Category Archives: Pop and Rock

Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro have been playing together at Lowen & Navarro for more than 20 years, making beautiful pop-folk sounds and warming hearts with their energetic performances. (They also wrote the 1984 Pat Benatar hit, “We Belong” before they started playing their own material as Lowen & Navarro.)

But Lowen’s been struggling with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) since 2004. He’s valiantly soldiered on, singing with a headset mic and playing seated — a change from his very active and energetic style from back in the day.

But the disease has progressed to the point where he’s not comfortable playing anymore. According to the L&N web site, the duo’s final two shows will be held the first weekend of June:

Because of compromises to Eric Lowen’s playing and singing due to his ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Lowen & Navarro will cease touring activity in 2009. Our final shows will be held June 5 and 6 in Annapolis MD and Alexandria VA. See listings below for more details. Dan Navarro solo shows will be listed opn this page until his website is constructed sometime this summer.

It’s a shame they won’t be hitting the NYC-area again before “El fin del camino,” but they’ve done well to stay on the road as long as they have and continue to play musice — even putting out their final latest album, Learning to Fall, just last year.

The title track was recorded in 2007 by a host of people whose lives have been affected by the tragically degenerative disease. Click here for a video about the recording session. Every click raises money for the cause.  Continue reading →

Here’s a little treat to whet your appetite for Grizzly Bear‘s new and possibly most fully realized album yet, Veckatimest, out on Tuesday.

The video for “Two Weeks,” below, will make you smile, but I hope not in quite the same way as the band!

I liked Grizzly Bear’s albums, but until the first time I saw them live  — doing a cover of “Mother and Child Reunion” at one of the Paul Simon shows last fall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — I didn’t realize just how good they really can be.  I’ve seen them once since then, and that show further reinforced my conclusion that this is one of the most creative, talented and musical young bands on the scene today.

But the band’s recorded output seemed to me to pale in comparison to its incredibly intense stage presence. Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear’s fourth album, rights that wrong. Every track is strong, focused and mesmerizing, like the band’s live show. I’m blown away, and I’ll be surprised if you aren’t impressed, too. (Get a listen to all the tracks on the band’s MySpace page.)

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The video, directed by Patrick Daughters, is an absolute joy to watch. You’ll want to watch this glistening, surreal little film over and over.

Grizzly Bear (with side project Here We Go Magic opening) has three NYC shows next week in celebration of the new album, and they’re all sold out: Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. at Manhattan’s Town Hall and next Sunday at 7 p.m. at The Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. If you don’t have a ticket, you’re really missing out. This is a show that I’d pay a premium to a scalper to see.

Anything with the words “Care Bears” in its name is apt to evoke visions of cuteness. And the Brooklyn punk-rock trio Care Bears on Fire certainly isn’t short on cuteness. But the three girls that make up this band (two eighth graders and one ninth grader) are long on talent and attitude, too.

Singer/guitarist Sophie and drummer Izzy are both 13, while bass player Jena is 15. These three really kick out the jams. (And I don’t say that just because I’m friends with the father of one of the girls.) They rock. They have the potential to have a great career if they want it. And they’re living proof that girls really can rock! Check out this great clip about the band from NYC’s Channel 7 Eyewitness News:

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And you can check out Care Bears on Fire in person in just a couple of weeks:

3:30 p.m. on June 4. Outdoors on the steps of The Brooklyn Public Library, 1 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn. Free.

Gawkers at CBGB.

Earlier tonight, the New York Dolls returned to their roots on NYC’s Bowery to celebrate the release of their reunion album ‘Cause I Sez So.

They played a private show (broadcast live on Sirius XM satellite radio’s Faction channel) at the John Varvatos boutique at 315 Bowery. And I don’t quite know how to feel about that. The address may sound familiar to some of you. It’s the longtime address of CBGB’s, a place that the Dolls frequented their first time around, in the Seventies.

John Varvatos's boutique replaced the legendary club.

Let me explain. Hilly Kristal opened CBGB in December 1973. It quickly became home to many of NYC’s most amazing punk and punk-influenced bands, nurturing the Ramones, the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Television and the New York Dolls.

In October 2006, after a battle with the landlord over rent increases in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Kristal closed CBGB. And the final concert, by Patti Smith, was broadcast by Sirius satellite radio.

After that, the property sat empty for 18 months, mocking passersby. Then Varvatos opened his shop there.

So consider this: CBGB, a club where the Dolls often played, couldn’t survive.  It was replaced by an upscale clothing boutique, whose fashions would have been rejected by most of the Dolls’ original fan — even if they could have afforded them.

So now, things have come full circle: the clothing boutique is hosting the Dolls in concert. Isn’t it ironic?

I don’t mean for a second to pass judgment. Or even to suggest that CBGB should have somehow been preserved. That battle was fought, and lost, by others more dedicated than I to the memory of what the crusty club once was.

That’s life in  Manhattan, after all, where almost nothing lasts but the memories. And, unlike the physical objects themselves, the memories can last forever and belong to anyone who wants to hold onto them.