Music Review: Al Kryszak, 'Soft Clowns of the Sea'

A free-form guitar is prominent among the traditional and progressive orchestral arrangements, soft messaged ballads, instrumental quiet time, and underwater think-tank oddities in Al Kryszak's new solo effort, Soft Clowns of The Sea.

The music sounds very much like the abandoned wood planks, moss covered stone, and occasional human artifact one might find looking at the bottom of a clear shallow lake. Even the swirling dead-key vocal arrangements sounds like the voices of drowned people, like the hapless harmonious chorus from an old Jefferson Airplane song.

"Catch Me Sleeping" has such a chorus. A funky pop beat gives way to nearly indecipherable murmuring vocals in which Kryszak sings "You won't catch me sleeping alone", while the helpless background vocals join him as if captured with him in an assured whirlpool. It's a soothing, George Harrison All Things Must Pass effect.

In contrast to those choppy waters, "Sun In My Eyes" is a stark and simple vocal arrangement with an insufferable sun bearing down on motionless waters. Tones of eastern global music, and Euro-minstrel mandolin spinning off the guitar strings gives it an otherworldly, quietly bizarre sound. 

While the album is big and heavy on downbeat, Kryszak's guitar sometimes is the only positive major key instrument speaking in contrast to the general minor key chords he prefers. The guitar flirts, antagonizes and soothes the music, as busy and constant as a dragonfly over water. Its jazzy, free-form style has an assured blues sound that complements well the gentle musical waves lapping against the shore.

The music drifts, sometimes for long periods, into a jazz/folk fusion of quiet meditative music sparked by Kryszak's splendid finger picking. His electric playing is as fine. "Hold Them All" offers a fiery, siren-like jam on guitar that pierces the song's stony rock-blues platform like a Russian meteor shower.

This is a big, ambitious album with several musical themes working, and I'm unsure if it all equals a cohesive whole. It doesn't matter. It's thought provoking and the music is always engaging. A profound theme lies somewhere in these mysterious waters.

Yet, reasoning will not prepare you for the rock and roll assault featuring Mike Brydalski on drums towards the end of the album which adds a final touch of strangeness. It's a regrouping of all the album's musical components burnt to a crust of primal rock. It is a wonderful burst of sound.

Music Review, Brent Best "Your Dog Champ"

Brent Best, lead player of on-again, off-again alt-country rock band Slobberbone, has released his first solo album, Your Dog, Champ. The rowdy, raucous, Texas roots humor of his band is greatly subdued on this effort, resulting in a low-key, sweet country sound that celebrates the cycle of life and death from a child’s perspective, with just a touch of adult cynicism.

The 11 tracks can be heard as a suite of songs that collectively conjure a paradox of Americana culture with songs bursting in rural Texas charm, even as a sack of newborn kittens are being drowned in the pond. Back porch camaraderie, cigarettes and beer, and dusty dirt and steaming blacktop roads are intertwined with references to absent and violent fathers, single-parent mothers, and lives unfulfilled.

The childhood perception of death is delicately examined in “Aunt Ramona”, a song of an Oklahoma-to-Texas family road trip in which the title subject possesses “the smell of perfume and sweet ammonia” as she quietly passes away in the back seat. “None of us could wake her, daddy said that was fine”, the child recalls as Best’s organ flirts with a sad lullaby, and gentle acoustics seem resigned to the realization that death is as peaceful and ordinary as an afternoon nap.

“Robert Cole” also reveals a child’s interpretation of tragedy, and the shaping of identity, as domestic abuse – slamming doors, enraged voices, and a cowering woman – is remembered wistfully and painfully and set against a lofty and mournful ballad in which the narrator dares to take solace on the blacktop road “where I was not to walk ’till I was old.”

Songs like “Daddy Was a Liar”, where daddy at the pond has “a bag of kittens and a brick”, and “Good Man Now”, where it is told, “The only good man is a dead man/Daddy is a good man now”, put a positive spin on the nastiest of scenarios while stressing the cardiac ache in “heart-achy”. This is gritty stuff and Best breezes through it with a naturalistic poetic flare. It is, at times, downright touching.

The country musicians backing up Best, particularly on fiddle (Ralph White), violin (Petra Kelly), and pedal steel guitar (Burton Lee), are a tidy group of players who masterfully accentuate Best’s narration like polished journeymen and can pick up the tempo when need be. “Tangled”, with its American Indian vibe, tethers on a jangle of steel guitar, and the sumptuous instrumental “Travel, Again” whips up dust and tumbleweeds like a tornado rolling across the Texas prairie.

this article was first published at

http://blogcritics.org/music-review-brent-best-your-dog-champ-slobberbone-frontman-releases-first-solo-album/

Movie Review: "Lambert and Stamp", The Story of The Who's Early Managers

Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp are not names that ring familiar in the annals of rock and roll history, let alone as subjects of a full-length, Sundance-debuted documentary Lambert and Stamp. The pair were the unlikely business mangers of the rock phenomena known as The Who, and this movie, directed by James D. Cooper, is the story of their brief and ingenious tenure as pathfinders to what would become one of the hottest bands on the planet.

As aspiring filmmakers at England’s famed Shepperton Film Studios (which The Who later purchased) in the early 1960s, Lambert and Stamp concocted a plan to create a movie about the burgeoning London mod youth subculture of music, sex, drugs, motor bikes and plaid dress suits, by filming a representative teenage rock ‘n roll band. Although they had specifics in mind (being like The Beatles would help tremendously) the two were prepared to sign nearly any rock band to a contract.

With no knowledge of how to manage a rock band, and little cash to support their enterprising ambition, the two, with film cameras in tow, stepped into a shabby London dive club, The Railway Hotel (since demolished) and crudely filmed their first meeting with the club’s house band, The Who – Roger Daltrey, Peter Townsend, John Entwhistle, and Keith Moon – known then as The High Numbers. On lovingly restored, grainy 16 mm black and white film, and with mod teenagers dancing in what looked like a collective glue sniffing trance, The Who are filmed agreeing to the novice business manager’s offers of support, guidance, and promised cash. The rest is Who history.

That Lambert and Stamp filmed and preserved so much historic footage may be reason enough for this patchy documentary’s existence. Lambert’s movie camera reveals a gritty and greasy, street level, mid-century British subculture of rebelling mods and rockers, as eye-popping montages – Jimi Hendrix is seen clubbing in quiet, common revelry – pass by as if unheralded (the duo would later manage and produce Hendrix).

