Album Reviews

Though you could argue that Bayou Country containing "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou" was a better album, I'm going with Green River as a stronger, more consistent overall album (you remember albums, don't you?), which also had some hits like "Bad Moon Rising" (with it's refrain "there's a bathroom on the right"), "Lodi", which at the time made me wonder why Fogerty was writing about New Jersey and of course the title tune. In retrospect, despite the New Orleans musical setting, much of what Fogerty wrote was about his life growing up in Berkeley, Calfornia. But I digress.

Memories can play nasty tricks on the mind. Events long since past that once seemed sublime can turn out to be anything but when the time machine slides them into the present.

Grand Funk Railroad proclaimed itself “an American band,” but CCR was arguably, the American band of the late '60's early '70's rock era. Even if Fogerty and Co. was not your premier domestic purveyor of rock'n roll, the group's sound has stood the test of time and actually grown in stature. Dredged from blues, swamp, and rhythm and blues, and overlaid with a now-classic propulsive '60's rock sensibility, CCR today still sounds fresh and remarkably pure, even as so much of the music from back then sounds “of the time.”

The Cuban born, classically trained jazz pianist Elio Villafranca plays in a lyrical, yet not quite florid style that moves from Latin style fiery and dramatic one moment to deeply introspective and abstract the next.

Squishy, sticky, elastic beats, some so slow and off-kilter that they threaten to fall apart, ghostly falsetto harmonies, cavernous empty spaces between the rhythmic wah-wah pulses and a distant, almost other-worldly sonic perspective announce D’Angelo’s singular sinewy yet gentle vision.

Originally released in June of 1972, Bowie's "rock concept album" broke the then still obscure musician and changed the face of rock'n'roll forever—and that ain't hyperbole. If this wasn't the album that gave Freddie Mercury his dream, I can't imagine what was.

There's something deeply offensive to me about picking apart the sound on the David Bowie [Five Years 1969-1973] box set. The guy is gone, the sadness lingers and maybe it's time to just enjoy and celebrate the music.