Credit, or discredit, the late Grover Washington Jr. with setting the template for the whole smooth jazz thing. There was always more to him than that. Really.
Something Else! Reviews
36 Articles
Writers from the Something Else! Reviews webzine have also been featured on AllAboutJazz.com, Rock.com, Jazz.com, NPR.com's A Blog Supreme, Blues Revue Magazine, and the NoDepression.com Americana site, among others. We focus on a diverse amalgam of musical obsessions from outposts in Texas, South Carolina, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Contact us at reviews@somethingelsereviews.com.
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While we’re still trying to digest the idea of Lady Gaga fronting Queen (embarrassing attention grab? or nervy post-modern tribute to Freddie Mercury?), let’s return to a few old favorites.
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Boasting focused, soul-lifting horns, sunburst harmonies and a thrilling propensity for shaken-up textures and rhythms, Earth, Wind & Fire could do almost no wrong for a period of time in…
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Guitarist Bill Frisell, the jazz guy, issues a terrific tribute to John Lennon today, titled All We Are Saying. But this isn’t, you know, his first intersection with rock music.
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Perhaps Todd Rundgren’s own restive muse — he’s dabbled in every major rock subgenre over the past four decades — simply makes him too difficult to categorize. Maybe Rundgren never…
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America’s first soul singer was lost in 1964 before his abilities as a writer, arranger and defacto producer could become more widely appreciated.
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There are TV themes you remember. “All In The Family,” with its way-back talk of President Hoover and LaSalle cars. Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams cooing together, “What would we…
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The Talking Heads emerged weird, polished that weirdness, and let the world catch up.
Something Else! Reviews
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In many ways, television is a technological wonder these days, what with remote controls, digital signals and DVRs. But, for those who fell in love with the old-school opening theme,…
Something Else! Reviews
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Believe it or not, Phil Collins was once just a member of this group called Genesis.
Something Else! Reviews
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Led Zeppelin’s image, dating back to the band’s debauched 1970s heyday, has grown so outsized that it sometimes obscures, well, the music.
Something Else! Reviews
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Supertramp was many things over its too-brief period of hitmaking — wanna-be proggers, post-Beatle popsters, kinda-classical rockers, memory-defining radio monoliths. Sure, Roger Hodgson’s voice could occasionally become a sing-songy distraction….
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In a way, the Who has no one to blame for a slow and steady slide into overlooked rock-god status.
Something Else! Reviews
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OK, there was the symbol thing. And the awful attempts at hip-hop phrasing. And the Sheena Easton thing. And the using of a certain ubiquitous letter of the alphabet (“Take…
Something Else! Reviews
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James Brown got all of the headlines, be they for his fancy moves, his fancier suits or his brushes with the law. But the JB Horns, those great groovers who…
Something Else! Reviews
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Denny Laine — Fab, one time removed? — will forever be the other guy in Wings, the Paul McCartney-led 1970s successor band to the Beatles. Even if that belies Laine’s…
Something Else! Reviews
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Marvin Gaye’s 1971 masterpiece What’s Going On doesn’t simply boast the gospel influence that marks so much of America’s most transformative works in blues and R&B. The album actually has…
Something Else! Reviews
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It’s hard, if you really listen, not to be startled when 1955’s “Bo Diddley” — all fast-driving beats and nervy aggression — gets going. Diddley ditched chord changes for propulsive…
Something Else! Reviews
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Your pals over at Something Else! Reviews begin an occasional feature focusing on the best of the 1980s with a look at producer and songwriter Daniel Lanois’ impact on the…
Something Else! Reviews
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Australia’s Little River Band placed 11 songs in the Top 40 in the late 1970s and early 1980s, becoming one of the most successful acts to come from Down Under….
Something Else! Reviews
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The Beatles, just as their creativity went supernova, quit the road in 1966 — frustrated over the inability of that period’s sound systems to amplify the increasingly complex work spinning…
Something Else! Reviews
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His credentials are as deep as his records are extraordinary: Adrian Belew, after all, has had stints with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, the Talking Heads, King Crimson and Nine Inch…
Something Else! Reviews
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Critics hung a soft-rock stone around their necks after the success of tunes like “I Won’t Hold You Back,” “99” and “I’ll Be Over You.” But Toto was never so…
Something Else! Reviews
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Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has taken his share of knocks over the years. Some of those, in the interest of full disclosure, came from us.
Something Else! Reviews
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A band suspended forever between the formalism of Dennis DeYoung’s Broadway pretentions and the harder-edged banalities of James Young and Tommy Shaw, Styx sounded different every time it came on…
Something Else! Reviews
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In a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career dating back to the early 1950s, the Isley Brothers stayed on the move — transforming themselves from gospel shouters to doo-woppers…
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Pink Floyd‘s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, alas, was no Dark Side of the Moon. Criticized then as now for being transitional and samey, though, it was far from the…
Something Else! Reviews
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The What-ing What Project? Never, perhaps, has a figure in rock music been simultaneously so famous and so … anonymous.
Something Else! Reviews
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The very ubiquitousness of the Beatles can make for difficult wading when you’re trying to remember what made them great in the first place. Well, the movement you need is…
Something Else! Reviews
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Hall & Oates are, of course, the poster boys for what happens when hair gel meets R&B. Funny thing is, they were originally anything but polished. Hall had reportedly been…
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