Album Reviews

You can tell me yours, but my first encounter with Thelonious Monk was the 1963 Columbia album Criss-Cross(CS 8838). I'd given up on rock'n'roll, which had become all Fabian and Frankie Avalon-ed out and new musical adventures of a more adult nature were in order for this high-schooler.

NIck Lowe has aged more than gracefully—he's never been better melodically and especially lyrically. On his latest release, issued by Yep Roc on a "wide groove 45rpm" record, Lowe waxes both melancholic and bemused about a break up.

Talk Talk's Mark Hollis may have long ago retired from the music business, but his musical legacy prospers and grows. A near cult-like devotion hovers around the group's records as succeeding generations discover his dense, probing, faith-based cogitations. The intensity and strength of his spiritual commitment was matched only by the forcefulness of his later "spirited" rejection.

Jazz Fusion may have turned out to be a dead end genre exiled to The Weather Channel's 24 hour forecast, but at its inception arguably with the group Weather Report, the sun shone brightly on its possibilities. How ironic that the jazz offshoot took off with Weather Report and dead-ended on TWC!

Gene Clark owed A&M an album in 1972 and so to fulfill his contract he did what most artists do in such circumstances: he decided to make one for himself.

Graham Parker kissed off his label with an album called Mercury Poisoning. Van Morrison owed one to Bert Berns' Bang label. Berns had died but Van, who had had a volatile relationship with Bert and was anxious to go to Warner Brothers and record Astral Weeks, handed his grieving widow Eileen an unreleasable album containing the ten songs and the publishing rights thereto. The songs—actually a series of short ridiculous and nonsensical jams— had titles like "Blow In Your Nose," "Nose in Your Blow," and "Ringworm."

While the Mississippi born, now New York based Wilson is labeled a "jazz singer," she's strayed far from her original comfort zone to cover everyone from The Monkees to Van Morrison to Robert Johnson—and more importantly done it effectively by re-imagining both the familiar arrangements and the listener's every musical expectation.