The High Violets - 44 Down

Shoegazing time! The High Violets make that dreamy, swirly, turn-on-the-fog-machines kind of shoegazing music that I like so much. Check out the title track, 44 Down and Wheel.

P.S. If you like this kind of music, check out The Flir, too.

Glen Campbell - All the Best

If you weren't around in the late sixties and early seventies, if you know of Glen Campbell at all it is probably from his DUI arrest last year or his Behind the Music episode. It may be hard to believe (or remember) but once upon a time Glen Campbell was HUGE. When he hit Los Angeles in the early sixties he quickly made a name for himself as a hot session guitarist. Later that decade his solo career took off in a big way and Glen carved his niche as a country/pop crossover. He had his own television variety show and starred alongside John Wayne in True Grit. Along the way, of course, he made some great music. None greater to me than Wichita Lineman, which easily holds up almost 35 years later. His troubles with alcohol over the years makes one listen to Rhinestone Cowboy a lot differently these days. It was just irritating way back when (HUGE hit) but hearing "...a smile can hide all the pain..." today makes me pause.

Placebo - Sleeping With Ghosts

If had to describe Placebo's album Sleeping With Ghosts in one sentence, it would be, "Pop meets goth, sung by the Pet Shop Boys." A pretty mellow album (don't let the opener, Bulletproof Cupid, fool you). Even the upbeat numbers, like The Bitter End, have a slow melancholy to them. The title track, Sleeping With Ghosts, is my favorite.

The Rebel Pebbles - Girls Talk

I suppose I'm a fan of girl groups. The Go-Go's, The Bangles, The Pandoras, L7, Heart (yeah, yeah, I know they don't count but still...). The thing is, though, I don't really think of them as girl groups. I know there are women in the groups and all but I tend think of them as just bands. The Rebel Pebbles, on the other hand, I do think of them as a girl group. Girls Talk came out in 1991 and I had never heard of it until a month ago (it came out during the KNAC years so I wasn't hearing a lot of non-metal at the time, I suspect). Anyway, it's not a bad album (way out of print but you can find it used for cheap--I did). Sure there are some clunkers (did 1991 really need a song called Groovy Love?) but it also has a few gems like How Do You Feel and the way-too-cute Eskimo and Butterfly. I have to mention Anthony's Attic, a song about--I kid you not--how sexy intelligent men can be (it manages to be both sexy and weird at the same time). The band (with ex-Pandoras drummer Karen Blankfeld playing guitar) released their one album and sort of disintegrated (on-the-road stress, etc. though the impending Nirvana tsunami might have had something to do with it). I figure I'm not the only fan of girl groups that had not heard of them, so I submit for your approval: The Rebel Pebbles.

Joey DeFrancesco - Incredible!

Did you know that there is a sub-genre of jazz that features the mighty Hammond B-3 organ? You did? Oh. Sorry but everything I know about jazz I learned from Ken Burns. Incredible! features present-day jazz organ wizard Joey DeFrancesco with a special guest, jazz organ pioneer Jimmy Smith. Now I can't tell good jazz from bad but I can tell you that if you're a fan of the Hammond (favored by Keith Emerson, Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman, and so many others in the rock world) you will want to give this a listen. Joey and Jimmy team up for two medleys on the album. Check out the first and the second. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to investigate some Bernie Worrell...

Celldweller - Celldweller

This is an interesting one. Celldweller starts off with Switchback, a catchy-as-heck techno rocker. Great beat and you can dance to it or bang your head to it. With such a catchy opener, you would expect more of the same...and you would be wrong. This album is all over the place. Rock. Techno. Mellow ditties like Welcome to the End. I wonder if people attracted to the rock will be put off by the techno and vice-versa. Best not to think too much about that and, instead, just listen to the music. With Celldweller able to make such a rocking single they can't help but become more popular.

