Since this is a sound track, we're into one of those good news-bad news situations. On the plus side there's the fact that Prince doesn't seem to recognize that he's supposed to fill such works with incidental throwaway music. From Purple Rain to Batman, he has displayed an inclination to create film scores that are stronger and fuller than most artists' masterworks. The drawback is that this also means there's another movie out there that Prince directed and stars in.
However the film turns out, we know at least that many of the songs are excellent. There's the springy, insouciant twirl of "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got," the up-side-your-head funk of "New Power Generation." the deeper shade of blues in "The Question of U" and the sumo jam of "We Can Funk," on which Prince teams with the original Mr. Funkadelic, George Clinton.
One chronic problem surfaces: Prince can't leave well enough alone. He keeps fracturing the flow with odd vocal overlays and melodic red herrings. That tinkering gives the album a rather scattered feel. So what if he floats off into the ether sometimes? Experimentation is to be expected from a true musical visionary like Prince. And sometimes it pays off, as on the mysterious jazzy mood of "Joy in Repetition."
With this record, Prince is raising the stakes on the Top 40 crowd (as he is wont to do with each release). The bass and drum sounds on Graffiti Bridge are absolutely engulfing. Musicians and producers are likely to pore over this record, scratching their heads and wondering how he does it.
This isn't a solo flight for the purple dauphin. There are jacked-up jollies from the Time ("Release It," "Love Machine" and "Shake!") and showcases for singers Tevin Campbell and Mavis Staples.
All in all. Graffiti Bridge is a groovable feast of an album (17 songs), loaded with exotic dishes, not all of them suitable to all palates (avoid the operatic title track), but it sure is filling, If the movie turns out to be bad, you can always close your eyes and just dig the sounds. (Paisley Park/Warner Bros.)
Anthrax
There are few things sadder than an aging punk rocker. The mohawk has gone gray. Arthritis has put a crimp in the dance moves. The skateboard creeps along now, slowing down everyone behind it.
Punk may not be dead, but it certainly could use some resuscitation. And that's where Anthrax comes in.
The band is a champion of speed metal, the brain-impaling genre that has assumed punk's mantle as music for restless youth. On Persistence of Time, which is not for the faint of heart or ear, Anthrax produces an album to warm the hearts of all ex-punkers. In fact, the only difference between this record and a golden oldie by the Circle Jerks or Black Flag is that it is even faster, louder and angrier. (The slowest tune on the record is a cover of former new waver Joe Jackson's manic "Got the Time.")
The guitars seldom move slower than a stock car, and the rhythm section never drops below the beat of your heart after six cups of coffee.
It's the lyrics—what you can catch of them—that really make Anthrax something more than just noise, though. They're full of surprisingly grown-up, almost semiarticulate angst. "Keep It in the Family," for instance, is a bitter rant against those who willingly inherit their parents' racism: "And you don't even know why you feel this way," 'Cause Daddy hated this and Mommy hated that." "Belly of the Beast" and "One Man Stands" are protests against oppression, both personal and political.
Persistence of Time includes too many songs that sound the same, and too many listens to this hypernoise could make you end up beating your head against walls. Still, punk and now speed metal have never been about getting things right. They're about thinking young. And doing it very loudly. (Island)
Willi Jones
Put Jones somewhere on the pop-rock continuum, between the ethereal, above-it-all Edie Brickell and the impassioned, bluesy Melissa Etheridge. Just put her there.
A 30-year-old who was born in Rhode Island and grew up in a nomadic military family (her father was a Navy captain), Jones flaunts her versatility—with abandon—on this debut album. She sings the peculiar urbanologist's lament "Where My City Stood," with the backing of only the tune's composer, John Glover (not the actor) on guitar and vocals. She duets with that walking blues institution, Willie Dixon, on "Long Legged Goddess," a gritty, funny call-response tune the two of them wrote with David Batteau and Darrell Brown.
She goes entertainingly countryish on her own "Southern Hospitality" ("You think we're blind, ya'll, behind the times because we talk so slow/ But you don't know what we all know"). And she goes all intemperate and botherable on "Love Me Up."
The album, mostly produced by Niko Bolas (Etheridge), is not overflowing with warmth, a quality that's at something of a premium these days. It's long on sizzle and smarts, though, and they're not overflowing the place either. For those of us who hadn't met Miss Jones before, this is a promising introduction. (Geffen)
Art Blakey, Dr. John and David "Fathead" Newman
Ordinarily you can place as much faith in a record company press release as you can in your average savings and loan pledge of integrity. But Windham Mill is not kidding when it calls this a "classic jam session."
