In the coming years, Universal will reissue 66 of Frank Zappa’s albums, kicking off a with a 10-CD flight covering the years 1966 through ’72. Take your pick of great Zappa releases, but a top choice has to be the ’69 classic, Hot Rats. This was Frank’s first post-Mothers of Invention release and even 40 [...]
Ritenour’s previous album, 6 String Theory, featured collaborations with guitar peers John Scofield, B.B. King, Slash, and George Benson, among others. Here, he’s working with virtuoso rhythm section players – and a few newcomers. Bassists on these 12 numbers include Stanley Clarke, Christian McBride, Marcus Miller, Chuck Berghofer, Nathan East, and Tal Wilkenfeld. On keyboards: [...]
It’s one thing to be the offspring of a famous performer, but quite another to share his name and still be able to forge your own identity. After a number of years in the musical wilderness, John Lee Hooker Jr. found his identity and has been grooming it with CD releases over the past decade. [...]
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Santana alumnus Neal Schon was not only known for his blazing guitar solos, he was equally famous for his ability to play with taste and restraint. He was one of the few heavy rock guitarists who wrote tuneful and memorable lines that were correct for the song, while [...]
The Show is back!After a hiatus starting in August 2011, with old band members leaving and new ones joining, this album was much anticipated by fans. Never fear. It’s every bit worth the wait. In fact, Carry Me Back is like two albums in one. There are “old” songs and “new” songs here, the old [...]
To expect a record by the Outlaws to sound this good in 2012 would be folly. The band hasn’t released a studio album in more than two decades and two of the main guitarists from the original band – Hughie Thomasson and Billy Jones – are dead. The remaining original guitarist, Henry Paul, has resurrected [...]
Like earlier country outlaws, Jamey Johnson forges his own paths while never forgetting his forebears. One is singer-composer Hank Cochran, who died in 2010. A giant among Nashville writers, Cochran wrote many tunes over nearly half a century, some now country standards. Having worked with a prerocking Eddie Cochran (no relation) in the early ’50s, [...]
It’s not glam rock, although “(I’m A) Slut” sparkles with a certain Bowie/ Roxy Music sexual ambiguity. It’s not Captain Beefheart’s industrial-strength experimental rock, though “Karaoke,” with a West Coast cool sax solo from Don Govoni furthers the Beefheart connection. Whatever elements make up Berlin’s musical amalgam, he often sounds like he’s working off pure [...]
Dokken is still going strong with their 11th studio album Broken Bones. With vocalist Don Dokken as producer, it’s an album that is shameless in its mission to reproduce the sound that made the band one of the top recording and touring acts of the 1980s. Though half the classic lineup is long gone, the [...]
Call this music “Americana,” if you have to put a label on it. The opener, “Red Dirt,” establishes straight away the muscular Midwestern quality that reflects Guy Forsythe’s musical coming of age in Kansas City, a locus for many musical styles. Blues, jazz, R&B, and rock and roll – Forsythe puts them all to good [...]
