John Lee Hooker
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Up until Hooker's death at 83 in 2001, the years had not diminished his skills as a master blues singer and guitarist. He had all but completed this impressive album before dying, and his daughter Zakiya has shepherded it to release, bringing in a few more guest artists in postproduction to join an all-star cast. Van Morrison joins Hooker on the almost-cute "Dimples," a duet that will send diction purists screaming into the night. Blues rocker George Thorogood serves as a sideman, as do cult favorite blues guitarists Elvin Bishop and Roy Rogers, virtuoso country-rock axeman Dickey Betts and veteran bassist Joe Thomas. Zakiya, who serves as executive producer, also joins her dad on backup vocals and cowrote three of the album's 15 songs. The star of the show is still Hooker, who learned his rhythmic, resonant guitar style from his stepfather as a boy in Clarksdale, Miss. Nobody, though, can teach the passion and understated musicality of his singing on tracks such as the visceral "Rock These Blues Away." A product of more innocent, less vulgar times, Hooker never aimed at any grand themes, yet his music nailed every human emotion, from joyful celebration to self-punishing regret, and this disc is no exception. Listening to Hooker on songs such as the intense "Mad Man Blues" and the quintessential blues "It Serves Me Right to Suffer," one can hear his influence on Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt and dozens of other great blues artists who came after him.
PUNK-POP
The Offspring
Twenty years and seven albums after The Offspring formed in an Orange County high school, these punk-popsters are still pretty fly for white guys. On its latest, the quartet, led by singer-guitarist Dexter Holland, sounds like a bunch of overgrown skater boys on rad and rebellious tracks geared toward listeners young enough to be the Offspring's own kids. The CD kicks off with the pseudo fight song "Neocon," a chant for alienated adolescents everywhere: "We are strong/ We are right/ We won't be pushed aside/ We'll go on/ We will fight/ We will not compromise." The band has not compromised its sound on such punk-spiked rockers as "The Noose" and "Long Way Home," the latter of which gives the disc its title: "Like fragments of a broken mind/ I splinter by my own design." The group also displays a breezy pop touch and a sardonic sense of humor on the ska-styled ditty "The Worst Hangover Ever" and the cheating song "Spare Me the Details." But they stumble on a few formulaic metallic cuts like "Race Against Myself."
FOLK-POP
Nerissa and Katryna Nields
Plaintive, self-justifying and full of enigmatic lyrics, the follow-up to this duo's 2002 debut Love and China sounds like a 1960s folk-pop album gone wrong. Katryna Nields, in fact, evokes Sylvia Tyson of the admirable '60s Canadian folk duo Ian and Sylvia. Meanwhile, Katryna's older sister Nerissa could easily be mistaken for Woodstock performer Melanie. Together, the Nieldses bring to mind a more pedantic variation on another sister act, Kate and Anna McGarrigle. It doesn't help that Nerissa's lyrics (she wrote all 12 songs) tend to the singsongy: "I saw you talk behind my back/ I'm ready for your next attack," on "Clairman Town." The best track on this otherwise soulless enterprise is the bluesy "When I'm Here," bolstered by the affecting Dobro of Dave Chalfant, a member of Nerissa and Katryna's former group, the Nields.
R&B
Avant
There is a moment at the end of "You Got Me," one of the bedroom ballads that dominate Avant's latest, when the singer goes into an ad-lib lifted straight from Luther Vandross's classic version of "Superstar." Elsewhere, on a remix of the slow-jam single "Read Your Mind," Avant borrows heavily from Teddy Pendergrass's 1979 hit "Come Go with Me," while he riffs off Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" on the mid-tempo bouncer "Heaven." But like many of today's R&B Romeos, Avant lacks the signature stylings of Vandross, Pendergrass or Gaye. Most of this decent but derivative disc could have come from Joe, Ginuwine, Jaheim or any of a number of one-named soul men.
Sting
After all this time, Sting, 52, is still going strong with a new CD, Sacred Love, and a tour that kicks off Jan. 23 in Miami. We asked the former chief of The Police to turn the clock back on a few of his old hits.
"ROXANNE" "Roxanne" kind of stuck out like a sore thumb on the radio at the time. Nothing else sounded like it, which pleased me immensely because that was [The Police's] first hit.
"DON'T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME" It's not an autobiographical song by any means. I was a schoolteacher, but I wasn't attracted to any of my students nor were they to me, thank goodness.
"EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE" It was written in Jamaica at a difficult time in my life. I think everything was kind of falling apart. It's a song that has a powerful resonance now because it's ambivalent. It's a romantic, seductive song, but it's also quite threatening, quite dark.
"IF YOU LOVE SOMEBODY SET THEM FREE" It's something I believe. That was really the song that set me free from The Police as a solo artist. I have great affection for that because it wasn't logical that I should leave this very successful band.
"ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK" This city has been very kind to me. I've been coming here since the late '70s and I have a home here now. I feel part of this community. I walk everywhere.
"KING OF PAIN" I'm not the King of Pain anymore. I was, though. I was a pain. I was difficult to live with, obsessed, obsessive, driven, ambitious, cruel. You name it, I was the king of it.
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- 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!