While these images are intriguing and nostalgia soaked in the first half of the documentary, they grow a wee tiresome as the film rolls on. The movie’s main subjects – Lambert and Stamp – are less exciting than the momentous figures around them – namely The Who. The narrative arch is shallower than it might be had this simply been a documentary of The Who.

Kit Lambert, son of noted British composer Constant Lambert, and Chris Stamp, brother of actor Terrance Stamp (both Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp are now deceased) are nearly incidental characters who serve as mere rungs on the ladder of The Who’s impeding superstardom. The duo are just short of fascinating and this documentary is elusive in defining just what their contribution to rock and roll history is – were they pioneering visionaries or manipulative opportunists?

Surviving Who members Roger Daltrey and Peter Townsend speak glowingly throughout the film about them and claim them to be instrumental to The Who’s survival and success. Still, a slow burn emerges as they recount Lambert’s attempt to peddle Townsend’s rock opera “Tommy” to Hollywood film studios without the band’s permission after the album’s phenomenal success. This brought an end to the relationship between The Who and Lambert & Stamp.

There is so much never seen before film footage here, it is no question that Lambert and Stamp’s archive of moving images begged to be put in perspective. Watching a young Peter Townsend debut an acoustic and virgin “Glittering Girl” to the duo is a priceless rock ‘n roll moment. Witnessing the late and somewhat tragic Keith Moom as a young, enthusiastic and playful drummer is part sad and part joyful.

Yet an all encompassing history of The Who during this era is what this archive of film really amounts to. The weird point of view that is Lambert & Stamp, although enticing enough to send me to Wikipedia for further innuendo, seems an incomplete afterthought, as if their history has not been fully disclosed.

this article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/movie-review-lambert-and-stamp-the-story-of-the-whos-early-managers/

Music Review: Giant Sand "Heartbreak Pass"

 

Maybe Giant Sand’s new album Heartbreak Pass is inspired by a genuine middle-age heart attack. Founder and only constant band member Howe Gelb sings about everyday existence as if coming from a life renewing, post-traumatic point of view.
But as most middle-agers experiencing an eye-opening realization of mortality can attest, living life with profound respect grows tiresome. Eventually the grind of living anchors itself back into place and the mortal clock is again damned and ignored. In Heartbreak Pass, there seems to be children, grandchildren, wives, and ex-wives to contend with.
Gelb wants to stop and smell the roses, or as in the case here, contemplate the flickering wick of a gypsy candle (on “Gypsy Candle”), but familial and financial responsibilities rob him of his selfish perspective. While singing a revelatory appreciation for the mundane, he eyes a peaceful and secure future of sunsets, rocking chairs, and children playing on the lawn. “When this day is done…” he lazily and melodically repeats on the same titled track, as if having all the time in the world to soak up a Burt Bacharach-styled easy listening afternoon, a sound this album often reflects.
The band – Gelb and a revolving door of players over the years – celebrates its 30th anniversary with Heartbreak, and except for the Euro synth and London fog-inducing sound of “Transponder” (lavishly produced by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle), it sounds like a Howe Gelb solo album. The songs are strictly singer-songwriter style, and any additional musicianship – solo trumpet, lead guitar, etc. – sounds distant and alienated, like from another recording session.

Giant Sand’s aging sun is best captured in “Texting Feist,” in which Gelb surrenders the studied observation that “The days become a Leonard Cohen medley.” Indeed, Cohen’s breezy soft acoustics and low-key vocal musings are an inspiration here, as is the lounge piano tinkering of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner.
Gelb has stripped away the cluttering pop music adornments normally found in Giant Sand’s music, and has left lovely bare bones. “Gypsy Candle” and “Pen to Paper”, vocal duets with Lorna Beth Kelley, are particularly stark and minimal, as if contemplating a long and languid day’s journey into night.
And yet as sweet and solemn as this all is, I’d prefer he’d gone more in the direction of “Transponder,” in which he escapes his bursting-at-the-seams home life tranquility for a dutiful concert tour of Europe. Here, with layers of minor chord keyboards, sound effects, and stoner observations (“Across the pond you’re a transponder”), he ignites the flame that keep the home embers, however dull and domestic, burning.

this article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-giant-sand-heartbreak-pass/

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Music Review: Robyn Hitchcock 'The Man Upstairs'

British rock and roll troubadour Robyn Hitchcock's 2014 album The Man Upstairs is a mellow affair, heavy on the light acoustics and indebted to Americana folk music. It offers five new  Hitchcock compositions and five covers of songs by The Psychedelic Furs, Roxy Music, Grant-Lee Phillips, The Doors, and Norwegian indie-rock band I Was A King.


Listening to it, I'm reminded of Jonathan Demme's 1998 documentary concert film, Storefront Hitchcock, in which the Silence Of The Lambs movie director filmed the Soft Boys alumni and celebrated solo artist playing live to a small audience inside an abandoned New York City storefront. As he played, city passersby on the street stopped at the plate glass window backdrop behind the stage, cupped their hands against the glass, marveled over the strange lights and sound, and wondered what the hell is going on in there.

Here, from the comfort of your own listening space, you can still wonder what the hell is going on inside Hitchcock. The veteran songwriter, who shot to minor American fame in the 1980s with his band The Egyptians, creates songs that aren't easily categorized, fusing elements of Syd Barrett's cosmic imagery, Bob Dylan's dusty folk narrative, and The Beatles psychedelic explorations. After listening to a Hitchcock piece, one might find himself in the deepest of thought, yet have little idea what that thought is, like a dream you struggle to remember.

The Man Upstairs is quiet and assured and spiked with a rock 'n roll edge. At 61 years of age, Hitchcock's voice is as rich and commanding as a hormonal teenager's, and his new compositions again battle for equilibrium between the oracular self and the cosmic powers that be. The purely Americana folk song Trouble In Your Blood cites the human condition to be "a well constructed shadow" while resigned acoustic strings and accompanying cello filter in like a foggy mountain breakdown pause for thought. "Comme Toujours" and "San Francisco Patrol" are both engaging quiet listens with a perfectly balanced arrangement of vocal, guitar and cello.

Grant-Lee Phillips' "Don't Look Down" is stark and haunting under Hitchcock's arrangement, even more so than the original's pastiche of dark colors. It sounds like a deadly balancing act on a high wire  with its foreboding refrain and lyrics that must have delighted Hitchcock's surreal comedic sense - "Buster Keaton and I danced out on the window sill/Ten stories high".

