Rick Berlin
http://www.emusic.com/album/10816/10816492.html
Pousette Dart Never Enough
http://www.emusic.com/album/10788/10788101.html
Upcoming Reviews on AMG January 8, 2005
Frank Sinatra Show with Ella Fitzgeraldhttp://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:08qog4gxtv1z
89 Live In Japan Quiet Riot
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:8wabqj7eojka
Spencer Davis Live In Manchester 2002
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:1jdjvwpwa9tk
Genius Of Lady Day Billie Holiday
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:igae4j177wav
The Legendary Nat King Cole
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:71q67ul040jd
IS IT LIVE OR IS IT MEMOREX???
O.J.'s Bastard Daughter: Ramblings about the Music Biz
by Rock Journalist Joe Viglione
Laurence Fishburne continues to ask us the burning question "What is real?"- or as the Architect in Matrix II might say "...Concordantly, while your first question maybe the most pertinent you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant. ...
That revision of the age-old query - "Is it Live or is it Memorex?"
Watching Ashlee on the web (my, how the world has changed from Madonna on MTV!) - "La La" and "Shadow" - this writer finds her a tolerable creation - vocals with enough soup on them to pair her with Marilyn Manson at some point in time - like Liza Minelli showing up on an Alice Cooper album, the alleged "culture clash" is no clash at all, it's just the fame game - if you got a name, we'll slap you on the disc. On "Pieces of Me" she looks like Courtney Hole's little sister with an unholy concoction of Three Dog Night when they covered a Dave Loggins tune back in 1972 meets Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner". It really does sound like "Pieces Of April" with the "Tom's Diner" melody - Sue, Suzanne, Sue!
Back to what is pertinent: Ashlee Simpson gets booed at Halftime - see this Orange Bowl clip:
http://www.comcast.net/providers/fan/popup2.html?v=25751911&pl=25268692.xml&config=/providers/fan/config/music.xml
She is just so awful awful awful! Has it really come down to this? Bobby Sherman may have annoyed us in his younger days, but now he's a sheer delight to watch onstage - and the songs have punch. But can you see Ashlee Simpson prancing out on stage in her 50s and 60s? To what - the booing of the Orange Bowl performance onscreen behind her?
What about taking care of artists that matter, artists who have creative genius? Has the music industry morphed into a cereal manufacturer? -now there's a rhetorical question - as long as the Wheaties and Led Zeppelin are on the grocery shelves, consumers ARE George Romero's creatures in "Dawn Of The Dead".
=========================================================================
That old adage "any press is good press" seems to have gone by the wayside after O.J. Simpson's knife cut through his ex-wife and some alleged gay guy - hey - I personally think O.J.'s son did it, which would almost make O.J. a hero except for those 911 tapes...Ashlee imploded on Saturday Night Live, and paid the consequences at the Orange Bowl - because at the Orange Bowl her voice is horrifying, and not the tolerable entity it is on her recordings.
...as this story is being written Jessica Simpson suddenly pops up on the video under this e mail (technology is so amazing!) doing Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun! Disco wizard Giorgio Moroder must be pleased (did you know that Martha Davis and The Motels actually cut the demo! - and was it really 1986 when Tom Cruise swept himself and Berlin into the mainstream consciousness - "I'll be your wingman, anytime" - a gayer movie was never spawned - so sayeth "homoeroticism.com) --- I mean we have to digress - some webpages blow Ashlee and Jessica off the map, check out Television City without Pity:
\http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=518801&st=45
ICE: I guess I owe you one.
MAVERICK: You don't owe me anything. We're on the same team.
ICE: You saved our lives. You did it!
MAVERICK: We did it.
ICE: You're a hell of a flyer. You can be my wingman any time.
MAVERICK: No. You can be mine!
ICE: Whatever you say, Commander.
Take my breath away indeed. ;)
I'm happy to report that Smallville's glorious S1 is currently running in Germany - sponsored by some body care company. They inform you in big & bold letters right before and after the show that Smallville is "a man's business". Coincidence? I hope not.
========================================================================== I did NOT write the above - call me late for dinner but don't call me Globe's resident plagiarist Jeff Jacoby - do a google on "I'll be your wingman anytime" - it ain't only me! That really "grabbed" people - and with a friend named "Goose"...oh well...
Now the web is spinning Britney Spears doing Bobby Brown, "MyPrerogative", so I guess we'll have to get back on track - what is real? And was that really 1989 - GAWWWDDDDD we're all getting so much ... wiser! The older the grape, the sweeter the wine... Britney's "Toxic" is justdownright annoying - melodies and electronic drums with visuals - what has happened to music like I heard Julie Devereaux on WROR spinning yesterday at noontime or so - (well she's not actually SPINNING the stuff, I think a computer touches the discs now, come to think of it...) Carole King singing "So Far Away" and Rod Stewart with "You Wear It Well" - which he allegedly wrote for Jo Jo Laine. Rod asked me what I thought of his set one night after a Tweeter Center gig - "Rod, you know I ADORE your old stuff" - skirting the question - and he laughingly said "Joe, I can't play for you and the 20 other critics in the audience" - so I handed him a copy of Jo Jo Laine's "I'm Into Something Good", a cover of Herman's Hermits that Jimmy Miller & I conjured up.
