Labor of Love

THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE is Bon Jovi’s 14th studio album since their 1984 debut. It reunites Bon Jovi with Grammy Award®-winning producer John Shanks, who began working with the band in 2005, on the RIAA platinum Have A Nice Day, which entered the charts at #1 in 15 countries worldwide. This will be Bon Jovi’s first major release since What About Now (2013), which was the band’s third consecutive multi-platinum album to enter Soundscan at #1 (following Lost Highway in 2007, and The Circle in 2009).

Vocalist Jimmy Nail first came to prominence in England as an actor during the early '80s, in the highly successful BBC-TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet. His next TV work, Spender, was a labor of love; he wrote and produced the series, starring as undercover detective Freddie Spender as well. He won several awards for the show, which also launched a best-selling novel. More awards were forthcoming for his series Crocodile Shoes, in which he played a third-rate country singer. Nail began recording in the mid-'80s, and first gained an American contract with the 1992 album Growing Up in Public. His 1995 LP Crocodile Shoes – based on the TV series – went triple-platinum in Great Britain (and spawned a best-selling follow-up one year later). In 1996, Jimmy Nail earned his most popular role, that of tango singer Agustín Magaldi in Madonna's feature-film version of Evita.

After more than two decades of touring and recording, The Appleseed Cast have slowly transformed themselves from emo new-comers to indie-rock elder-statesmen. The Fleeting Light of Impermanence, the band’s first release since 2013’s Illumination Ritual, finds the Kansas-based band once again putting a fresh spin on their trademark heart-on-your-sleeve anthems.

The original 1970 MGM album on CD and Digital for the first time, plus a second disc of rarities and previously unissued songs. Lester Bangs, in Rolling Stone magazine, said the album was, “like a labor of love, a salute from a young visionary to an ancient sage.” Allen Ginsberg began “tuning” William Blake’s poetry in 1968 (inspired by attending the tumultuous protests at that year’s Democratic Convention in Chicago), but the origin of the album dates back to a 1948 vision or “auditory illumination” as he called it, of William Blake reciting poetry to him in his Spanish Harlem apartment.

This is not the vintage Don Covay sound that many of his fans may know about and you won't find any of his big hits on this CD but this 1969 album sounds like a labor of love, something that Covay was dying to record for a long, long time. You can hear the sincerity, vitality and enthusiasm on every track. Wonderful album. As other reviewers have noted. this is a bit of a hybrid. Not a traditional blues album by any means, but one that mixed blues with soul and a dash of rock too. Very satisfying results. There are times when Covay is singing, that I swear it's Mick Jagger. The vocal inflections are that similar sometimes. But the real highlights are the songs themselves, plus the guitar playing. Something to savor.