de Pascale
