Album Reviews

Rock ‘n’ roll historians invariably trace the roots of the now-expansive, constantly morphing music to a Mississippi bluesman named Robert Johnson, a 1930s guitarist who ostensibly made a deal with the devil – trading his mortal soul for stellar talent - one night at a rural intersection (a “crossroads”). Johnson’s canon of songs, bolstered by his pioneer legacy and dark mythology, is embraced universally as being instrumental to the very structure of rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s difficult to believe this November 18th, 1993 Sony Music Studios performance is almost seventeen years old. Though it aired on MTV a month later, it wasn’t issued on vinyl or CD until November 1st, 1994, six months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

Joni Mitchell’s move to jazz on this 1974 game changer upset her hippie contingent, who wished she’d remained a “lady of the canyon,” and it didn’t exactly thrill fans who considered themselves jazz aficionados either—not with the likes of “jazz-lite” guys like Tom Scott, Joe Sample, Wilton Felder and Larry Carlton involved.

Sadly, during the early '60s Muddy Waters and other Chicago blues masters were better known to white English youth than to their American counterparts. Mick and Keith weren't alone in their fandom. Search YouTube and you'll find an amazing Howlin' Wolf performance before an adoring audience of well-scrubbed English white kids that was probably never repeated in America where blues was dubbed "race music" and relegated  to the ghettos.

This psychedelic noise-rock band from Japan is  definitely not for everyone but if your tastes run towards free-jazz when you think of jazz and you find the opening of Axis: Bold As Love structurally symphonic, you will surely dig Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso  U.F.O. and this album in particular, which definitely has a Hendrix vibe, right down to the cover art that has lettering like Are You Experience and some scantily clad gals like the UK Track edition of Electric Ladyland  that Jimi hated. 

This hard /progrock trio never got the media hype and they are rarely mentioned outside their own musical world, but Muse has made it big. How? The old fashioned way: hard work in the studio and constant touring. They have an intensely loyal fan base. Their worldwide touring grosses are impressive and they chart  well around the world

Recorded in glorious mono in 1956 and issued first in 1957, this set of small combo standards with Cole both singing and playing the piano remains as fresh and vital as it did when originally released.