You can just tell the holiday shopping season is cranking up because you can't move one step in any direction without stumbling over a new "Plays Holiday Favorites" or greatest hits disc. (I should know, they keep showing up in my danged mailbox.) None of this means that there isn't anything good out there, because there almost always is.
The Fat Is Gone - Peter Brötzmann/Mats Gustafsson/Paal Nilssen-Love (Smalltown Supersound)/Frightening Improv
I have to purchase my Brötzmann only very occasionally because it takes a while to get over the blatant intensity. Recorded last year at the Molde International Jazz Festival, this is really what European improvised jazz is all about. Well, maybe not all, but certainly a side of it. You know how some folks will characterize slower music as "like watching paint dry"? This music will sandblast that paint right back off the wall.
Please, adults only. Too intense for young children and pets.
Blues All Ways - Dave Liebman (Omnitone)/Jazz
Liebman never seems to slow down. Rather than mine the past, he continues to push his own envelope. Heck, even when he does look back (Back On The Corner), he comes at it from a different angle. The new record has Liebman and his band (Vic Juris/guitars, Tony Marino/bass, Marko Marcinko/drums) taking a Coltrane-ish pass through the blues.
Live at the Barbican Theatre 2006 - Os Mutantes (Luaka Bop)/Latin something-or-other
I'd heard of this band, but none of the music had made its way to my ear. Good gawd. Imagine progressive rock that leans more toward early psychedelic music...but by way of Brazil. I tell you, some really great and thought-provoking stuff comes out of David Byrne's Luaka Bop label.
Black and White Album - The Hives (Octone)/Rock
Article comments
1 - Pico
"This music will sandblast that paint right back off the wall."
To quote you on the James Taylor, I'm all over it.
2 - Michael J. West
Great purchases!
3 - SharIndie
You forgot about The Goo Goo Dolls Greatest Hits: Volume 1 release today!
4 - Mark Saleski
how can a band have a greatest hits record with two hits?
5 - Donald Gibson
I thought it was one hit, done two different ways ("Name" and "Iris" are the same song, right???).
6 - JC Mosquito
How?
Free - Greatest Hits
Donnie Iris - Greatest Hits
off the top o' my head. I'm sure there are others.
7 - Mark Saleski
hmmm...this could be fun....
8 - Mark Saleski
David Gray
9 - Mark Saleski
Marc Cohn
10 - Mark Saleski
Collective Soul
11 - Mark Saleski
Social Distortion
12 - Mark Saleski
Bonnie Tyler
13 - Mark Saleski
Steve Perry
wow, this problem is worse than expected
14 - JC Mosquito
Ouch - you're right.
15 - Donald Gibson
Paul Young?
16 - Pico
Percy Sledge,
who rode "When A Man Loves A Woman" all the way to the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.
17 - Glen Boyd
...and let's not even get into the eighties.
Flock of Seagulls, Heaven 17, Haircut One Hundred, Bananarama...the mind simply boggles at the possibilities here...
-Glen
18 - Mark Saleski
Aruigius G
almost forgot!
19 - Glen Boyd
That would be a "no-hit" wonder Mark!
-Glen