We were at the Four Seasons with Jo Jo (he was cool enough to go out and play soccer with her son the next day - the son that was conceived about two months after Jo Jo exited from Rod (or vice versa) and moved on to Denny Laine from Wings (Wingman, anytime?). Rod said "He has my shoe size!" Jo Jo replied "But of course!" I said "Laine is Denny's kid".Jo Jo said - "you're right, but with all the money Alana (Hamilton)'s getting..." Good old Jo Jo - always going for the gold.
THERE ARE NO PUBLISHING COMPANIES OUT THERE DOING THEIR JOB!
This regurgitation is not as much fun as retro! Would you rather hear a cover of "My Prerogative" or Britney Spears tackling "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night"...hmmm, on second thought, let them rip the disco/funk stuff all they want, leave sacred territory alone!
To be continued
Joe Vig First Impressions 1:25 PM day before David Presley's birthday.
An Elvis Bowie Production
Willie Loco on 971zht!
http://www.971zht.com/iplaylist/album/554504/
Loco Live 1976
Willie Alexander & The Boom Boom Band Released 2001 on
Captain Trip
Available on: CD
Willie "Loco" Alexander
Main Performer
Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band signed a three-album deal with producer Craig Leon and MCA records back in the '70s, but the group imploded after tracking just two albums which failed to capture their magic. Decades later, the Tokyo-based Captain Trip records has seen fit to issue this single CD, which includes portions of two live shows and a bonus 45 rpm. It achieves what the major-label releases did not. The CD begins with material engineered by Jesse Henderson at Boston's notorious nightspot the Rat on August 27, 1976, exactly one month before the recordings this band made for the Live at the Rat album (September 27, 28, and 29 with Jesse Henderson as well). "Pup Tune," "At the Rat," and "Kerouac" sound much clearer on this CD, a better mix than what was released on the legendary double LP from the nightclub, and three more songs to boot. The performances are excellent. Eight additional titles were recorded in May of 1976 at the Club in Cambridge by Erik Lindgren of the band Moving Parts. Dramatically different than the Rat recordings, this earlier tape is muddier -- bootleg quality, but that doesn't stop the power from seeping through. These are historic concert tapes of the band performing "For Old Time's Sake" (aka "Cause I'm Taking You to Bed"), "Garbage Man," and a rare live version of "Gin," the single that landed Willie Alexander his post-MCA deal with New Rose/RCA in Europe. The woman in the audience talking at the prelude of "Garbage Man" is totally annoying, and it is a sin marring what is a fine performance. This is a slow, very nasty version of the sexual escapade that is "Garbage Man" -- as close to the sound of Alexander's former group, the Velvet Underground, as the Boom Boom Band cared to get. This song, along with "Dirty Eddie," caused much controversy in the "Loco" camp. Reportedly, the band became afraid of letting Alexander be Alexander on MCA, but the whole reason they got signed was because of his ability to write great ock & roll with no inhibitions. Hearing this CD will thrill as well as infuriate the devoted followers of Willie Loco because it preserves the power of his performance, and proves that producer Craig Leon and the members of the Boom Boom Band should've just let loose in the studio and allowed the artist the opportunity to do what he does best. The demos that secured the deal with MCA were brilliant, and there was no need to re-record them except in a live setting. "Mass. Ave." is an all-out rocker on this CD, the May performance one of the Boom Boom Band's earlier shows boasting a raw energy and enthusiasm resulting in total artistic expression. "Rock 'n' Roll Lick #76," a masterpiece of song construction, is sublime and, along with "Rhythm a Baby," reveal how cohesive and extraordinary this ensemble was. People say that Barry & the Remains were a live phenomenon which studio recordings failed to capture. That could be said of the Boom Boom Band as well. However, this disc, and the long out-of-print Sperm Bank Babies live radio broadcast from 1976, are able to set the record straight. This is primal Willie "Loco" Alexander with his Boom Boom Band before the politics and the recording industry did a number on them. What it lacks in production is more than made up for with the spirit and energy that sizzle in these CD grooves. The two bonus tracks at the end were released on Somor records and are outtakes from the MCA sessions recorded by Craig Leon. "Dirty Eddie" was perhaps the finest single tune produced for MCA and was rejected for being "too dirty." The band, the label, management, and the producer attempted to "refine" Willie Alexander, and in doing so, stifled him and derailed their gravy train. "She Wanted Me (Nazi Nola)," a live eggae track recorded in the studio, is completely raunchy, and half trying, obliterates the other recordings that were released on the two MCA Boom Boom Band albums. France and Japan revere Willie Loco Alexander for the genius that he is, and this album, despite the jarring caused by the three different tape sources, is very powerful and lots of fun. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
