>LIVE AT MARTYRS' Chris Whitley (Messenger) The blues poet and guitar maestro opens at the nicely named Chicago club with "Dirt Floor." A performer whose emotions are as bare as the title suggests, Whitley goes solo here but sounds like a whole gang.
HOMELAND Miriam Makeba (Putumayo) Before they called it "World Music," there was Makeba, South Africa's own queen of soul. Back in her Homeland after years of exile, she updates her 1967 U.S. pop hit with "Pata Pata 2000."
BRUTAL PLANET Alice Cooper (Spitfire) "It's such a brutal planet/It's such an ugly world," the original shock rocker snarls. School's out forever, as Alice famously said, but he's still teaching the kids to leaven the metal with harmony, hooks and humor.
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