Ennio Morricone - MondoMorricone

Ennio Morricone: the man, the myth, the legend. Regular readers are going to become familiar with him, if they are not already. Most of you should at least be familiar with his work on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and The Mission. He is so prolific (there is no exact count of the several hundred scores he has written) that there are more compilations of his work than most composers have original albums. The MondoMorricone series (MondoMorricone, More MondoMorricone, Molto MondoMorricone) is one of the more unique collections. It gathers some of Il Maestro's groovier pieces from movies of the late sixties and early seventies. Not much you'd want to dance to at an Austin Powers-themed party (see if you can dance to Alla Luce Del Giorno) but you could play all three albums in your swingin' bachelor pad while you entertain that far out chick of yours (dig on Giocoso, Gioioso, baby). A fine addition to the collection of any Enniophile or someone who appreciates the groovier things in life.

Praxis - Live at the Bonnaroo 2004 Music Festival

I was recently exploring the world of live recordings and I came across The Bonnaroo 2004 Music Festival, which was held this past June in Tennessee. The usual suspects were there (String Cheese Incident, The Dead, Trey Anastasio) (actually, to be fair, there were a lot of interesting acts at the festival) but what caught my eye was an appearance by the mighty Praxis. Praxis, for those of you who don't know, play a sort of fusion. However, whereas fusion is usually a cross between jazz and rock, Praxis are more of a cross between jazz, speed metal, and space aliens. This version of Praxis is pretty much the original lineup, Buckethead, Bernie Worrell, and Brain, with Bill Laswell filling in for Bootsy on bass. They even throw in guest Lili Haydn for a few numbers. The great thing about this Bonnarroo Festival is that they are making recordings of the performances available for download. They're not free but what I paid for a 2 1/2 hour Praxis performance was pretty darned reasonable. You get a choice of downloading MP3s or uncompressed FLACs. I am really happy to see things like this (Metallica's Live Metallica, the Instant Live site, etc.) starting to take off. Check out Vertebrae and Machine Gun to get a taste.

2020 UPDATE: Praxis later released the album Tennessee, which is this recording.

Rush - Feedback

Once upon a time, probably before you were born, the band Rush rocked. No, really. They have matured into a band that's more mellow than those early days, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Their latest album/mini-album/EP (it clocks in at 27 minutes--call it whatever you want) is a bit of a return to their rocking roots. On the occasion of the trio's thirtieth anniversary together, they've stripped things down and covered some songs from their teenage years (read: the sixties). The result is Feedback. While you're not going to hear a patented Geddy Lee shriek anymore (lest there be any confusion, I liked the shriek), you do get to hear the band rock more than usual. My favorites are the Yardbirds covers they have chosen: Heart Full of Soul and Shapes of Things. Only time will tell if the looseness will spill over to future albums.

The Gathering - Sleepy Buildings

I have been a fan of Lacuna Coil for a few years so I was aware of The Gathering. People on the LC mailing list, Amazon.com, etc. were recommending The Gathering if you liked LC. I gave them a listen but I wasn't impressed so I didn't pursue them. Fast forward to a few months ago and an MP3 from their (then) upcoming live album is posted on the web. I give them another try and this time I am interested. That album, Sleepy Buildings, is released, I pick it up, and now I am very interested. This recording really grabs me so the question is: what happened when I listened to them before? Well, I've gone back and listened to those samples again and the answer is: I'm not sure. Maybe I was so intent on comparing them to Lacuna Coil that I couldn't hear them on their own terms. Maybe the style of this album (it's sub-titled "A Semi Acoustic Evening") suits them better than the previous albums. Maybe the poor-quality samples at Amazon messed with my ears. Who knows? I'll keep trying them out but in the meantime we have this very good album. Listen to Saturnine and Locked Away to hear for yourself.

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

There are great albums that are of their time. There are great albums that transcend their time. There are great albums that define their time. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours falls into the third category...wait a second. What is a twenty-seven-year-old album that everybody has heard of doing on Fresh Tuneage? It turns out that Rumours has finally been remastered, and not just your typical "I'm not sure I hear a difference" remaster, either. Disc one has the normal album with the addition of the B-side Silver Springs. Disc two has early versions of almost all the album tracks, including a version of Songbird that gives the final version a run for its money, followed by assorted demos. Is it worth spending the extra bucks for a double CD to replace a CD I already have? The deluxe treatment has also been given to Fleetwood Mac and Tusk but I'm going to wait on those two. For me, the answer was "yes" for Rumours.