The only original copy of this album that I ever saw was in The Library of Congress's record collection. It features great period cover art that Green Day lifted for their Foxboro Hot Tub album and a live performance from guitar legend Dick Dale. 

The only original copy of this album that I ever saw was in The Library of Congress's record collection. It features great period cover art that Green Day lifted for their Foxboro Hot Tub album and a live performance from guitar legend Dick Dale. 

Clearly a fan, producer Steve Lipson places Jeff Beck's guitar in a distant reverberant  space that decreases its solidity but increases both its size and its mystery, evoking a God-like presence hovering above a lush, string-drenched orchestra. Or you could see Beck playing perched on a craggy, windswept rock surrounded by white-capped water. The album very much has a Pacific Ocean vibe.

Keb' Mo's mellow protest album recycles classics from the '60s and '70s, recasting them for the 2004 mindset witnessing the greatest strategic foreign policy mistake in American history. 

Keb' Mo's mellow protest album recycles classics from the '60s and '70s, recasting them for the 2004 mindset witnessing the greatest strategic foreign policy mistake in American history. 

Dixie Chicken and Sailin' Shoes are the meat of the LIttle Feat catalog, with Dixie Chicken arguably being the group's finest studio effort.

Dixie Chicken and Sailin' Shoes are the meat of the LIttle Feat catalog, with Dixie Chicken arguably being the group's finest studio effort.

This is not Sam Beam's (A/K/A Iron and Wine) latest album. It dates from 2007. His first release, The Creek Drank the Cradle, was released back in 2002. Somehow that one, this one, his newest and all of his work escaped my attention until last year's AXPONA audio show in Jacksonville Florida where I saw the collected works in the bins of a Florida audio store owner who had a room at the show. I asked to hear something and he played a cut from this introspective, atmospheric and sonically enticing and well-produced album. I was hooked.

Glen Rock New Jersey is a small town in Northern Bergen County.

It has ridiculously high local property tax rates. I know because I used to live there in a tiny old house built in 1929 on a tiny postage stamp of property near two sets of railroad tracks that merged at the end of the street.

I now live in another nearby town that at least as nice in a newer house three times the size of the one in Glen Rock on a much larger parcel in a much nicer area and my property taxes are actually lower! 

Glen Rock New Jersey is a small town in Northern Bergen County.

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.

Scott-Heron's construction was simultaneously mischievous, subversive and ingeniously disarming. It took pot shots at blacks and whites alike, aiming most of its vitriol at a mindless TV culture.

The relationship between Jewish-Americans and African Americans has been long, complicated, confusing, controversial and not without reciprocal animosity. Yet, clearly as this fascinating collection of African-American artists singing Jewish songs demonstrates, there’s also been a lot of mutual love and support.