Take me to redneck heaven," Billy Ray Cyrus sings on his second album since his "Achy Breaky Heart"-fueled debut. To get there, Cyrus will need a ticket out of the purgatory he now inhabits: the limbo land between country music and rock and roll, where Cyrus often combines some of the worst aspects of each.
Grafting rock's weakness for macho pomposity onto country's tendency to stray into ersatz emotionalism, Cyrus comes up with an unappetizing hybrid that somehow manages to plod and strut simultaneously. The self-dramatizing bombast of "How Much" could win him a nomination in a Meat Loaf of Country Music contest, but the most over-the-top number here is "Enough Is Enough," which addresses child abuse and Third World dictatorships in 3 minutes and 43 seconds. Must be trying to pile up credit in redneck heaven. Given that the public's fascination with the hair-tossing hip-swiveler seems to be ebbing—an Oct. 6 special on ABC, Billy Ray Cyrus: A Year on the Road, clocked at No. 91, dead last, in that week's Nielsen ratings—Storm in the Heartland may turn out to be only a squall. (Mercury)
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
Dinosaurs they may be, but the song-writing tandem behind Led Zeppelin actually show some daring in this companion release to the obligatory MTV Unplugged special, which aired last month. Page and Plant approach the reworking of these chestnuts, composed during a 25-year span, as if they were a pair of perfectionist potters, destroying their prized pieces and throwing fresh clay on the wheel.
More than 50 musicians, including Moroccan and Egyptian performers, have been assembled to create exotic, percussive, rhythms. "Gallows Pole" and "The Battle of Evermore" burst alive with the spirited help of players like vocalist Najma Akhtar and the layered orchestral arrangements of Ed Shearmur. There are a couple of amplified renditions, including a powerful take on "Thank You," in which Page's guitar playing sounds more confident than it has in years. Vocally, Plant, now 46, can no longer make the leaps he once did, but his pipes are still nonpareil. Only one gripe: Where's the Arabic version of "Stairway to Heaven?" (Atlantic)
Various Artists
Live albums should be the next best thing to being there. But trying to recapture the feeling of being at Winston Farm in Saugerties, N.Y., last Aug. 12-14, smack dab in the midst of several hundred thousand mud-caked and rain-soaked teens, twentysomethings and scattered Woodstock '69 alumni, is a hefty task. Woodstock '94 comes closest with the miscellaneous stage announcements that are interspersed throughout the two-CD set, including one that instructs the crowd on how to avoid being struck by lightning.
The selected tunes offer satisfying sonic pleasures and a generous sample of the weekend's performers—despite such notable omissions as James and Arrested Development and the no-show of nonrap R&B—but many of them (Nine Inch Nails' "Happiness in Slavery" and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magik," for instance) beg for visuals. With so much to see onstage and off at Woodstock '94 (the Chili Peppers costumed as lightbulb heads, Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon in bad drag, the occasional nudist), the music sometimes seemed an afterthought, as a quick flip through the festival photos included with the CD clearly indicates. You had to be there. (A&M)
George Strait
Thank heaven—and Texas—for George Strait. He was a lonesome figure in the early '80s, reviving the traditional country sound while Nashville was going pop. Now he's got plenty of competition from squadrons of cookie-cutter cowboys, but few peers.
Strait's voice can break your heart one minute ("No One But You") and gladden it the next ("The Big One"). His song selection, on the evidence here, is flawless. And his band seems incapable of playing anything that doesn't complement his vocals while deftly illuminating the album's many captivating melodies.
It seems a shame to point out the obviously terrific songs on this album, like the forlorn ballad "You Can't Make a Heart Love Somebody" and the Cajun-spiced rocker "Adalida," because on subsequent listening, other tunes that initially just seemed good, such as "Down Louisiana Way," turn out to be the ones you find yourself whistling all the time. Lead on, George. (MCA)
Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick has been flirting with Brazilian-influenced pop for years. The melancholy, bossa-nova-tinged shuffle of such early Warwick singles as "Walk On By" and "You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)" made the singer seem like an American equivalent of Brazilian chanteuse Astrud Gilberto during the '60s.
Unfortunately she stumbles by going all the way with Aquarela do Brasil ("Watercolors of Brazil"). Though she exercises her usual good taste in material (such as Gilberto's "How Insensitive" and the Burt Bacharach-John Bettis-penned "Captives of the Heart"), Warwick's arrangements sometimes come dangerously close to jazzy lounge pop. Her alto—lacking in subtlety and upper range—also keeps letting her down. Aquarela does have some lovely moments ("Oh Bahia" and "Piano Na Mangueira"), but when Warwick finally offers a vivid, finely nuanced performance on "Heart of Brazil," her musical accompaniment sounds like the soundtrack to a cruise-ship commercial. (Arista)
D Generation
D Generation, a guitar-wielding quintet of New York City guttersnipes, exudes the same we're-the-only-band-that-matters arrogance as the Clash and the New York Dolls once did. Like those groups, D Generation approaches the songs on this major-label debut as if each one were the opening salvo in a war on complacency.
Such pop power balls as "Sins of America" and "Waiting for the Next Big Parade" abound, while manic workouts like "Frankie" should jolt even the most somnolent listener awake. At the close of "Guitar Mafia," singer Jesse Malin screams at listeners to "Get up, man/ Start a band!"
Granted, you probably won't. And I won't either. But D Generation is just the band to redeem your faith in the power of loud, snotty rock and roll. (Chrysalis/EMI)
- Contributors:
- Mark Lasswell,
- Andrew Abrahams,
- Jeremy Helligar,
- Tom Sinclair.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