Some of the covers are a bit ordinary. There are no great turns to The Furs' "The Ghost In You" or Jim Morrison's "The Crystal Ship", although Hitchcock's interpretations, more revering than explorative,  fits well in the album's introspective tone. Only once does he break out and rock, on the bluesy thumping new song "Somebody To Break Your Heart", which adds a harmonica to the acoustic mix.

Folk artist Gillian Welch is responsible for the album's cool cover art.




this article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-robyn-hitchcock-the-man-upstairs/

Music Review - Royksopp - 'The Inevitable End'

Bobby Vinton's recording of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "Blue On Blue" was an inspiration on Royksopp's 2001 debut album Melody A.M. The song's ghostly refrain sounded like a trapped and homeless melody hurdling through the cosmos destined for future generations to discover and ponder. There are more pop music archaeological digs on their fifth and amicably announced final album, The Inevitable End, although nothing as memorable as Bobby Vinton drifting through the galaxies.

The album continues Royksopp's retroactive electronic rock, shaped with dark energy of wasted matter made musical, and a hungry dedication to the beat boxes and synthesized keyboards of 1980s synth-pop bands. The Norwegian duo - Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland - have put a significant dent in global music sales over the years, helped no doubt by the corporate use of Royksopp's music in major TV advertising - T. Mobile in the U.K., Geico in the U.S. While their Euro-rhythm melodies suit the slick commercials well, their songs are more often terminally dark and caustic, equal parts lovesick and suicidal.

On the chorale-like "You Know I Have To Go", Royksopp's somber testimony is as resigned as the last message in a bottle from a drowning man. The constant thump of a clinical heartbeat and the subtle sound of a lazy wave breaking at shore add mournful drama to the mix. Picture 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" gripped with a shiny, taunting razor blade.

"I Had This Thing" follows the same formula with layers of electronic keyboards threatening to evolve into the sound of Catholic mass before it breaks into an upbeat techno dance number, even while the lyrics anchor the song in contemplative desperation - "I don't remember anymore what I used to be, there was a fire burning inside of me".

This sad but danceable music is given a shot of sunshine with remedial tracks featuring Norwegian singer/songwriter Susanne Sundfor on lead vocals. "Save Me" and "Running To The Sea" have a radio-ready Madonna-like glitter ball pizzazz, the former sounding like Blondie after the tide has gone out again, the latter reaching symphonic grandness like Kate Bush pursuing a mountain summit.

If there is an issue with Royksopp's bon voyage, it is the repetition of song structures and a few throwaway tracks.  "You Know I Have To Go" and "I Had This Thing" are virtually interchangeable. "Coup de Grace" is a remarkably uninspired short instrumental and "Ronk" seems only to give the album its parental advisory sticker with the repeated use of mankind's favorite four-letter word.

The adventurous musical virtues far outweigh the wasted space though, and when you're not contemplating ending it all, you can dance to it. The CD issue comes with a second CD of added tracks.




this article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-royksopp-the-inevitable-end-their-final-album/

Music Review: Matt Turk - 'Cold Revival'

Mandolin plucks like twinkling stars and drums bang like someone is pounding the lids of aluminum garbage cans in folk artist Matt Turk's new album, Cold Revival.  More traditional folk instruments - ukulele, steel guitar, accordion - are sprinkled throughout, each offering a tasty side dish to a serving of modern folk music that pays homage to love, loss and commitment. While grounded in the genre's values, Turk is an edgy innovator not content for an electric guitar to merely resonate when it can screech and howl.

From island reggae rhythms (the comfortable and predictable When A Boy) to electric guitar solo fade-outs (the surprisingly explosive In Her Smile), Turk covers much ground in an array of styles that fall neatly under his Euro-folk gazebo tree. His modernist testament to emotional angst (love- loss-commitment, in that order) is crowned with a watchful eye on the state of the fiery political world, singing on the title track, "Young lovers and young soldiers, lead us through this war/Caught between the crossfire of extremists, there's no middle anymore".

Sorrowful steel guitars and comfort zone keyboards lay a bedrock of impending grief in "Quiet Day", a heart aching ode to death and dying which recalls John Prine's similar shout-out to the aged, "Hello In There". Turk's omnipresent view of a lifelong relationship ending in death boasts his troubadour talent for atmosphere and storytelling as he conveys, both musically and lyrically, the helplessness of an aging couple who "live in a small way, hope for a quiet day".

The late great Harry Nilsson, complete with escalating vocals and antiquated musical instruments (accordion, ragtime piano) is a certain inspiration in the jaunty barroom blues of "Battle Song", in which the lovelorn sips his brew to the point of misery - "I used to dream about you/Now I just want to kill you". The talk narrative and subsequent rock and roll surge in "Say You'll Live" brings the urgency and topicality of indie bands Drive-By Truckers and The Handsome Family to mind.

While "Cold Revival" flirts on the fringes of chill - the songs say relationships are futile and impossible to resist - the outcome is a warm embrace this songwriter happily surrenders to. He conveys that paradox with the finest of folk music values, occasionally stepping out of bounds to express the endless limits of the genre.


this article was first published by the author at  -  http://blogcritics.org/music-review-matt-turk-cold-revival/

Music Review: The Turtles 'The Turtles 45 RPM Vinyl Singles Collection'

In the canon of 1960s pop music groups, the sophisticated bubble gum psychedelic sound of The Turtles lies somewhere center between the crowned king Beatles and the corporate controlled Monkees. Their string of hit singles between 1965 and 1969 - including their most successful record, "Happy Together" which is still heard in regular rotation on commercial radio today - were a delectable blend of addictive pop hooks, desperate love-heat sentiment, and a spooky, almost menacing aural vibe ("Elenore") that spoke to the sex hungry, thrill seeking youth of the era.

Turtles founders, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan - later known as Flo and Eddie when a contract dispute prevented them from using The Turtles name - have released The Turtles 45 RPM Singles Collection which includes their top hits on eight vinyl singles along with incredible and worthy B-sides that are fascinating peaks and valleys to the brief, but by pop music standards, glorious history of The Turtles.

The recordings sound wonderful on virgin vinyl. The phonograph needle digs lovingly into the grooves of these records, revealing layers of ambiance not entirely detected when blasting from your favorite oldies radio channel. Keyboards slither and crawl beneath the jangle of guitars, pounding drums are suddenly reduced to a near silent bongo syncopation, and vocal harmonies are complex and echoed and buried deep in the sound.

Their first hit, a cover of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" (#8 Billboard 1965) progresses from a soft rock ballad into a raw emotionally charged rocker. It's a slick and smooth transgression of a Dylan acoustic song, created at a time when Dylan himself was turning towards electrified music. The circus-parade atmosphere of "She'd Rather Be With Me" (#3 Billboard 1966) reaches dizzying heights of happy delirium with an oom-pa-pa brass band enshrouding a catchy as all hell melody.

