Jennifer Review by Joe Viglione
With a plethora of producers over the years – including Martin Cooper, Al Capps, Stewart Levine, Rob Fraboni, Jim Ed Norman, Val Garay, and Jim Price – it is this obscure album produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale that captures a very special moment for Jennifer Warnes. A beautiful faded cover photo with the word "Jennifer" floating across the top, this album stands as landmark interpretation by the artist, and a production for Cale as important as his first album for the Modern Lovers. Don't expect the sound to be anything like the quagmire of Velvetsonics that Cale allowed the legendary members of Jonathan Richman's band to create. This is a pure pop album. "Needle and Thread" is a replica of what Motown producer Frank Wilson was doing exactly at this moment in time with the new Supremes, and "Be My Friend" is Diana Ross from this same period, by way of songwriter Paul Rodgers from Free. As A&R for Warner Bros.

Man, does this set go down easy big easy! This gorgeous set features over 80 hits from New Orleans' most famous-and occasionally obscure-musical sons and daughters, 4 CDs of jazz, blues, Cajun, zydeco and funk all mixed together like a good 'n' spicy gumbo. An 84-page book takes you by the hand into the most notorious bars and restaurants as you listen to such Crescent City classics as Iko Iko Dr. John; Potato Head Blues Louis Armstrong; You Can Have My Husband Irma Thomas; I'm Walkin' Fats Domino; Let the Good Times Roll Shirley & Lee; Mother-in-Law Ernie K-Doe; Release Me Johnny Adams; Jambalaya Clifton Chenier; St. James Infirmary Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Hey Pocky A-Way Meters; Tell It Like It Is Aaron Neville; I Hear You Knocking Smiley Lewis; Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette) Benny Spellman; Tipitina Professor Longhair, and more.

Myrna Joy "Jody" Miller (November 29, 1941 – October 6, 2022) was an American singer, who had commercial success in the genres of country, folk and pop. She was the second female artist to win a country music accolade from the Grammy Awards, which came off the success of her 1965 song "Queen of the House". By blending multiple genres together, Miller's music was considered influential for other music artists.

The Fugees translated an intriguing blend of jazz-rap, R&B, and reggae into huge success during the mid-'90s, when the trio's sophomore album The Score hit number one on the pop charts and sold over five million copies. The trio formed in the late '80s in the New Jersey area, where Lauryn Hill and Prakazrel Michel ("Pras") attended a local high school and began working together. Michel's cousin Wyclef Jean ("Clef") joined the group (then called the Tranzlator Crew), and the trio signed to Ruffhouse/Columbia in 1993. After renaming themselves the Fugees (a term of derision, short for refugees, which was usually used to describe Haitian immigrants). Though the group's debut album, Blunted on Reality, was quite solid, it reflected a prevailing gangsta stance that may have been forced by the record label. Presents the Carnival No matter how pigeonholed the Fugees may have sounded on their debut, the group had obviously asserted their control by the time of their second album, The Score. With just as much intelligence as their jazz-rap forebears, the trio also worked with surprisingly straight-ahead R&B on the soulful "Killing Me Softly With His Song," sung by Lauryn Hill. Elsewhere, Clef and Pras sampled doo wop and covered Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry," giving the record familiarity for the commercial mainstream, but keeping it real with insightful commentary on their urban surroundings. The Score became one of the surprise hits of 1996, reaching number one on the pop charts and making the Fugees one of the most visible rap groups around the world.

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Thomas had this to say about recording with the Ike & Tina Revue: “I’ll tell you some strange stuff. I’ll tell you why you get confused with this stuff. Everybody gets confused. Look … Ike was a wheeler-dealer when it came to … I mean he knew how to juggle. In them days people like myself … in the organisation … we were just young, only Ike knew what was going on. And Ike would make masters and masters of other masters and wheel and deal and change names around and stuff … like, I wrote two or three Ikettes songs that sold pretty good and Ike stuck his name on ’em and stuff like that. Because he said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, I got the publishing company so the money’ll come’ … you don’t know until later on, a few years later you learn better and you do it different. But, yeah, he sold a lot of masters more than one time. He re-recorded songs, you know, new masters of various songs. That’s why you see things on various labels, same song by a different name … We would be on the road, we did a lot of recording down in New Orleans, Cosimo’s studio … Whatever city we’d be in, we was always touring, we’d do some recording usually. Lay down some tracks. Odd places, population twenty and stuff like that. If there was a studio there and we was in town, Ike got some ideas, even if they ain’t new ideas, just re-record what we did last year, you know, whatever …”

10 from 6 is a compilation album released by British supergroup Bad Company in December 1985 on Atlantic Records label. All the songs on the album were previously released on Swan Song Records, a record label begun by Led Zeppelin in 1974. 10 From 6 means ten songs from six albums – namely, Bad Company's first six records, all of which were big hits on album-oriented rock radio. This brief yet very effective collection gathers all of the group's best-known songs ("Can't Get Enough," "Feel Like Makin' Love," "Shooting Star," "Bad Company," "Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy," "Ready for Love") in one place. Although most album-oriented hard rock acts are better heard on the original albums, Bad Company's records tended to be more uneven than those of their peers, making 10 From 6 a valuable collection for the group's casual fans, who will want to bypass the cluttered studio albums and just get the cream of the crop.

