When he's not leading vocals or playing a masterly mouth harp, John Popper likes to take his own band to task: He has dissed their studio albums as "nice tries." Like the Grateful Dead, the band to which Blues Traveler has been most often compared, Popper and his jamming mates put their all into free-form live shows. Even after the success of the group's not so imaginatively titled fourth album, four, which went six-times platinum and even scored an MTV hit ("Run-around"), the Travelers treated albums as aural T-shirts, souvenirs to tide fans over till the next tour. Now, having survived Popper's heart troubles and the 1999 death of bassist Bobby Sheehan, Popper leads the group back for a sixth CD. With the exception of "Pretty Angry (For J. Sheehan)," an ode mourning the lost Traveler, most of the tracks are languorous grooves that go nowhere. But don't despair, fans: The Blues boys are back on the road again.
Bottom Line: Canned jams
Janet (Virgin)
Album of the week
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Like the Jackson she is—although she dropped her famous surname from her recording moniker back in 1997—Janet tries to be all things to all people on her ambitious seventh studio album. As with her big bro Michael, her appeal has transcended race, age, gender and tax bracket since her 1986 breakthrough Control. But never has Janet displayed such a broad command of the pop form as she does on this sweeping, near-73-minute opus.
From the percolating hip-hop opener "You Ain't Right" to the sunny soft-rock finale "Better Days, Janet goes all over the pop planet on All for You. And although still not a powerhouse singer, she is in finest voice ever on such cuts as the retro soul-disco title tune, the ebullient house track "Come On Get Up" and the spacey, sexually explicit slow jam "Would You Mind."
The tour de force, though, is the blistering funk workout "Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)," featuring a guest vocal by Carly Simon, who reprises a bit of her 1972 hit "You're So Vain" in the chorus. Half-rapping what seems to be a searing rebuke to her estranged husband René Elizondo Jr.—"You think you irk me and you're so right/ I'd rather keep the trash and throw you out"—Janet hits him with her best shot.
Bottom Line: All hail the queen of pop's royal family
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (Columbia)
No working stiffs are more proudly blue-collar than cops, so it was odd to find some NYPD officers booing a song that the Boss, a hero to Joe Sixpack if ever there was one, performed during his 10-night stand at Madison Square Garden last year. The fuss was about "American Skin (41 Shots)," a nice bit of rock and roll agitprop that starkly dramatizes the shooting death by New York City police of an unarmed African immigrant in a burst of automatic weapons fire after police mistakenly thought he was reaching for a gun. The song does not indict the police but casts the killing as a tragedy of American race relations. This whopping 20-song, two-CD, two hour and 43 minute set—don't worry, the time flies just as quickly here as it did at the Garden, where it was recorded—is filled with rousing, gospel-infused rock anthems ("Badlands," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out"). Among them, both "41 Shots," performed with church organ backing and chilling, liturgical vocal arrangements, and a dirgelike version of "Born in the U.S.A." assume the power of hymns. Each is a haunting interlude in the joyous, tent-revival spirit of the concerts.
Bottom Line: The Boss in charge
Run DMC (Arista)
It's hard to call the new Run DMC album—the first studio disc from the rap pioneers in eight years—a real Run DMC album. Every song but the bombastic title track features at least one guest artist, ranging from Nas and Method Man to Sugar Ray, Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst. That Run (Joseph Simmons), DMC (Darryl McDaniels) and deejay Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell) still command such star support testifies to their impact as the first rap act to go multiplatinum (with 1986's Raising Hell) and incorporate rock elements. In fact, Crown Royal is something of a tribute album. The group's influence on today's rap metal is particularly evident on "The School of Old" (featuring Kid Rock) and "Rock Show" (featuring Third Eye Blind's Stephan Jenkins). And "Them Girls" (featuring Durst) is the best Limp Bizkit song that Limp Bizkit never recorded. Run DMC seems to be hoping these current hitmakers will do what the trio did for Aerosmith with "Walk This Way": revive their career.
Bottom Line: Overrun with too many guest stars
>E=VC² VOLUME 2 Victor Calderone (Tommy Boy) A popular New York City-based deejay who has been Madonna's favorite dance remixer for several years, Calderone applies his winning spinning to this seamless club compilation. It includes a beat-heady reconstruction of the Material Girl's "Skin."
LIVE FROM MARS Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals (Virgin) The funky folkie with the signature acoustic slide guitar and his hard-rockin' backup trio get their collective groove going in this soul-infused two-disc live set, which includes a smoldering rendition of "Sexual Healing."
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Chuck Arnold.
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!