But it's the signature super-hits drifting off the vinyl that mesmerize as splendid classic recordings. "Happy Together" (#1 for three weeks in 1967 Billboard) has an ominous, foreboding sound laced with a gothic themed keyboard tugging at the heart of the simplest of song structure. It defies you to not sing along. "Elenore" (#6 Billboard 1968) is still wonderfully atmospheric and finds cuddling up with your babe at the picture show to be as daring as a deadly commando mission. Here, the spookiness of the music (scary organ) gets extraordinarily grey, while the poetic prowess goes no deeper than, "I really think you're groovy, let's go out to a movie".

Flo and Eddie went on to join Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention after the demise of The Turtles in 1970. They had further success as recording artists and radio programmers, and still tour today as The Turtles. Their vocal arrangements are the mightiest factor of their old Turtles records, and over the years they have contributed vocal tracks to recordings by T-Rex, John Lennon, Stephen Stills, Keith Moon, Alice Cooper, Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, The Psychedelic Furs, Duran Duran, The Ramones and several others.

The limited edition Turtles 45 RPM Singles Collection comes autographed and numbered and includes a Turtles 45 RPM adaptor (Hey kids!). It can be ordered at Flo and Eddie's official Turtles site - http://theturtles.com.




this article was first published by the author at
http://blogcritics.org/music-review-the-turtles-the-turtles-45-rpm-vinyl-singles-collection/

Music Review: Yes - 'Heaven & Earth'

Classic progressive rock fans can't expect a cutting edge release from Yes this late in their career. The pioneering British rock band that formed in 1968 and helped spearhead the progressive rock wave of the late 1960s and early '70s now releases an album every few years or so, as if dutifully doing their taxes.

The new album Heaven & Earth - my vote for the blandest album title of the year - is the first with lead singer/lyricist Jon Davison. He replaces founding member Jon Anderson who has gone solo again. This latest full-length is so light and passive (dainty even), it is nearly void of any signature progressive rock musicianship, let alone any defining Yes flourishes.

Sure, Chris Squire's anchored bass still provides a solid platform for the band to work from, and Steve Howe's flashy fret work still thrives with a seasoned confidence, but so lazily are these contributions offered, along with Alan White's barely distinguishable drumming, the performances sound as if they were lap-topped in from the four corners of the globe. 

Loyalists may have a challenge warming up to singer Davison's freakishly spot-on impersonation of Jon Anderson, the ageless choirboy voice of Yes on such classic albums as Close To The Edge and Fragile. Davison's vocals sound only like an accomplished enactment - he was the lead singer in a Yes cover band - and his cosmically light lyrics rarely invoke the striking imagery fans could expect from Anderson.

If pressed, one could kindly describe Heaven & Earth as a pleasant, if unadventurous album. Keyboardist Geoff Downes' pretty and linear playing seems insistent on keeping this garden free of any progressive growth. Songs like "It Was All We Knew" and "In A World Of Our Own" have a pop flavor unfortunately diluted by the drowning remnants of progressive rock. One wonders what might have been had the songs been more fully charged with a steeper degree of drama and flash.




this article was first published by the author at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-yes-heaven-earth/

Book Review: 'The Opposite Of Everything" by David Kalish

This is a lighthearted and comedic novel concerning Daniel Plotnick, an Associated Press business writer who, upon learning he has contracted thyroid cancer, decides to change his life by doing the opposite of everything. What he once deemed important - a solid marriage, a successful career, reasonable good health - would now be, in his enlightenment, obstacles to avoid.

His doctor first informs him that if you're going to get cancer, thyroid cancer, a mostly curable disease "is the one to get". After further examination the same surgeon does a complete about-face and declares Plotnick's condition as incurable. After sacrificing his thyroid, a vocal nerve, and a portion of his trachea to the surgeon's scalpel, Plotnick is given a 50-50 chance of surviving 10 years and the unsettling advice to "live each day with meaning".

What makes David Kalish's thin and breezy book so appealing is its refusal to treat the Big C as anything but a motivation for humor. Never does the disease reach dramatic threatening height, all the while intimidating the character's very existence. The point here is - the choices one makes in life, including the frantic choices a cancer diagnosis may invoke, are essential in determining one's well-being and quality of life, regardless of how little time that life has left.

After running the tread mill of cancer treatment, Plotnick concludes that the choices he has made in life - the smart practical choices - have not served him well. Why not then, he supposes, do the opposite of all he held significant? He locks his wife out of their apartment and soon divorces her. He gets fitted for a nose ring and dresses in gothic black like his beloved death metal rock bands. He goes on drinking binges, practically lives in bars, and roams the night like a Metallica reject.

In his most radical departure from the norm, he accompanies his swinging singles father on a weird odyssey to a Catskills resort senior citizens weekend. Here, his life takes another spin as he slips even further into his psycho abyss when he can't tolerate his father's playing of The Village People's "Macho Man" at full volume on his father's Mustang cassette deck. 

Before Plotnick self-destructs with or without a terminal illness, the author allows his protagonist to fall in love with a lovely Columbian woman who sees his reckless behavior as a calling to her own needs and desires. With that happy outcome, witty Seinfeld-like dialogue, and bizarre situations that confront the commonplace (Plotnick falls or is pushed from a famous American landmark) The Opposite Of Everything is a passive and engaging read. 

The character of Judy, Plotnick's first wife is sketchy at best. She is a cast-off wife who only serves as a catalyst to his ensuing adventure and romance. I thought the author's treatment of her was harsh. It's the only false note in a novel that is grinning from ear to ear with the promise of another day. 




this article was first published by the author at http://blogcritics.org/book-review-the-opposite-of-everything-by-david-kalish/

Music Review: Brian Jonestown Massacre - 'Revelation'

The fourteenth Brian Jonestown Massacre album, Revelation - the first to be recorded in their new Berlin, Germany recording studio - is a jangly psych-rock affair glazed in a frosty shoegazing chill. Although it's a terribly bland title, the new album is spirited with BJM's gloomy, then bright  psychedelic haze.

The band's one constant -  singer, writer, multi-instrumentalist Anton Newcombe - is a survivor of documented drug addiction (the rock documentary Dig!) and rumored alienation. He has produced an album with an almost paranoiac tone yet with a glint of light, of hope, creeping through the window of his safe European home. He has relocated to Berlin and is now a husband, father of a young son, and record producer. Word is, he's on the mend.

