Greg Burk

Madonna gets crucified, and you don’t get to see it on TV. NBC, wilting under an eruption of Christian colic, expelled the visual — wherein the Godmother warbles “Live to Tell” on a moderne mirrored cross — from November 22’s taped concert special, The Confessions Tour. Fans daring to creep......

I know Smogtowners are supposed to be dumfuqs, so all these sharp abstractionist discs must be by Manhattanites pretending to be from L.A., right? Right? Dwight Trible, Living Water (Zen). L.A.’s most passionate wailer keeps trying new studio sounds, this time a Courvoisier-sipping urban slickness that lends an appealingly perverse......

WHERE: Avalon, Wednesday November 8, opening for Sia. WHO: Songbird/bassist Inara George, hatched from late Little Feat guitar hawk Lowell George; and instro-bee Greg Kurstin, repped as an ace session dude (Beck, Flaming Lips, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sheryl Crow, etc., etc.) and past co-bandleader (Geggy Tah, the Kurstins). The......

{mosimage}Even Mongels Get the BluesYou see Roswell Rudd’s name on a project, you know it’s gonna be golden. From the ’60s on, he’s been one of the few trombonists who’ve hung authoritatively with the avant-jazz biggies: After youthful Dixieland adventures, there he was on Cecil Taylor’s New York City R&B,......

Dusty Sparkles: long hair plus bangs, like Mick Fleetwood in ’74, and you better believe he shakes it around sweatily when he grapples guitar and synth (sometimes simultaneously), ’cause that’s what it’s for. His band, Danava: retro plus progressive, terms that sound like they’d cancel each other out. But no,......

Duke Redux Meddlers trying their hand at the music of Duke Ellington better observe two commandments: Add something (otherwise why bother?) and subtract something (to avoid close comparisons with the master, a.k.a. suicide). Stefon Harris escapes damnation and then some. On his new African Tarantella (Blue Note), the most obvious......

Burning the Diorama For a while, it looked as if jazz had gotten stuffed and mounted. Hearty backslaps and unlimited food stamps should go to the few who’ve kept the music out of the museum over this past decade, but most of all Matthew Shipp. Improvisational music had to change,......