SR’s last connection to the 1960s, at least on the popular side, fades away. Peter Reilly is on the masthead of reviewers, but there aren’t any contributions from him; after an almost twenty-year run, this is the final issue in which his name appears. Reilly came on board with the January 1967 issue, and the first review of his you’d have encountered was a rave of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. (As it happens, Rex Reed also joined SR with that issue, though he lasted but a few years. I tweeted about Reed’s jaw-dropping Jan 67 take on Revolver last night.)
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The Basic Repertoire on Compact Disc, Part 1
The CD era was mature enough at this point to begin curating the best of what was out there, though this is strictly a classical affair. Going alphabetically by composer, Part 1 takes the reader from Bach through Mendelssohn. The second half appears in the October issue.
Our reviewers this month are Chris Albertson, Phyl Garland, Alanna Nash, Mark Peel, and Steve Simels, with a future regular contributing a little.
Best of the Month
–Steve Earle, Guitar Town (SS) “His songs deal, in part, with traditional country themes—faithless lovers, the continuity of family life, poverty and hard times—but from a remarkably sophisticated and modern perspective, and he can be mordantly funny in a way that would never have occurred to, say, Ernest Tubb.”
–Tonio K., Romeo Unchained (SS) “…the kind of album that will sound good on MTV and make you think anyway.” Simels also references what had become an inside joke: he crowns each of K.’s releases as ‘the greatest album ever recorded.’ That habit continued through January 1999, SR’s final issue, where Simels gets to proclaim the same about Rodent Weekend ’76-’96 (Approximately).
Other Disks Reviewed (* = featured review)
–Anita Baker, Rapture (PG) “…possesses not only a remarkably lustrous voice but also the kind of taste and intelligence that mark her as one of the finest vocal interpreters to emerge in quite some time.”
–*Tony Bennett, The Art of Excellence (Roy Hemming) “…shows that Bennett…is still musically and expressively at the top of his form…”
–*Chuck Berry, Rock ‘n’ Roll Rarities (SS) “…brings together previously unreleased alternate takes and stereo remixes of some of the most familiar tunes in rock history and allows us to hear them as if they were spanking new.”
–The Blow Monkeys, Animal Magic (SS) “Here’s yet another act purveying the effete, post-disco British r-&-b that is all the rage these days, a music inhabiting a space somewhere between bad Culture Club and bad Spandau Ballet (the latter admittedly a redundancy).”
–George Clinton, R&B Skeletons in the Closet (MP) “…his manifesto against the evils of crossover—commercial tendencies that dilute, homogenize, and otherwise bleach funk of its essential nastiness.”
–Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny, Song X (CA) “…the two principals exhibit a mutual rapport that simply begs for further collaboration.”
–The Forester Sisters, Perfume, Ribbons and Pearls (AN) “…neither as progressive as the Judds nor as traditional as the Whites. They are also not nearly as interesting nor as overtly talented…”
–*Peter Gabriel, So (MP) “But it’s not for lack of effort that the album comes up short. Rather, it’s the dimming of Gabriel’s white-hot vision.”
–Howard Jones, Action Replay (MP) “I keep waiting for Jones to come up with a worthy successor to Human’s Lib…”
–Journey, Raised on Radio (SS) “I remain convinced that Journey is the most inexplicable band in America. It’s not that they’re bad…it’s more as if they’re utterly and irredeemably lacking in personality, brains, body odor, or any other recognizably human characteristic.”
–Nicolette Larson, Rose of My Heart (AN) “…the only real complaint I have about her is that she obviously has a severely limited emotional range…”
–Susannah McCorkle, How Do You Keep the Music Playing? (CA) “Simply put, McCorkle is the finest interpreter of sophisticated songs we have today.”
–Bobby McFerrin, Spontaneous Inventions (CA) “McFerrin is often at his best when he’s teamed up with an instrumentalist…a very successful and creative album.”
–Pet Shop Boys, Please (MP) “Like Wham!, the Pets are the kind of group that drives frustrated audiophiles to mutter, ‘I could do that.’”
–Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Like a Rock (SS) ‘…longer on good intentions than inspiration. A lot longer.”
–Jane Siberry, The Speckless Sky (MP) “The arrangements…work at being free-wheeling and innovative, but while there’s lots going on, none of it is much fun or very interesting.”
–The Style Council, Home and Abroad (MP) ‘…succumbs to just about every pitfall that can ruin a concert recording.”
–Randy Travis, Storms of Life (AN) “…proves that he is a serious and worthwhile suitor for the same audience that reveres (George) Jones, Merle Haggard, and George Strait.”
–Van Halen, 5150 (MP) “…Hagar is clearly intent on proving he’s a worthy successor to the King of Raunch-and-Roll. But where Roth could be legitimately funny about his rampaging promiscuity…the best Hagar can manage is a dull, passé crudeness.”
–Wax, Magnetic Heaven (SS) “Everything is cheerful, well produced, and well crafted, but neither Gold nor Gouldman is a particularly interesting singer, and more to the point, their melodic gifts seem to have deserted them.”
The Music of My Life 