Music Reviews

"Welcome Klaus! Come have a listen", George Martin invited. "You can sit in my chair," he said to Klaus Voorman, bassist, artist and long time friend of The Beatles. This and other excerpts from Voorman's graphic novel birth of an icon REVOLVER tells the story of how and what moved Voorman to draw the now iconic, possibly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley pen and ink black and white cover—visually a polar opposite of Rubber Soul's inviting... Read More

It runs less than 1/2 hour but "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark" is worth its weight in choose your favorite precious whatever. Crazy magic happened in the "small, lonely L.A. studio" A&M's Bob Garcia describes in the liner notes. Obviously the small budget or a previous booking didn't allow Gene Clark, Doug Dillard, Bernie Leadon, Chris Hillman and the others to record at the big A&M Studio, but no matter,... Read More

Monty Alexander's long association with the Montreux Jazz Festival produced many stellar musical moments. This double LP set culled from performances from 1993 through 2016 highlights many of them. There's a video interview with Alexander conducted by TrackingAngle editor Michael Fremer the day this review posts.

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)Not since Moby Grape has so much talent been victim to dumb circumstance. Mann hit it big out of the gate with ‘Til Tuesday’s 1984 hit “Voices Carry.” You’d think two gold records would vindicate her pop musical instincts, but when Mann begin edging away from the drum machine/synth rut she’d dug for herself, towards folkier, acoustic guitar-based music, her label resisted, ultimately killing the group’s third... Read More

“David Bowie in Jazz"'s Aladdin Sane-era cover art might lead you to believe this Bowie tribute record is tied in with or is somehow connected to Bret Morgen’s feature-length "Moonage Daydream" documentary released September, 2022 in IMAX and standard theater formats and currently available for streaming and purchase on Amazon, itunes and other sites.The scant credits, however, indicate that the French Wagram Music label marketed and distributed... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 5/6, Winter 1995/96.)The lineage of American electric guitar is a long, rich, exciting thread. It runs through Muddy Waters, Albert King, Albert Collins, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and the kid from Texas, Stevie Ray Vaughan. A plane crash in late August 1990 took Vaughan way too soon but his music sounds just as fresh and vital today as ever. Stevie never made a bad album so putting together a... Read More

When Steely Dan recorded "Can't Buy a Thrill" it was more of a "pick-up" studio band than a "group". As Donald Fagen recounts in the notes accompanying this new UHQR release sourced from the original master tapes (shown on the notes insert), Fagen and Walter Becker had failed as ABC Dunhill "staff composers" and decided it was time to live the dream leading a real band.The pair called their friend New York guitarist Denny... Read More

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)An extended suite for musical insanity and sonic meatcleaver that mutates The Bonzo Dog Band, Spike Jones, Nino Rota, Frank Zappa, Alvin Cash, The Art Of Noise, surf music, exotica, industrial heavy metal sludge, the tango, methedrine, Metallica, Don Van Vliet, and just plain old fashioned wise-assery into a rip roaring roller coaster ride through a double E ticket musical and sonic fun house. That these guys... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)Don’t laugh, this is not just a novelty record—it’s actually a helluva musical album. Jim Turner is an amazing virtuoso with the ol’ crosscut and he never lapses into sound effects or cheap diddling. The album is a jumble of classical and folk music with Turner’s high-pitched saw at the center of some pretty fine acoustic recordings. The folk stuff is especially good.You gotta hear... Read More

It's not too late to order this fun record for your young children or grandchildren. The late Andrew Gold produced, performed, engineered and mixed this 1996 children's Halloween album. It's not scary and not meant to be.

It’s a bit hard to fathom, but Stereolab has now released almost as many compilations as it has original albums. Sure, there’s some crossover, but taken as a whole, all of the rarer material gathered across their Switched On series gives you the sense that during their initial 20-year run the Anglo-French outfit never left the studio .

Jethro Tull is this weird guy with an old man fetish, who fronts a rock band playing the flute while standing on one leg. That’s what we thought. He made weird noises too, while playing flute standing on one leg. A few who knew Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s music knew from where came this old standing on one leg guy’s flute sound (and noticed the credit on the first side ending cover of Kirk’s “Serenade to a Cuckoo”), but there was no Internet and news traveled slowly back then, so Jethro Tull he was until he was Ian Anderson fronting a band called Jethro Tull. Jethro Tull the man was an 18th century agriculturalist/inventor.

Formed near the sunny sands of Rio De Janeiro in 1973, Azymuth is a Brazilian funk-jazz trio though they manage to sound like a much larger group, especially when hosting guest players. The band features Jose Roberto Bertrami (unfortunately, deceased in 2019) on an array of keyboards, Alex Malheiros on bass and Ivan Conti on drums. These three musicians initially connected with one another in a previous band called Group Projeto 3 which later became Grupo Seleção. The... Read More

Though the pianist Mal Waldron recorded more than 110 albums as a leader or co-leader, he is known mainly as a sideman to the likes of Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy, Blakey, and, in her final few years, Billie Holiday. In 1963, he collapsed in a drug OD, took more than a year to recover, during which time he moved to Europe, where he would for the most part stay (he died in 2002 at the age of 77) and where he also crafted a new style, built less on chords and more on... Read More

It’s tragic that, in the past decade, physical catastrophes have struck two of our greatest jazz masters in their prime. Pulmonary thrombosis stopped Sonny Rollins from blowing the saxophone; two strokes prevented Keith Jarrett from ever again playing the piano. At least Rollins was in peak form for an 80th birthday concert (captured on "Road Trip, Vol. 3)"; Jarrett stayed active barely past his 70th. (Both are still alive, at 89 and 72, respectively.) Lucky... Read More

Recorded in 1977 but not released until 1981 after Evans passed away September 15th, 1980 at age 51, You Must Believe In Spring was kind of "the great lost Bill Evans album". For those who bought it when it was first released as a single LP mastered by Doug Sax (Warner Brothers HS 3504) the question always was "Why was this not released immediately upon its completion?" The music is certainly up there with Evans' best on record and on a more... Read More

The absurdity of any culture is probably best seen from the outside, but by someone with first-hand experience inside of it. On paper, this puts Sebastian Murphy, tattoo artist by day and frontman of Swedish post-punk/dance-punk band Viagra Boys, in a perfect position to comment on the far-right’s increasing presence in America; born and raised in the US, Murphy knows America, but living in Sweden would give him a more distanced view. In execution, however, Viagra... Read More

The first time I ever saw a Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) symphony on my music stand, I was an 18-year-old student at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was the Symphony No. 1 in D Major (sometimes subtitled “Titan”) and I was tasked with playing the delicate low English horn notes in the opening measures. From that point on Gustav Mahler’s orchestral works would hold a special place in my musical growth, heralding the finale concerts of various... Read More

When Anthony Wilson is not on the road playing jazz guitar, he sometimes steps into a recording booth and exits Clark Kent-like as a sensitive ‘70s era singer/songwriter.For those more accustomed to Wilson backing Diana Krall or leading jazz ensembles on a series of Groove Note releases or providing orchestrations and/or playing on dozens of studio dates (for instance on Paul McCartney’s “Kisses on the Bottom”), his sumptuously packaged, sensitively drawn 2019 Songs... Read More