Greg Burk

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Divinity

Greg Burk
LEON PARKERThe Simple Life (Label M) Leon Parker could help make jazz a popular art form again. Like Medeski Martin & Wood, he‘s an innovator who understands communication, and his arrival in the early ’90s came at a time when the music had spread far from its trunk, displaying many......
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Dead Serious

Greg Burk
”Knife jammed in your assShotgun in your mouth.“ ”I open up the coffin . . . It gets me hardI ejaculate on the corpse.“ ”Pulled out the gutsRight through your fucking neck!“ ”Murder mankindMurder mankindMurder mankind . . .“ Thanks for printing the words in the booklet, friends, otherwise it’d......
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Rhythm & Belief

Greg Burk
“After the customs inspectors went through my bags, they wanted to look in my hair,” says Hamid Drake at the end of a hard day’snight‘s journey from his Chicago home to the fishing town of Essaouira, Morocco. He’s come to play in a June festival of traditional Gnaoua music that......
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Don’t Be Afraid

Greg Burk
Nels Cline‘s music is scary. Not horror-movie scary -- more what Talking Heads were thinking with that title Fear of Music. Deep-reaching art like Cline’s sticks you with the kind of dilemma you confront when a spiritual path or a career change or maybe love gets in your face. If......

Kill 'Em All

Greg Burk
Photos by Greg Burk A LOCUST MADE OF CLOUDS, BIGGER THAN AMERICA, hung in the sky over Ozzfest 2001, at the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion, outside San Bernardino, the last day of June. The insect's solitary eye, a waxing moon, shone down brightly on the baking throng, as if contemplating......

Children of the Grave

Greg Burk
Black Sabbath was different. Back in 1969, you could tell just by looking: These were sartorial exiles. Bill Ward, the drummer, remembers the impression he and his mates made when they started out. No Kinks-ish Edwardian outfits. No Beatles-esque Cardin suits. No Who-like fringes and jumpers. ”We weren’t exactly the......

Aural Fixation

Greg Burk
Photo by Debra DiPaolo The idea came to Bill Roper while he was naked. In front of a bunch of people. Musical ideas, you see, can drift into a man’s head during the still stretches when he’s holding poses as an artists’ model. Half of Roper’s income comes from his......
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Blackwash

Greg Burk
The phrase dirt cheap is gonna have to be decommissioned. Considering all the celebrity biographies in the bookstores and on TV, there‘s hardly anything more expensive, and profitable, nowadays than dirt. With the purchase of Motley Crue’s new autobio, I get not just the dirt, but the piss, the shit,......
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Crush ‘Em

Greg Burk
Photo by Larry Hirshowitz A fond mist clouds the eyes of Megadeth guitarist-singer Dave Mustaine and bassist David Ellefson when they talk about revisiting L.A. See, they met right here in Hollywood 18 years ago. Ellefson: “It brings back some very haunting memories. Today, Dave and Al [second guitarist Pitrelli]......

Identity Crisis in Athens

Greg Burk
One of the reasons my wife likes to travel is local politics. She remembers edgy armed soldiers in the streets of Jerusalem right after the Six Day War; her hippie friends grabbed and jailed for having beards in Chile back when Pinochet and Kissinger were keeping the world safe for......