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
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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.
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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,…
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Believe it or not, Phil Collins was once just a member of this group called Genesis.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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The What-ing What Project? Never, perhaps, has a figure in rock music been simultaneously so famous and so … anonymous.
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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…
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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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