More than 20 years after Captain Beefheart's last musical outing, the Magic Band (sans the Captain) reconvened for the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival. Actually, it's a Magic Band that never was, consisting of Drumbo (John French) on drums, vocals, and harmonica; Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) on bass; and guitarists Mantis and Feelers Reebo (Gary Lucas and Denny Walley, respectively). (For the live shows, Robert Williams – another Magic Band alumnus – took over the drum chair when Drumbo had to sing and play harp.) Of course, these guys knew the material, but they don't just play the tunes, they attack them, summoning up the controlled chaos that made the original Captain Beefheart recordings such singular achievements.
Of all the Miles Davis recordings, the 16 weeks of sessions that created a single, two-selection LP produced by Teo Macero called A Tribute to Jack Johnson have been the most apocryphal. While the album itself was a confounding obscurity upon release – due to its closeness in proximity to the nearly simultaneous release of the vastly inferior yet infinitely more label-promoted Live at the Fillmore East – its reputation as the first complete fusion of jazz and rock is cemented. It also garnered a place in the history books for guitarist John McLaughlin, the axis around whose raw, slash-and-burn playing the entire album turns.
Anybody who has followed the development of Ray Wylie Hubbard as an artist over the last dozen years or so has had to be keenly aware that he's been moving through changes in lyric style, melodic invention, and production styles. He's also been on a spiritual odyssey in his music that culminated on the excellent Eternal & Lowdown. Growl is a record of an awareness gained; it is expressed in the most basic, elemental physical and emotional truths (from humor to doubt to surrender to anger at hypocrisy) in these songs.
A Wild Romance is the third studio album by the German synthpop band The Twins. Inspired primarily by bands like Depeche Mode, OMD, John Foxx, Devo, and The Human League, their earliest works were dance floor fillers, adding a little italo-esque edge for good measure. Music The Twins, very invokes fond memories and thoughts and is reflection of the emotion and soul also too wonderful back to the 80s.