A true maverick, DiFranco has fashioned a career every bit as far from the mainstream as her poetic, politically charged brand of alternative folk music. Openly bisexual and highly critical of greed and commercialism in the music industry, she has refused major-label deals and has chosen instead to release 11 albums on her own Righteous Babe Records, the company she runs from an office in her hometown of Buffalo. Her latest, which may upset her possessive cult of fans by crossing over to a wider, pop audience, is a gem that is at once funny, moody, meditative and challenging. Full of DiFranco's pet peeves and ironic musings ("people talk/about my image/like I come in two dimensions/like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind"), the album will make listeners laugh, think and tap their feet. (Righteous Babe)
James Galway
Classical musicians who dabble in pop music inevitably have to counteract the stiffness that carries over from their usual formal approach. In this collection of mostly pop songs, Galway, a spirited Irish flutist, combines extraordinary technique with warmth and ease and manages to seem at home with popular material without turning it into Muzak.
Unhappily, even he can't do much with the tuneless gruel of "River-dance," which is tedious even without those dancers galumphing about. But given a shapely melody—"In My Life," say, or "The Wind Beneath My Wings"—Galway can turn the familiarity of an oft-heard tune into a virtue. He plays with great emotion, especially on Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven," and he's particularly moving when he plays against a pop performer, as he does with singer Cleo Laine on John Denver's "Like a Sad Song" and with the Chieftains on the traditional "Over the Sea to Skye." Crossover attempts by classical artists can be discomfiting, but Galway seems as at home with Lennon and McCartney as he does with Mozart and Bach. He manages to communicate the joy of music in both domains. (RCA Victor)
Los Umbrellos
Led by rapper Al Agami, a 25-year-old African now living in Copenhagen, and with backing vocals and sexy attitudinizing by two former models and Danish TV cohosts, Mai-Britt Grondahl Vingsoe and Grith Hojfeldt, Los Umbrellos is the latest in a series of successful Scandinavian export bands that has most recently included Robyn ("Show Me Love"), the Cardigans ("Lovefool") and Aqua ("Barbie Girl"). Percolating in a jambalaya of musical styles are strains of Jamaican dance-hall music, Brazilian street-carnival rhythms, flaring mariachi horns and thumping hip-hop beats. Both silly and ambitious, this CD will have listeners hitting the replay button to decipher a trippy hodgepodge of American pop-cultural references. (Extra points to those who can identify TV's Rawhide theme and find the lyrics to Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth.") (Virgin)
Jim Lauderdale
Better known as a composer than a singer, 40-year-old Lauderdale proves on this album that he has a folksy, Roy Clark-like way with a tune. He wrote or cowrote all the songs on this album, a collection of emotional Nashville tunes, and his standing in country music is high enough for him to attract such hardcore honky-tonk composers as John Scott Sherrill (who collaborated on "She Used to Say That to Me") and Harlan Howard (cowriter of "Goodbye Song"), and even old pros, including Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys as accompanists (on the bluegrassy "I'll Lead You Home"). Lauderdale's songs have been recorded by Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, George Strait and Mark Chesnutt. They, among others, may have to look elsewhere for material if he starts keeping his best stuff for himself. (BNA)
Jules Verdone
Revealing a painful truth comes easier when it is accompanied by an entrancing melody. But for Boston's Jules Verdone, who injects uncut anguish straight to the heart, catchy tunes are also suitable for disclosures of the opposite kind, as in when she hisses at a former lover on one track: "Something's coming through my teeth/It's a lie, it's a lie, it's a lie." The 11 mid-tempo rockers here all brim with forthright honesty, however, a quality Verdone perhaps acquired during stints as an AIDS educator and Planned Parenthood counselor. But whether fact or fiction, these cleverly constructed pop tunes—all sung with a charming subtlety—sound inimitably tried and true. (Q Division)
Austin Lounge Lizards
Few elements of the pop culture invite satire as much as country music. So it's always good to hear someone fresh sending up the excesses of Nashville. The Lizards—Conrad Deisler, Hank Card, Richard Bowdan, Tom Pittman and Boo Resnick—have actually been around for 18 years and have built a cult following with such tunes as "Jesus Loves Me but He Can't Stand You" and "Paint Me on Velvet." The most country-specific track on this album is "Stupid Texas Song": "biggest egos, biggest hair, biggest liars anywhere." But "The Dogs, They Really Miss You" is a nice play on those maudlin country songs about the children of divorce. And "Rocky Byways" suggests one of John Denver's schmoozy pastoral ditties gone even more wrong.
But the Lounge Lizards don't limit themselves to things southern. "Leonard Cohen's Day Job" lampoons the Canadian troubadour of the moribund, casting him as a garage mechanic: "To the streets of New York from my tower of song/I come down to work where the common folk throng/In my famous blue shirt with the patch that says 'Len'/Then I go back to write songs again." Pittman can't sing as croakily as Cohen, but the satire succeeds swimmingly anyway. (Sugar Hill)
>Will Smith
BACK IN STYLE
Before he morphed into a big-time TV and movie star (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Men in Black), Will Smith was best known for a string of 1980s rap hits recorded with fellow Philadelphian "DJ Jazzy Jeff" Townes. Apart from a two-song contribution to the Men in Black soundtrack, Smith, 29, hadn't released a new recording in four years until his recent hit solo CD, Big Willie Style (Columbia).
Why return to rap?
I can't stop writing. I probably wrote four albums worth of material in my home studio. Then I let Jada [Pinkett, his recent bride] and a friend hear what I was doing. Their reaction really gave me the confidence.
Did you have any fears about being away for so long?
The last record I did [in 1993] flopped. I wasn't sure I was still the jiggiest.
Why did you choose to become a rapper in the first place?
I talk a lot, so it's great to do what I do anyway and have the opportunity to get other people to listen. Rapping is just a part of me.
Which do you prefer, acting or recording?
There was a time when music was all I had. Then doing television was all I had. Then I had this budding movie career, and that was what I did. But there's always this race going inside of me to see which career is going to win.
Are you a different person in a recording studio than on a set?
The only difference between the rapper version of me and the television version and the movie version is that the movie guy dresses better.
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Ralph Novak,
- Alec Foege,
- Craig Tomashoff.
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!