Pop radio in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a delightfully diverse thing. Tune in your transistor to your local Top 40 station and you’d hear everything from easy listening to acid rock. But lost amidst the mythology of that tempestuous time are dozens of sweet, catchy, lightning-in-a-bottle hit records – we call them “Sugar Pop.” Many of these artists scaled the upper reaches of the charts and were never heard from again. But, one-hit wonders or not, these are some finest records of their era – and we’ve rescued them from obscurity and polished them to a fine-sounding gleam for the latest installment of Hard To Find 45s On CD.

"Of all David Bowie's many distinctive personae, none have done more to lodge this most ingenious of British artists in the world's consciousness than his 1972 amalgam of the alien visitor and Christ-like rock star: Ziggy Stardust. Cheap glamour, spacemen and ambiguous sexuality surface throughout the loosely conceptualised collection that is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. If its premise sounds faintly ludicrous, then inspired and dramatic songs such as "Starman" and "Five Years" dispel all doubts about Bowie's genius, and the theatrically tragic "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" brings the album and it's fictional protagonist to a close. As a cultural and musical signpost, Ziggy Stardust points simultaneously backwards to early rock & roll and forward to the simpler, tougher inclinations of late-1970s punk and New Wave rock. As one of the defining rock albums of the 20th century, its influence is immeasurable."

Terry Riley would certainly bristle at the idea of there being a "definitive" version of In C, since it was created with the intention of having an infinite number interpretive possibilities, but this version, a reissue of the original Columbia recording, led by the composer, has a certain authority since it was the means by which the piece was introduced to a broad public and it paved the way for the biggest revolution in classical composition in the second half of the twentieth century. It has the hallmarks that came to define musical minimalism: triadic harmony, a slow rate of harmonic change, a steady pulse, and the use of repetitive patterns. In this performance, it has a shiny, almost metallic brightness and a visceral energy that immediately set it apart from the intellectually rigorous and austere trends in the new music establishment of the 1960s.

Cold Chisel opened the '80s with their most widely accepted and artfully constructed album, East. Following it up was a tall order for the Aussie quintet, but they did the trick admirably with Circus Animals. (A live album, Swingshift, was released in the period between the two studio discs.) A ten-song stew of the band's signature guitar-and-piano-driven ballads and rockers, it further confirmed Chisel's depth and breadth as a creative unit. From the outset of Circus Animals, the boys come crashing in through the window like a bunch of rowdies with hell-raising on their minds, cranking out the guitar rock rottweiler "You Got Nothing I Want." Singer Jimmy Barnes' wrote the song about the frustration of a recently completed U.S. tour that had imploded ingloriously. As he belts out the number, Barnes' voice sounds like a buzz saw blade that's flown loose and ripped through a bunch of parked cars.

Ce CD fait découvrir trois motets à grand choeur du compositeur méridionnal Antoine-Esprit Blanchard, dont deux en première mondiale. Ces grandes pièces, tout à la fois empreintes de noblesse et de théâtralité, alternant faste des chœurs et intimité des récits, donnent un aperçu fidèle de la musique pratiquée et appréciée à la chapelle de Louis XV, dans la tradition du grand motet français instaurée par Louis XIV.

In the annals of rock music, there are few singers who have such an expressive voice as Dan McCafferty. As the charismatic frontman of the Scottish band Nazareth, McCafferty has been involved in more than 25 albums, released hits such as 'Love Hurts', 'Dream On', 'This Flight Tonight' and 'Morning Dew' and toured all over the world. After a unique career of 50 years, Dan McCafferty passed away on November 8, 2022 at the age of 76. His name will be remembered, his great songs will continue to be played on countless rock radio stations around the world. Undiscovered musical treasures were kept in McCafferty's private home archives. Some of them can now be found on the posthumous homage: 'No Turning Back - In Memory of Dan McCafferty'.

Funky studio grooves from Italy – pulled from one of the few sound library sources that the grooveheads still haven't plundered! The folks at Plastic put this one together with the same sort of funky bent as their legendary Stroboscopica sets – and the handsome packages features 16 groovers with a mix of jazz and funky soundtrack styles. Tracks include "Battereologistica" by Turicoli, "Notturno" by Ugo Fusco, "Presse" by Francesco Tamponi, "Ritorsione" by Girolamo Ugolini, "Vocal 700" by Romano Rizzati, "Parco Dei Principi" by Luigia Sordini, and "Industraialey" by Carmelo Giacchino. © 1996-2024, Dusty Groove, Inc.

With the latest installment of our ''Hard-To-Find 45's on CD'' series, Eric Records tackles a broad topic - love songs. After all, most songs are love songs - all about wanting it, finding it, losing it, and every step in between. And, we've got that covered, from John Denver's heartfelt tribute to his wife, ''Annie's Song,'' to Ronnie Dyson's frank discussion of bedroom politics, ''(If You Let Me Make Love To You Then) Why Can't I Touch You?''

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.