BJM have always been conspiracy-minded with a reckless enthusiasm for all things dark and dangerous. What more can you expect from a band name that is a combination of tragic Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, and the mass suicide (or was it murder?) of hundreds of members of The People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. On Revelation an adult maturity has seized and anchored Newcombe, as if it suddenly dawned on him that being alive is better than being dead. "You've got to wake up and be a man, and know the plan", he sings on "What You Isn't", a song bristling with angry confidence and backed by a white-knuckled organ and American Indian tom-tom percussion.

The album boasts Newcombe's musical influences. He raises his glass to Robert Smith and The Cure on the ska-tinged, "Food For Clouds". He channels The Man Who Sold The World -era David Bowie on the whimsically lovelorn "Unknown". "Memorymix" impossibly combines The Beatles repeating Sgt. Pepper (title track) guitar riff with '90s electronica and club land dub, and is the most experimental song here even while constrained to a dance groove.

Newcombe never sounded so at peace with himself as he does on "Nightbird", a soulful "waking up alone" ballad with a modest string arrangement accompanying an acoustic guitar and killer melody. Throughout the album jangly Byrds-era guitar and customary drum beats that break in at perfect intervals add a sunny splash to the moody atmospherics.

Revelation gets darker and deeper on repeated listens. On first take the instrumental "Duck and Cover" seems only filler. On further listens, the whistling keyboards, like a perfectly cued air raid siren, paint a drone-filled sky governing the continents. It's food for thought from an artist not quite ready to abandon his inner rebel.



this article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-brian-jonestown-massacre-revelation/

Music Review: Swans - 'To Be Kind'

Is that a melody? The new Swans album is packed with leader Michael Gira's trademark loud art rock - lengthy guitar slams and atmospheric droning passages in a no-wave political music one might meditate to while contemplating global domination. Add to the equation a sparkling melody and a shiny pop sheen.

There are downright catchy background vocals on the funk-minded "A Little God In My Hands". A trombone assault closes "Oxygen" like a Duke Ellington show-stopper, and there's guitar intros so rudimentary you could swear you're listening to Grand Funk Railroad strumming chords in search of a song structure. Swans have been infected with rhythm and melody, not to mention rock 'n roll.

It's a welcome change, a bright human element in Gira's bleak worldview where the godless militant sky squashes men like in an old Raid! commercial. Not that Swans have abandoned their metal shield of all things unnatural. The darkness is still visible in long guitar noise of complete chemical breakdown. Weird twisted tribal tongues still bark in the face of established religion. Moments of pure silence are shattered by a deafening assault on the ears. It's just that they've never sounded happier about total devastation.

On the 34-minutes long "Bring The Sun  / Toussaint L' Outerture", Gira sounds positively joyous singing a gripping infectious mantra above a cacophony of fierce guitar waves as if shouting "Ride 'em cowboy!" while straddling a nuclear missile.

In the David Lynch inspired collage "Just A Little Boy (For Chester Burnett)", he channels a cosmic hillbilly sporting a metal plate in his forehead while bleating "I'm just a little boy! I need love!". It's an eerie crawling music full of metallic tinkering and atmospheric hum interrupted by a mocking television laugh track. I envision a human harvesting operation in the Ozarks. The dedication to the great bluesman Burnett ("Howlin' Wolf") may be indicative of both Swans and Burnett employing pounding repetition in their music.

To Be Kind is a mammoth 2-disc recording (Special Edition has 3 discs) with over two hours of poetic, adventurous music. Swans have never sounded so accessible and yet so dark and mysterious. Largely funded by the Swans fan base, the album answers to no one but the delighted mesmerized listener.

Swans just started an extensive American and European tour.


this article was first featured at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-swans-to-be-kind/

Theatre Review: 'The Anastasia Trials in The Court of Women' by Carolyn Gage at Rust Belt Books (Buffalo, NY)

A tiny space in a back room at Rust Belt Books on Allen Street in Buffalo, NY, is the venue for The Brazen Faced Varlet's production of "The Anastasia Trials in The Court of Women" by Carolyn Gage. It is an informal stage to say the least. Just ask the late arrivals who stepped through a door and into the small theatre and found themselves center stage during performance. They promptly sat in chairs that were certainly part of the set design.  A cast member turned to them and rudely said, "you can't sit there - go sit over there", and pointed to the designated seating with all the authority of a traffic cop and without losing a beat of her monologue.


The Varlets, a feminist thespian troupe, were prepared and likely eager for any impromptu minor collision to occur in this reckless comedic tour de force, a play within a play, concerning the trials, both genuine and psychological, of The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikulaevna,  the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Before you envision Ingrid Bergman offering longing haunted looks to a movie camera, know that this Anastasia is a traumatized veiled waif who screams wildly at the mere mention of her history and behaves as though she needs a miracle worker and not a lawyer. She is played by a member of the bickering cast-within-a-cast who are mounting a theatrical production about a courtroom trial in which Anastasia accuses five women of denying her a rightful identity.

The production is falling apart at the seams as the cast bickers over everything and backstage shenanigans ensue. Two top critics are rumored to be attending the night's performance debunking the theory expressed by several of the ensemble that "The patriarchal media never reviews women's theatre!". More theatrical clichés are decked out like vaudevillian vignettes. A young ingénue hopes to steal the spotlight from a seasoned thespian; the playwright adds a new character moments before the curtain rises and informs the cast that she herself will play the role; a stagehand with a phobia of acting is thrust onstage much against her will. It is a recipe for the broadest and possibly blandest of comedy.

Yet this comedy with all its silliness rests assuredly on the historical plight of equality for women and the very genuine sorrow of the raped and murdered Grand Duchess Anastasia and her pathetic imposter who was briefly the toast of the New York City elite in the 1920s. That this "Noises Off" farce could so seriously strike a humanitarian feminist vein in the midst of its outrageous comedy is a credit to its impassioned and energized cast and director, Lara D. Haberberger.

Diane McNamara playing Anastasia's aunt and closest surviving relative embodies the entire fallen Russian empire in gestures of regal hollowness that turn the stage deadly significant however briefly. She offers a surprisingly touching account of her niece's final days. Kelly M. Beuth playing a cussing bag lady friend of Anastasia is as animated as an adrenalin-charged cartoon character, and as wise as theatrical bag ladies will be. The entire cast performs well teetering between loud absurdist comedy and empowered feminist statement.

