Emel Sayin

Compared To That is that musical happy place somewhere between contemporary/modern jazz but with an old school sensibility. Bromberg is not reinventing the musical wheel. What Brian Bromberg does so incredibly well here is expand his sound and push the music forward. Guest artists include such diverse talents as Jeff Lorber, Bela Fleck and Randy Brecker combined with a deceptively subtle swing of a walking bass line punctuated with attitude so if this release doesn't make your musical back leg shake you may want to see if your autopsy report is ready.

Guitarist Smokin' Joe Kubek and his partner, singer-guitarist Bnois King, were signed to Bullseye Blues just after the bubble burst on the crossover appeal of electric Texas blues, with the breakup of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1990. While the label may have hoped they would fill those shoes, Kubek and King have never, in seven albums, really made much of a move to the mainstream, remaining content to turn out faithful recreations of Texas-style blues. On their first few albums, they recorded a lot of covers, while their most recent efforts have consisted entirely of band originals, which is also the case on Bite Me!

The Mannish Boys lineup may change, but it is always one of the most solid bands ever put together and this incarceration is no different. Led by the Sugar Ray Rayford and Randy Chortkoff up front, with Kirk Fletcher and Frank Goldwasser as axe men, Willie J. Campbell on bass and Jimi Bott on drums, they are as solid a blues band as one can find anywhere. And then you add the likes of Candye Kane and Laura Chavez, Kim Wilson, Steve Freund, Kid Ramos, Mike Welch, Fred Kaplan and Bob Corritore (among others) and it becomes a blues extravaganza! Randy Chortkoff has steered this band and his label quite well, and this sixth CD for the ‘Boys remains centered in the blues and delivers a powerful punch. It’s stripped down some, but it works well, and maybe even better!

Following the success of Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot continued his success by releasing a greatest-hits compilation. A double album (now a single CD), it contained the most popular songs from his Warner Bros. years on disc two, and he re-recorded many of his early songs for side one of record one. Although not as good, perhaps, as the originals, this did bring them up to date with his current sound style. Just about all the favorites are here (except "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which hadn't been recorded yet when this set was put together and appears on Lightfoot's second volume of Gord's Gold), making this a good general overview of a strong talent. When Warner transferred the double LP to CD, "Affair on 8th Avenue" was dropped from the program to make the set fit on a single disc. Randy Newman arranged the orchestration on "Minstrel of the Dawn," by the way.