Chinese

Peggy Lee returned to Capitol Records in 1957 after a five-year stretch at Decca Records, but it wasn't until 1958 that Decca got around to releasing Sea Shells, an LP she had recorded during her tenure with the label. That the recording sat on the shelf for a while is not surprising given the contents, which make it Lee's most unusual album. Accompanied only by harp player Stella Castellucci and harpsichordist Gene DiNovi, she essays a group of art songs and Chinese poetry (thankfully translated into English) on this thoughtful, esoteric project…

Mike Watt - Ball-Hog or Tugboat
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC (tracks): 421 MB | NO Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Columbia # CK 67086 | Country/Year: US 1995
Genre: Rock | Style: Alternative Rock

For his first solo album, Mike Watt assembled a different band for each track, creating a veritable who's who of post-punk and alternative rock – Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore, J Mascis, Frank Black, Evan Dando, Dave Pirner, Henry Rollins, Flea, Lee Ranaldo, Mike D, and Pat Smear all appear, among others. Predictably, the sound is somewhat schizophrenic, but no more so than the average Minutemen album. (…) And Watt's own vocals on "Big Train" are as big-hearted, sly, and funny as the album itself.

The names of Johann Sebastian Bach, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff do not necessarily conjure images and sounds of jazz in one's mind, that is until one has listened to recordings by the Classical Jazz Quartet. Although these musicians utilize the same instruments as the Modern Jazz Quartet, they are in no way clones or copycats of that groundbreaking group. They have very much their own sound and style. This is not surprising given the huge talent of the musicians involved; all four are virtuosos on their respective instruments. The themes, although composed in a different time and place, become excellent vehicles for complex, sometimes, bluesy, often swinging and always fresh improvisations in the hands of these musicians.

On the strength of the immense success of Dido & Aeneas and King Arthur, in 1692 Purcell went on to produce The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer-Night’s Dream. The work is, in fact, a ‘semi-opera’, or ‘opera with dialogue’, in which only some of the crucial scenes are provided with music. But this version of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream by the ‘Orpheus Britannicus’ became almost as famous as the play that inspired it, with its love scenes, its supernatural scenes and its innate sense of musical humour investing it with an irresistible savour and enchantment.

European baroque music composed by Teodorico Pedrini at the Chinese Emperor's court where all kinds of European instruments were available and even built. There is nothing "Chinese" in Pedrini's music, but on this recording each of Pedrini's sonatas is preceded by a rather meditative and Chinese sounding "divertissement chinois" by another European composer at the Chinese court, Joseph-Marie Amiot.

Once Appetite for Destruction finally became a hit in 1988, Guns N' Roses bought some time by delivering the half-old/half-new LP G N' R Lies as a follow-up. Constructed as a double EP, with the "indie" debut Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide coming first and four new acoustic-based songs following on the second side, G N' R Lies is where the band metamorphosed from genuine threat to joke. Neither recorded live nor released by an indie label, Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide is competent bar band boogie, without the energy or danger of Appetite for Destruction. The new songs are considerably more problematic. "Patience" is Guns N' Roses at their prettiest and their sappiest, the most direct song they recorded to date. Its emotional directness makes the misogyny of "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)" and the pitiful slanders of "One in a Million" sound genuine…

The last official studio recording of the 1990s for Guns N' Roses was 1993's THE SPAGHETTI INCIDENT?. This collection of mostly punk covers was released at a time when G N' R was reeling from both internal dissension (founding member Izzy Stradlin left after the release of USE YOUR ILLUSION I & II) and the great grunge explosion of 1991 that made the band seem passe. Rather than jumping on any bandwagons, the California quintet instead paid homage to heroes overlooked by kids caught up in buying the right kind of flannel…