The audience plays judge and are asked at times to allow an attorney to proceed or be sustained, through the use of little stick women designating yes or no, handed out as the audience enters the theatre. It's a cute gimmick that adds a childlike touch to a strange night of theatre wherein the audience exits with the dubious and possibly schizophrenic understanding that we are all Anastasia, Grand Duchess to the Tsar of Russia.


this article was first featured at http://blogcritics.org/theatre-review-buffalo-ny-the-anastasia-trials-in-the-court-of-women-by-carolyn-gage/

Music Review: Various Artists - 'Punk Goes Christmas'

This is not your father's anarchic punk Christmas..The punks in the new holiday compilation from Fearless Records, Punk Goes Christmas ,are a gentle lot content on cuddling warm embraces under the mistletoe and marveling over Santa's solid gold Cadillac. These punks are tame mainstream rockers with holiday songs more indebted to Brenda Lee than The Sex Pistols.

William Beckett's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" is so void of irony, so traditional, you might as well be listening to Catholic mass. Even Alvin and The Chipmunks probably have a more sparkling rendition of this holiday chestnut.

There are more familiar punk leanings on Man Overboard's snotty "Father Christmas" with a jagged garage guitar backing up a leftist sentiment of an unfair Santa who gives "all the toys to the little rich boys". The song is all about rolling Santa for his money and is about as radical as this music gets.

Issues' "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" (no shortage of uninspired song titles) is catchy radio fare with an aggressive metal vocal grunt merging with a squeaky clean pop vocal track. It's a delectable blend of Top 40 kiddie pop with just a sprinkle of holiday sentiment.

Set It Off's "This Christmas (I'll Burn It To The Ground)" sounds more Halloween than Christmas. It offers a traditional "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" morphing into a Gothic dripping Christmas rampage concerning a can of gasoline. Not only does Grandma get run over by a reindeer, she is  burned alive at the stake.

But mostly these are tame radio friendly songs your Grandmother might tap her foot along to. New Found Glory's "Nothing For Christmas" is an acoustic-strumming, folksy love song about wanting nothing for Christmas because "I got what I needed ... it's you".  The Summer Sets' "This Christmas" is a slick and danceable glitter ball of kiddie techno culture. That is as fine as Top 40 radio gets.

But is this punk? Absolutely not. But it is is a most agreeable grab bag of Christmas candy. These young punks still believe in Santa Claus.


this review was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-various-artists-punk-goes-christmas/

Music Review: Al Kryszak, 'Lullabies For People Who Don't Need Sleep'

Bless the unknown musician who, despite a constant output of musical creation thrown to the wind unheard, continues to burrow through the icy and crowded stream of musical culture with his latest, soon to be unheralded collection of songs.

Al Kryszak, creator and front man of Buffalo-based alt-rock outfit REV, is one such musician. With four full-length REV albums and several classical music and film score releases distributed from his one-man operation,  Kryszak continues to produce and release fiercely independent music that goes largely unheard.

His newest, first alt-rock solo release, Lullabies for People Who Don't Need Sleep is an intricately woven but wildly stitched pattern of acoustic composition adorned with a light arrangement of sparse background collage that support the subtlest, and often sweetest, of melodies.

The lingering melody rises above a low hum and rattle industrial soundscape in the somber "Shadow of A Coal Plant". Kryszak's soft acoustic plucking, and a swirling, decidedly '70s style church organ paint a lovingly polluted blue-grey sky over a dominating, watchful coal plant. It's a sad, nearly resigned protest song set in a post-apocalyptic-like urban wasteland where citizens work their cancer-causing impossible gardens "in the shadow of the coal plant". It is the outstanding track on this album.

The organic acoustic compositions, often adorned with low-key techno arrangements, snake through a jungle of urban and emotional angst that finds modern blight suffocating the artist sadly strumming his guitar at its center.  Album opener "Declare Nothing" is a downcast of anger with overdubbed vocals and altering guitar riffs. It finds the composition of music and its empty reception, a lifestyle where "talking to the mynah bird" is the art of writing a song.

Elsewhere things get a bit more cheery. "The Rock I Came From" is a funky acoustic jam that explores the genre of rock music, or existence itself, as a rapidly disappearing entity where flowers still grow. "Trying To Remember" is a warm slice of dreamy psych music with the slightest detection of an old Neil Diamond guitar chord at its base.

One gets the impression that when Kryszak touches upon a musical nirvana, such as the peaceful plateau he reaches on "Trying To Remember", the field is ripe for further exploration. But he quickly moves up the path, searching for another riff or melody, as if snuffing out any commercial weeds growing in his garden. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. It makes for wildly creative music, but you may want to linger a little longer on the breezy summit of "Trying To Remember", which is just over two minutes long.

Lullabies For People Who Don't Need Sleep is a little rough around the edges. The naked, likely first-take vocals are sometimes harsh, when you know he can sound better, as he does when he supports his own voice with background vocals. It is his choice for the organic sound of the recording, a precious expression of a genuine artist.




this article was first published at: http://blogcritics.org/music-review-al-kryszak-lullabies-for-people-who-dont-need-sleep/

Book Review: 'A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir' by John Grant

Ask the question, "What is film noir?" of film buffs and you'll likely get diverse answers. Ask them "What is neonoir?" and you're liable to start a fight. Passionate arguments abound about what is and isn't film noir, and if the term "neonoir", a term used to describe noir made after around 1960, is a valid genre in the canon of cinema.

 In his humongous volume, A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir (Limelight Editions, 2013), author John Grant defines film noir - a term first coined by French movie critics to describe the wave of American black & white crime movies of the 1940s - as "knowing it when you see it". His complete definition is more thorough and complex, but "knowing it when you see it" is an apt description of this elusive movie genre that most often incorporates shadowy lighting, black & white cinematography, urban settings and crime.

With over 3,250 movie entries listed in encyclopedic fashion, the book is a page-thumbing romp for movie buffs with a passion for noir. The short introductory chapter is an interesting history that finds the genre evolving, not from artistic creativity, but from a limited movie budget which sacrificed elaborate set designs for shadowy rooms narrow in scope. We learn the French coined the term in retrospect, after viewing American films of the 1940s denied to them during the Nazi occupation of WWII.

One man's film noir is another man's detective story, or police procedural, or gangster film. It's a highly subjective categorization that the author admits will find discourse among readers. It is my opinion that Thelma and Louise (1991) does not belong here, while David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006), should have been included. You may disagree or feel validated by several of the author's inclusions.

