Album Reviews

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.

There's an outlaw tune, a tough-chick-struts-her-stuff tune, one about breakup and regret and other familiar subjects, and Kathleen Edwards and her band express it with edgy, pedal steel drenched country roots-rock that has probably already worn familiar pathways through the musical synapses of your mind, but on her sophomore effort, Kathleen Edwards proves she's got the goods to go for the long haul.

Abbey Lincoln:
In the upside down year of 1961 (not until 6009 will that happen again), the Kennedy era began, Washington D.C. residents finally got the right to vote in presidential elections thanks to the 23rd amendment to the constitution, and the civil rights movement was in its most activist period, with sit-ins staged throughout the south at public places and freedom riders traveling on buses to force the de-segregation of bus terminals as mandated by federal law.

By the time Mind Games was issued in December of 1973, John Lennon had lost all semblance of musical and personal balance. Sad, but true. The looming Yoko on the horizon cover said it all. Yet the stunning title tune, with its wistful melody and “summing it all up” lyrics led many fans to believe the revolutionary Beatle had returned to greatness after the formless debacle that was Sometime in New York City, but alas, they were mostly wrong.

Today, Houston, Texas seems like one of the last places on earth a bluesman would want to call home (send those emails!), but Sam “Lightnin' “ Hopkins called it home, once he left his small town birthplace, nearby Centerville (population under 1000). His first Houston foray, sometime in the late 1930's, where he accompanied his cousin, the blues singer Alger Alexander, was a bust, so after working on a railroad and singing in the streets he returned home to Centerville.

I don't have kids. Didn't happen. We've dealt with it. They say if you play Mozart for your kid in the womb it's good for his or her development. I wouldn't know.

Long considered to be one of the best sounding RCA “Living Stereo” recordings, this Classic Records 45rpm single sided edition takes getting it into your home to new extremes. The flat “other side” means better disc to platter coupling, as does the Quiex SV-P 200 profile, which gives your platter no lip. At 45rpm, the wavelengths get elongated and thus are easier to track-especially at the inner groove area as the spiral gets tighter and tighter.