For one thing it's a song he will never get tired of singing I don’t know if Liam remembers, but he told me a few years ago that he felt like he had very nearly figured out what he sounded like. I spoke to him first at pivotal point in his musical career. He was in the process of getting larger than an early phase in his career when he sounded exactly like Ed Sheeran. He was living through this stage where he’d realized he didn’t want to be Little Ed Sheeran anymore. Which left him with the puzzle: what did Liam Cloud sound like? We talked about that, and I got the impression that, at that p ..read more

If you’re into pop/R and B fusion with more than a few gallons of early 2000s singer-songwriter thrown in, I know a couple gigs you should catch. But first… In other stories for Front Page News, I have avoided, where possible, too much in-depth musing on the creative process. If you’ve read any of the other stories I’ve written for Front Page News, you might find yourself struck with the thought, “That was NOT in-depth musing?” To which I say, indeed, sir! That was shallow musing. It was meeting you halfway. I had to recognize my job, which is mainly to talk to all the wonderful people who wan ..read more

Liam Cloud wrote a song, and that song took on a life of its own, and that’s your fault. Thing is, see, when we take in art, we can only understand about that piece of art what it’s saying to us. You ever noticed that? And then we bring our own baggage to the conversation we have with the art. When that happens, we feel clever, don’t we? Because we consume the art, and we start divining layers and depth into it. This art has dramatic meaning and it speaks directly to our souls, and the artist making it carried some kind of genius or psychic powers or voodoo magic or something, because they fig ..read more

What’s a Wherever Session and Why Should I Care I don’t often wish I’d been alive at times in the past when I wasn’t. Sometimes, though, I wish I’d been maybe eighteen or nineteen during Halloween Week of 1977. Awfully specific. Sure it is. What’s the point of unrealistic fantasies if they’re not specific. The really disappointing thing about this is my dad was seventeen in that week, but he was into the wrong scene. Anyway, here’s what happened inside of about nine days’ time around then: Rocket to Russia by Ramones came out. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols by The Sex Pistols ..read more

Know what’s hard? Having opinions on current events. People get real nervous when they hear what sound like opinions. Could be good or bad, they might even agree. Doesn’t matter. The overwhelming question to ask is, “is this going to make me less popular?” It’s the not knowing that creates doubt. So people don’t like opinions. They don’t like hearing what other people think, because that way lies the lonely outer darkness. Or the risk of outer darkness, which is frightening enough. We all know that look. That look of, “I’m not really listening to you. I’m just waiting until you stop talking, s ..read more

Dylan Cloud Can’t Honestly Be Like That…Can He? This is the story of a song. Wrote some lyrics—didn’t take very long. And they sound so good in paragraphs. And then we absolutely dug’ em. When they try. Yeah. Dylan Cloud dropped a single. “Straight On” is a genre-bridging track. It inherited some fuzz from funk. Some of its edges got sharpened, then scraped jagged, from stripped-back punk. He threw some wit into it that he stole from the garages of rock duos with cheap cleverness. Then he glued it together with some get-up-and-groove from reggae. Over the top he poured some noise from his met ..read more

Where on earth does he get inspiration? Who would he pick a proverbial Fight Club fight with? All this and more. Liam Cloud was here from Day One when Front Page News grew from a mad mad idea in Kristina's brain, to being the event series we've come to know and love. If this is your first time here, Front Page News started a few years ago, when a bunch of us wanted to help change the way venues and audiences regarded live music. We all love the open mic nights and multiple concert options, but far too many talented musicians of that time had become the "free live music" included with beers and ..read more

For many of us whose lives are intrinsically tied to live events, 2020 couldn't have been a more horrendous year. Around this time last year, almost to the day, The Gran Teatre del Liceu filled its 2,292 seats with plants for a performance by the UceLi Quartet, which it called a prelude to its 2020-2021 season. The string quartet serenaded its leafy audience with Giacomo Puccini's "Crisantemi" in a performance that was also made available to human listeners via livestream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgvadprJFRc&list=PLvIUd5Qlk4h9bH_uc9Sor3IojYZ1ygepw&index=1Yes, it wasn't a typo ..read more

Jason is a visual artist who we invited to Barcelona in March 2020, to play Art in Motion in La Rubia. This is one story from around that time, when I interviewed him...and only published today. Jason didn't start this story with the words, "This'll sound like the intro to a cyberpunk movie." He may as well have. They stood out in the alley. He was head and shoulders taller than anyone in sight, and her hair practically glowed in the sea of black-haired locals. The multi-splendored lights slowed on them, casting the night into sharp edges of bright lights and shadows that held promises. It wa ..read more

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald I found talking to Lila March relaxing. Maybe my mind zigzags enough to make it work, because thinking back on it I feel like I ought to have had psychic whiplash from it. We’d be merrily chattering about the whimsy of being a creative type and the need to accept that the world sees us as just odd, then taking a flying le ..read more