The listings include production credits, national origin, year of release, and cast. Several obscure foreign film noir are among them. The sometimes brief, sometimes lengthy plot synopsis are often wordy and strictly subjective. I wish the author had omitted his critical analysis of the films in favor of their relation to the genre of noir. The premise of the hard-boiled, white-knuckled paranoid crime thriller D.O.A. (1950), a classic black & white film noir, about a man hunting the killer who gave him a fatal dose of poison, is described as enchanting. It is not. It is mean and raw.

Still, the book is a welcome addition to any film buff's library. It's communicative to the point that you may yell out loud in disagreement. It includes glossy publicity photos of selected films, and selected filmographies of directors, actors and authors.



this article was first published by -
http://blogcritics.org/book-review-a-comprehensive-encyclopedia-of-film-noir-by-john-grant/

Music Review: Tony Joe White, 'Hoodoo'

In 1969, Washington D.C.-based Monument Records released Cajun-blues inspired Tony Joe White's first single - "Polk Salad Annie" - a delectable blend of swamp rock and funky Mississippi Delta Blues, that was immediately likable and addictive, and unlike any other Top 40 record of the era. After 9 months of circulation, the single never broke into the popular charts and was deemed a failure and written off by the record company.

Yet requests for the single trickled in from remote Southern U.S. locales, where White had toured, and a few visionary disc jockeys, recognizing the excellence and hit potential of the record, continued to play it. The unlikely hit single that sang of "poke sallet", a food product of the pokeweed plant known to Southern culture, started to nudge up the charts and didn't stop its ascension until it reached #8 on Billboard's Hot 100.

Here's hoping it doesn't take blues music fans as long to find Tony Joe White's new album, Hoodoo (Yep Roc Records), as long as it took record fans to find "Polk Salad Annie". At 70 years old, the songwriter of one of the most beloved blues songs to ever hit the popular charts - "Rainy Night in Georgia" - has released a low-key and stunning guitar driven blues record featuring a low and thumping bass line sure to fondle the beat of your blues hungry heart and shake the beer in your glass.

The blend of instruments - guitars, thumping bass, a touch of harmonica and keyboards - have such an organic and impromptu sound it is no wonder White boasts that much of the record was recorded live to tape on first takes. It sounds like a flawless live performance. White's fluid sliding guitars merges seamlessly with Steve Forrest's bottom-feeding bass and Bryan Owen's steady percussion, to create a simple but atmospheric and seductive blues music.

The autobiographical songs of hungry life in the rural South are heartfelt testimonies from a master of Blues philosophy. "Alligator, Mississippi", with its chugging chainsaw guitar, has all the muscle and drive of an alligator wrestling its dinner. "Gypsy Epilogue" fuses the dying embers of a gypsy campfire with a reverberating slide guitar adorning the sentimental philosophy - "can't eavesdrop on the future, can't dance with the past".

The most striking songs are eyewitness accounts of natural disasters so familiar to the people of the deeply southern U.S. The cyclic familial narrative of "Storm's Comin'" invokes a warm bond as White's patriarchal, controlled voice sings with just a measure of desperation - "Kids get up, get your clothes on, storm's comin'". The catastrophic 2010 Nashville floods are documented in "The Flood", where a higher ground vantage point reveals an unrecognizable Nashville with "guitars floating down the river and drum sets washed up on the road". These storm-themed songs come from a voice that has experienced and a respect for the ravages of nature.

Listening to White is like listening to the elder father at the family supper table, who holds you spellbound with tales of storms, lovers and family bonds. He grips the listener in a warm cocoon of fascination while never abandoning a rich and rowdy blues spirit. Hoodoo is a splendid blues album, maybe the best we'll hear all year.


this article was first published by the author at: http://blogcritics.org/music-review-tony-joe-white-hoodoo/

Book Review: 'Roger Waters, The Man Behind The Wall' by Dave Thompson

This biography, by renowned rock 'n roll scribe Dave Thompson, (frequent Rolling Stone magazine writer and author of the Kurt Cobain bio Never Fade Away) says as much about Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, as it does about his flagship rock band. It paints a cheery if psychedelic picture of the burgeoning progressive rock music scene of 1960s England, and examines, with blissful scrutiny, the in-studio and behind-the-scenes history of Pink Floyd's legendary albums and concerts.

The late and tragic Syd Barrett, one-time leader and co-founder of Pink Floyd, is given just enough biographical detail to emerge as a genuine human being and artist, as opposed to the impossible mythological demigod history has made of him.

While encompassing decades of the ascent of rock 'n roll as a true art form,  and name-checking nearly every major musician of the era, the book is still an expose on Roger Waters, the quiet musician and writer who rose through the ranks of Pink Floyd to become its unlikely leader and spokesperson following the exile of Syd Barrett. It traces his subsequent divorce from his band mates, (and his wives) and his confident attempt to be recognized as a solo artist, while the mammoth dinosaur Pink Floyd lay in broken bones around him.

The book is a treasure trove for a Floydian, the musical equivalent of a Trekkie.  While Thompson writes at an arm's length away from his subject, with no one-on-one interviews or correspondence with Waters, his insight into the music of Floyd, and his exhaustive research of the era including interviews with those closest to Waters, makes for a thoroughly engaging and often amusing read. When the famous Pink Floyd prop, a giant inflatable pig for the promotion of the Animals album, escaped from its mooring and floated off into the sky, Thomspson assumes the point of view of an pub patron stepping out the door, looking up to the sky, and seeing a giant pig floating by.


Pink Floyd's opus The Wall, a monumental album that crowned Pink Floyd's tremendous body of work late in their career, and forced The Grammy Awards people to nominate a progressive and unlikely rock music for Album of The Year,  is the theme the book revolves around. It covers the album's transfiguration into a movie version (a colossal dud I thought), it's impact on popular culture (The Berlin Wall came tumbling down), and Waters' seemingly endless live touring of The Wall which has been making the rounds of the globe for the last three years.

But it's the more detailed and intricate nuggets of Pink Floyd history that makes this book one of the finest rock 'n roll bios I have ever read. While Waters is no more "in the flesh" than he ever was after reading this, I have a deeper appreciation for his life and work. Specifically, the Wall-related loss of his father in WWII, before he was born, and the influence it had on his art. And I won't soon forget Thompson's description of a drugged-up, wild-eyed Syd Barrett playing his last gig with Pink Floyd at dawn in an English park.

And now I have an insatiable urge to listen to The Dark Side of The Moon for the millionth time.


this article was first published by the author at: http://blogcritics.org/book-review-roger-waters-the-man-behind-the-wall-by-dave-thompson-2/

Movie Review - 'Blackfish'

The orca that killed veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010 before a packed horrified audience was an aggressive individual that had killed twice before and would likely kill again. So says the documentary Blackfish, a movie that examines the danger involved with domesticating orcas for circus-like entertainment at places like SeaWorld.

