Album Reviews

The late New York Times rock critic Robert Palmer once wrote a Billy Joel review that was so scathing, so mean, so nasty and couched in personal terms, that even I, a fellow Billy Joel detractor (perhaps even a "hater" back then), cringed with embarrassment.

Analogue Productions'  The Nat King Cole Story box set, originally scheduled to be released Spring of 2010 is finally here. We reviewed the box's sound quality last March based on test pressings but the actual box didn't arrive under early 2011. What's below is that review with additional information about the box and overall presentation quality—Ed.

Neil plays, Daniel "La-noise" manipulates. The result is a solo album—a man and his guitar— that takes on gargantuan proportions as it throbs, undulates, oozes, howls, flows, rattles and hums through a series of reminiscences, philosophical discussions, entreaties and proclamations of faith that only an older man could possibly produce and deliver with such rich and fervent authority.

ORG Music is a new division of ORG, the label that's been reissuing mostly classic jazz titles over the past few years along with the heart of Nirvana's catalog. ORG Music will specialize in classic rock reissues, with an enhanced, extra track edition of this Tom Petty breakthrough album  coming first.

Little Feat was never an "album" band, even though they released many good records. They were low concept and high boogie. The groove was cerebral though, not the mindless "good time" endless fist pump variety mainly because of the playful and smart Lowell George. Lowell was from Baltimore,MD.

Underrated and anonymously well-exposed, the Los Angeles session guitarist Howard Roberts played for everyone from Frank, to Elvis, the Beach Boys, the Jackson 5, the Monkees and Dean Martin, to name but a few. That's Howard out front on "The Twilight Zone" theme song, among many others. The guy got around.

The poet/singer Gil Scott-Heron struck a raw nerve in the early '70s  with "The Revolution Will Not be Televised," a sarcastic, simmering three minute taunt set to a flute, drum and bass soaked jazz backing track that  sounds today more like Beatnik parody than jazz.