Deep Purple Ballads

Fresh Sound presents 17 solid selections retrieved from Lionel Hampton's brief involvement with the Jazztone label. Recorded in New York City during the summer of 1956, this mixture of standards, ballads, and original work represents mainstream jazz at its warmest, friendliest, and most accessible. Hamp's front line consisted of trumpeter Ray Copeland, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, and tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson; the rhythm people were pianist Oscar Dennard, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Gus Johnson. Hamp played vibraphone on all but two of the tracks; he is heard at the piano on "Look! Four Hands" and does marvelous things with a marimba on Gerry Mulligan's "Line for Lyons." The Jazztone record label existed between the years 1955 and 1957.

A surprisingly good album from this German band Okta Logue (formerly Zaphire Oktalogue). In a way it can be regarded as their 'second' Debut. The well-known, but now more prominent popular lead guitars expand for a wide range of unconventional instrumentation by creating a remarkable variety and atmospheric depth within the six songs. Wide organ rugs, lap steel guitars and patches of orchestral wind instruments mark the crafty musical development of the band. Ballads Of A Burden offers a wide musical spectrum, ranging from deep Pink Floyd-ish influences to well dosed 70's progressive excursions.

Taken together, David Coverdale's first two post-Deep Purple solo albums, 1977's White Snake and 1978's Northwinds, are rather more subdued and, while not exactly laid-back, more in a mainstream late-'70s rock groove than you might expect from a singer who fronted both Deep Purple and Whitesnake, with pit stops for roots rock, AOR ballads, and gently funky stuff. Taken on their own terms outside of the context of Deep Purple and Whitesnake, they're mediocre listening, the product of a man uncertain about where to take his music as a solo act, without the rock-hard hard rock support of one of his steady bands.

While they started off being marketed as a band, past a certain point, W.A.S.P. became primarily a Blackie Lawless-led project. Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as it was the Lawless one that has written the vast majority of the group's tunes and has dictated their direction from the get-go. And also past a certain point, W.A.S.P. went from shock-rock poster children for the PMRC ("Animal," anyone?), and began focusing on conceptual albums and more mature lyrical subject matter. And it's the latter direction that W.A.S.P. continues with on their 2009 offering, Babylon. Supposedly based on "biblical visions of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (as confirmed by the album cover's doodle), Babylon is still metallic-based, and such tracks as "Live to Die Another Day" and "Babylon's Burning" are instant W.A.S.P. anthems…