We all remember the tragic incident in Orlando. Initial reports stated trainer Brancheau was pulled by the whale or fell into the water when the aquatic matinee star, the killer whale Tilikum, dragged her under effectively drowning her. SeaWorld claimed Brancheau's pony-tail style hair was to blame, having gotten caught in the whale's teeth, an explanation echoed by local law enforcement. The whale was simply playing and unintentionally drowned her.

Blackfish disputes that explanation and rightfully so. SeaWorld's passive denunciation of the tragedy, modified several times since, is in bold denial of the facts. Brancheau's autopsy revealed she was attacked, thrashed about, and scalped. Her left arm was torn off. Witnesses say it was eaten by the whale. She suffered a lacerated liver and broken ribs. If not for the outcry of the unfortunate viewing public who witnessed the matinee show at SeaWorld, we may still be believing a whale of a tale.

Tilikum had killed twice before. In 1991 trainer Keltie Byrne was killed at Sealand of The Pacific in British Columbia when she entered the whale pool, and was tossed from mouth to mouth by Tilikum and two other trained whales. The official cause of death was drowning. Witnesses described a horrible death. The negative publicity from the tragedy forced Sealand, which was more a roadside attraction than an amusement park, to close. They sold Tilikum to SeaWorld who intended to use him as a breeding male.

In 1999 27 year-old David P. Dukes sneaked into Tilikum's pool and was found naked and dead the next morning draped to the whale's back. He had wounds and bite marks on his body and his genitals were bitten or pulled off.  Details of this incident are unclear with accusations that SeaWorld must have video surveillance of this attack which they claim they do not. SeaWorld's public spin on this tragedy suggested it looked like the whale had tried to save Dukes from drowning by putting him on its back. Believe!

Tilikum still performs at SeaWorld in Orlando to this day, although he now swims alone. While the documentary attempts to depict him as an aggressive individual who is spawning countless dangerous baby killer whales - a rather alarmist sci-fi notion - one suspects it is the breed itself and not some individuals who are a threat to their trainers. Director Gabriella Cowperthwaite notes there is not a single documented case of a killer whale killing a human in the wild. These tragedies occur only in captivity.

The film conveys the absurdity of capturing and training these magnificent beasts and then joining them in the water as if they are an air blown aquatic toy to be ridden on like a horse. Grainy video from old TV news reports, and colorful vistas from SeaWorld's promotional advertising, that depicts parents playfully placing their child on the head of the orca, are coupled with the very dark edited footage of the tragic events. The most compelling footage is the near death of trainer Ken Peters, who was dragged down by his foot to the bottom of the whale tank, held underwater, brought back to the surface and dragged down again. The entire incident, well known and immortalized on YouTube, lasted nine heart pounding minutes.

The movie is an aggressive and impelling argument against the capturing and compounding of killer whales. SeaWorld is depicted as an uncaring contemptuous multi-million corporation hiding behind a veil of ecological righteousness in their claim of promoting awareness and activism of marine wildlife. As a result of the death of Dawn Brancheau, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has made it mandatory that a physical barrier must be placed between the trainers and the killer whales. SeaWorld is appealing that decision.

Blackfish, which is a native-American word for killer whale, made its premier at The Sundance Film Festival and is currently in mass distribution by Magnolia Pictures.


this article was first published by the author at http://blogcritics.org/movie-review-blackfish/

Music Review: Sly and The Family Stone, "Higher!"

When record executives pressured Sly Stone into producing a hit single in 1968, mainstream audiences were rewarded with a new infusion of pop music - psychedelic soul. This new rock-infused genre of music, bending the beats of the old Motown sound with its reverberating guitar, druggy sound effects, and socially conscious lyrics, would become the blueprint many soul music acts would follow after Sly and The Family Stone's sudden popularity.

Sly and The Family Stone already had one critically acclaimed but low selling album under its belt -  1967's A Whole New Thing, but Epic Records, and particularly legendary company president Clive Davis, knew that composer and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone was capable of much more.  Reluctantly Sly Stone went into the studio with his band of family and friends and did exactly what was asked. He produced a single that would appeal to the mass record-buying public.

Although the band wasn't particularly proud or happy with the recording, "Dance To The Music" rose to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a big global hit record. Strictly designed for public consumption, the record was still a delicious blast of infectious drum beats, blazing trumpets, hot guitar licks, and a bass line so low and deep, it threatened to blow the batteries out of the tiny transistor radios it played on. Horn player Cynthia Robinson's raw and demanding vocal to "Get up and dance to the music!" lent an electrifying radical edge.

There was a collective dropped jaw as Sly and The Family Stone then showed up on American TV and viewers witnessed the first multi-racial, multi-gender popular recording act. They looked as if they had just beamed in from another planet. Sly Stone, wearing psychedelic sunglasses in a shirtless vest with gold chains and a towering Afro haircut, and Rose Stone, sporting a remarkably unnatural platinum blonde wig, were just a few of the fashion and cultural statements Sly and Family revealed as they crashed into American living rooms.

With the release of Higher! a 77-track 4-CD package that chronicles the history of the band, listeners can trace the evolution of black popular music from '60s Motown (The Supremes, The Temptations) to the emergence of funk (Parliament/Funkadelic), which opened the door to a host of expressionist styles of music including Afro-punk. Sly and Family's hit records ushered James Brown's "funk" into the popular record charts.

The CDs offer 17 previously unreleased tracks, two of which - live versions of "Stand!" and "You Can Make It If You Try" - unfortunately sacrifice the original studio versions. Also missing is the deep funk meditation of "Africa Talks To You" from There's A Riot Going On, an essential track in my opinion. This major fan would have loved to see the Sly Stone-produced Little Sister records included here, but I suppose record executives would remind us you can't have everything in one package. There is still a bounty of music here including several early Sly Stone solo recordings.

The hits are wonderful to hear again -  "Hot Fun In The Summertime", "Everyday People", "Family Affair" "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" - all possess a timeless immediacy,  sounding as fresh as the day they were released. The early less commercial recordings reveals a gritty, urban sound that certainly inspired Marvin Gaye to evolve from a crooner to a visionary.

Higher! comes with a 104 page booklet with rare photos and other memorabilia. Amazon.com is offering an exclusive 8 LP - 1 CD version of the release.

this article was first published by me at http://blogcritics.org/music-review-sly-and-the-family-stone-higher-four-cd-box-set/