Ray Charles Deja Vu Definitive Gold

Frank Vignola is another well-known straight-ahead electric guitarist who's aware that an instrumental cover of a well-known hit is only as good as its arrangement is. Vignola does a stylistic 180 and goes the smooth jazz/light funk route on Deja Vu, a spirited homage to instantly recognizable pop gems of the 70's and 80s. While a few of the tunes are given pretty much the easy listening treatment (a laid-back take on Carole King's "It's Too Late" is saved only by lightning improvisations at the end, for instance), Vignola finds wildly creative ways to tackle songs that were actually more mundane in their original incarnations…

Based on the title, it's hard not to think that Déjà Vu Live finds Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reaching back into their past, perhaps even performing their classic 1970 album in its entirety. That's not true, although there is an album that comes close to being performed in its entirety here, and that's Neil Young's 2006 political manifesto Living with War, a controversial record that Young supported by re-teaming with CSN for a tour — a tour that was documented in the Young-directed feature documentary Déjà Vu Live. Got that? It's a series of circumstances a bit too confusing for music that's so straightforward, as the Living with War tour was as direct as the album itself.

One of the most hotly awaited second albums in history – right up there with those by the Beatles and the Band – Déjà Vu lived up to its expectations and rose to number one on the charts. Those achievements are all the more astonishing given the fact that the group barely held together through the estimated 800 hours it took to record Déjà Vu and scarcely functioned as a group for most of that time. Déjà Vu worked as an album, a product of four potent musical talents who were all ascending to the top of their game coupled with some very skilled production, engineering, and editing. There were also some obvious virtues in evidence – the addition of Neil Young to the Crosby, Stills & Nash lineup added to the level of virtuosity, with Young and Stephen Stills rising to new levels of complexity and volume on their guitars.

John Fogerty is many things, but predictable is not one of them. His solo career has proceeded in fits and starts, with waits as long as a decade separating solo albums, and when the records did arrive, they could be as brilliant as Centerfield or as bewilderingly misdirected as Eye of the Zombie. There was no telling what a new Fogerty record would bring, but perhaps the strangest thing about his sixth studio album, 2004's Deja Vu All Over Again, is that it's the closest thing to an average, by-the-books John Fogerty album that he's released in his solo career. Unlike its immediate predecessor, the Southern-obsessed Blue Moon Swamp, there is no unifying lyrical or musical theme, nor was it released with the comeback fanfare of that 1997 affair.

One of the most hotly awaited second albums in history - right up there with those by the Beatles and the Band - Déjà Vu lived up to its expectations and rose to number one on the charts. Those achievements are all the more astonishing given the fact that the group barely held together through the estimated 800 hours it took to record Déjà Vu and scarcely functioned as a group for most of that time. Déjà Vu worked as an album, a product of four potent musical talents who were all ascending to the top of their game coupled with some very skilled production, engineering, and editing. There were also some obvious virtues in evidence - the addition of Neil Young to the Crosby, Stills & Nash lineup added to the level of virtuosity, with Young and Stephen Stills rising to new levels of complexity and volume on their guitars…