Album Reviews

That’s right folks, don’t touch that dial — it’s another tag-team album review, just in time for that last-minute holiday push. This time around, AP editor Mike Mettler, along with ace reviewers Mark Smotroff and Ken Micallef, are combining forces to proffer a three-man review of the new 50th anniversary 180g AAA 2LP 45rpm edition of Frank Zappa’s top-shelf September 1973 release, Over-Nite Sensation, an album all three of us regard with great affinity. We also review the limited-edition 3LP version of ONS too, which contains an extra LP of bonus tracks. Read on to see how this Zappa-loving triumvirate of Mike, Mark, and Ken get reety-awrighty with their analysis of a stone-cold classic LP in its new 45rpm incarnation. . .

The sound of this reissue is so spectacular, Classic can be forgiven for using the wrong cover art. They scanned a second pressing. The “SLP 18000 STEREO” is inside a mustard colored banner back and front on the first press, and the banner points to a Monument logo.

The first question we asked ourselves when contemplating the newly unearthed 1953 concert recording of Nat King Cole duly dubbed Live at the Blue Note Chicago — which is earmarked for release on the next upcoming Record Store Day, April 20 — is why would audiophile-leaning vinyl enthusiasts and jazz fans alike want it in their collections? The combination of great performances, of-era sound quality, and pricing topped our requirements list, and, fortunately, Live at the Blue Note Chicago has enough of all three to satisfy our listening/collecting needs — but what about yours? Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if Nat King Cole’s Live at the Blue Note Chicago belongs on your RSD must-have list. . .

The daughter of a British woman whose British engineer husband was assigned there to work on a dam, Rumer and her six older siblings lived isolated in an ex-patriot community. Not until she was 11 and her “parents” divorced and the family moved back to England did she and her siblings discover that her father was the family’s Pakistani cook.

Brooklyn Dodger fans weren't the only ones heartbroken when their beloved bums moved to Los Angeles. An entire L.A. neighborhood, Chávez Ravine, had to be sacrificed to make way for the new Dodger stadium. Despite the album title, Ry Cooder's Cinemascopic new album is as much about a lost time-the 1950's-as it is about a lost Mexican-American neighborhood known as Chávez Ravine.

Being out of the record-biz hype loop has certain benefits. Until I bought this album I knew nothing about Ryan Adams other than the name and a vague notion that he was an extremely talented kid who used to front an alterna-country band called Whiskeytown. I'm willing to admit to being two years behind the hype curve. So be it. That Gold was issued on a nicely packaged two-LP set (as are many Lost Highway releases) put me in a positive frame of mind. I wanted to like this record and Ryan Adams both. But when I saw the American-flag-draped cover and Adams' contrived pose, my bullshit detector went off and it didn't stop ringing throughout the four sides of this set of well-recorded musical comfort food.