Captain Hook

A John Williams masterpiece, the emotion he evokes through this music is incredible: it can make you experience what the characters in the movie are feeling – see the menace of Captain Hook, or find your happy thought and fly. One could just sit and listen to it for hours without finding all the little nuances in the music. It includes the vocal selections "We Don't Wanna Grow Up" and "When You're Alone."

Captain Beyond is a one-of-a-kind progressive album with rock, heavy metal, and jazz influences with a "space rock" lyrical bend. Formed by former members of Deep Purple (Rod Evans, vocals), Iron Butterfly (Rhino, lead guitar, and Lee Dorman, bass), and Johnny Winter (Bobby Caldwell, drums) Captain Beyond is an album that flows from riff to riff, drumbeat to drumbeat, often with various time signatures within the same song. Taking a tip from the Moody Blues, songs flow directly into each other without benefit of any lag time between selections. Taken as a whole, the album is kind of a rush, as quick, riff-laden guitar lines predominate for a few songs before slowing down temporarily into a lull until the next takeoff.

A few days after an acclaimed performance at the 2001 IAJE Conference in New Orleans, pianist Benny Green was joined in the studio by his former bassist Christian McBride and guitarist Russell Malone to record this terrific CD. Five of the six trio tracks are originals by Green; they include the driving Stanley Turrentine-inspired "Pittsburgh Brethren," the funky "Captain Hook" (Green's nickname for McBride during their early trio days), the easygoing "Russelln'," in honor of Malone's considerable talent, and the soulful "Beg Your Parlan," in honor of the polio-inflicted but phenomenal pianist Horace Parlan, Green's fellow Pittsburgh native. The trio also swings mightily on a mellow version of Carl Perkins' "Grooveyard"…

Unconditionally Guaranteed, the universally derided album from Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band is commonly regarded as the nadir of the Captain’s career, the pariah among the pearls. From the cover depicting a weasel-eyed Beefheart clutching fistfuls of money to the lightweight and accessible tunes centring on themes of love, sex and happiness, people claim to hate this album with a burning passion. Even Beefheart wrote it off, insisting that buyers should take it back to the shop and get their money back, taking advantage of the guarantee…