50 Shades of Fun

Sharon Kovacs, who records and performs as Kovacs, is a Dutch singer with a darkly alluring, soul-steeped voice that recalls that of Amy Winehouse. As a youngster, Kovacs played in bands and performed at talent shows, but she didn't make any serious moves until after she graduated high school, when she auditioned for Rock City Institute, a music school based in her hometown of Eindhoven. She was accepted but found that she and her teachers were a poor match. Through social media, she contacted Oscar Holleman and impressed the producer enough to spark a collaboration. The two involved additional songwriters and recorded an album in Holland and Cuba.

Sharon Kovacs, who records and performs as Kovacs, is a Dutch singer with a darkly alluring, soul-steeped voice that recalls that of Amy Winehouse. As a youngster, Kovacs played in bands and performed at talent shows, but she didn't make any serious moves until after she graduated high school, when she auditioned for Rock City Institute, a music school based in her hometown of Eindhoven. She was accepted but found that she and her teachers were a poor match. Through social media, she contacted Oscar Holleman and impressed the producer enough to spark a collaboration. The two involved additional songwriters and recorded an album in Holland and Cuba.

The usual perception of early Deep Purple is that it was a band with a lot of potential in search of a direction. And that might be true of their debut LP, put together in three days of sessions in May of 1968, but it's still a hell of an album…

The usual perception of early Deep Purple is that it was a band with a lot of potential in search of a direction. And that might be true of their debut LP, put together in three days of sessions in May of 1968, but it's still a hell of an album. From the opening bars of "And the Address," it's clear that they'd gotten down the fundamentals of heavy metal from day one, and at various points the electricity and the beat just surge forth in ways that were startlingly new in the summer of 1968…

The usual perception of early Deep Purple is that it was a band with a lot of potential in search of a direction. And that might be true of their debut LP, put together in three days of sessions in May of 1968, but it's still a hell of an album. From the opening bars of "And the Address," it's clear that they'd gotten down the fundamentals of heavy metal from day one, and at various points the electricity and the beat just surge forth in ways that were startlingly new in the summer of 1968…