The album is a free-spirited set of blues-based tunes, with Dr. John (Mac Rebennack) playing loose boogie-woogie piano, ex-Ray Charles sideman Newman blowing exuberantly on sax and flute and venerable jazz drummer Blakey nudging them along zestfully, despite his 70 years.
Rebennack generates an especially invigorating time on the Cousin Joe Pleasant tune "Life's One Way Ticket." In a voice that's the aural equivalent of a big, fat scrawl, he rasps out, "When you get your hands on your big money, you'd better get your hands on everything you can get/ Well, you just can't take it with you/ I ain't never seen an armored car at a funeral yet."
Newman's sax bursts run happily through the improvised-sounding blues "Need to Be Loved" (with Rebennack spinning off a meaty piano solo). While Blakey sings the standard "For All We Know" in a voice best described as a gentrified croak, his drumming is still full of pace and splash.
This is an exercise in cross-genre mixing, with jazz meeting R & B meeting New Orleans pop meeting three roundly talented musicians. There's one word for this, and the word is "more." (Windham Hill)
Concrete Blonde
If by some chance a friend sets you up with a blind date and you discover it's Johnette Napolitano, here's a little advice: Bring along a squirt gun loaded with holy water and wear a garlic necklace just to be on the safe side. Napolitano, the husky-voiced lead singer and songwriter of this L.A.-based band, appears to have developed a vampire fixation.
It's no coincidence that Concrete Blonde's excellent third album is called Bloodletting. The music is masterfully dark and moody, stripped-to-the-bone rock along the lines of the early Los Angeles punksters X, and every song revolves around one creature of the night or another.
In the title track—a grungy rocker—the beast seems literal ("Oh, you were a vampire, and I was nothing at all"). In the slam dance-paced "The Sky Is a Poisonous Garden" and the creepy crawly "Darkening of the Light," the monsters are bloodsuckers of the figurative sort, former friends and lovers who have drained Napolitano dry before the sun came up.
The demons are even more real on two slow-rolling ballads that close the album. "Joey" is turned by Napolitano's throaty moan into a woman's pitiful plea to a drunken ex-lover. "Tomorrow, Wendy," written by ex-Wall of Voodoo singer Andy Prieboy (who does the song on his solo album), turns as dark as midnight in a haunted house as it tells the tale of an AIDS-stricken hooker who kills herself.
None of this makes Bloodletting the feelgood record of the summer, but it is intelligent rock you can sink your teeth into. (I.R.S.)
The Jackie McLean Quintet
During a retrospective concert of his music this August during the Classical Jazz Series at Lincoln Center in New York City, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean was full of creative fire. "Don't burn the house down," one audience member shouted after a sizzling exchange between McLean and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. "Don't worry," McLean called back. "We've handed out asbestos suits to the people in the first two rows."
The Lincoln Center concert and this album, his first since 1977, mark McLean's re-emergence as a major player on the jazz scene. A native of Harlem. McLean was a protégé of pianist Bud Powell and at age 18 apprenticed with trumpeter Miles Davis. During the '60s he was one of the first to combine the urgent rhythms of bebop with modal harmonies on such (recently reissued) Blue Note recordings as Let Freedom Ring and One Step Beyond. Now 59, McLean has devoted most of his energy in recent years to teaching, as chairman of the African American Music Department of the Hartt School of Music in Hartford.
On Dynasty McLean comes out smoking. Pianist Hotep Idris Galeta, bassist Nat Reeves and drummer Carl Allen offer torrid rhythmic backup while McLean charges through such potboilers as "Bird Lives." an homage to his boyhood idol Charlie Parker. McLean is joined in the front line by his son Rene, who plays tenor and soprano sax and flute and composed four of the 10 tunes on the album. Most effective is "J. Mac's Dynasty." a filial tribute that showcases the contrasting styles of father and son. Jackie favors unadorned, searing melodic lines. Strongly influenced by tenor saxophonists Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, he has a uniquely resonant, tart tone on alto. Rene is more prone to honk and holler, exhibiting a bluesy swagger on tenor that complements his dad's heated romanticism. Welcome back, J. Mac. (Triloka)
- Contributors:
- David Hiltbrand,
- Craig Tomashoff,
- Ralph Novak,
- David Grogan.
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!
