Mysterious Meishi Smile

Taken from the 2003 album "Other People's Songs", "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)" is a cover of Cockney Rebel's smash UK hit. The US version of the single contains three versions of this song, plus three exclusive tracks.

As an album title, Smile carries an air of determined pleasantry, and Katy Perry could use her share of good spirits in 2020. Witness, Smile's predecessor, found Perry pushing her artistic limits, an exercise that didn't find an audience, so she's chosen to retreat to safe territory for Smile. Mostly, this results in Perry devoting herself to dance-pop that's coolly glassy on the surface and vaguely positive underneath. It's dance music that's not intended for the club; rather, it's a soundtrack for everyday events, from work to exercise to relaxation. It's also music that tacitly acknowledges that Katy Perry is beginning her slow transition away from pop culture's center stage.

"Smile" is the second studio album by "Danger Danger" front-man Ted Poley, originally released in 2007. In contrast to its predecessor, "Smile" as a release falls clearly in the melodic rock/AOR genre perhaps partly influenced by the change in record label (Poley has been signed to "Frontiers" records since "Smile"). The melodies and vocal hooks are plentiful and the music is how melodic rock should be.

Crack a Smile… and More! is the fifth studio album from the American hard rock band Poison. The record was released on March 14, 2000. The album features guitarist Blues Saraceno, who was hired as the band's new lead guitarist following the firing of Richie Kotzen in late 1993. Saraceno appeared on the band's last album release Poison's Greatest Hits: 1986–1996 in 1996, which featured two new tracks with him on lead guitar. Those two new tracks re-appear on this album along with thirteen new songs and five bonus tracks. The album moved around 12,000 copies in its first week of release to debut at #131 on The Billboard 200 album chart.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers' Koch release Smile continues, to some extent, from her previous Avie issue Birds in Warped Time in that she is attempting to expand beyond the constraints of typical classical CD programming combining a couple of big works, or collecting a bunch of little ones, "encores" into something more imaginative and in more keeping with her own taste and personality. With that, Meyers has invested some measure of muscle into developing repertoire that fits her generous, yet transparent tone with the same degree of comfort as one of her designer-made concert gowns. Here we have an arrangement of the Japanese melody "Kojo No Tsuki," made by Meyers herself in collaboration with Shigeaki Saegusa, for solo violin.

Takeo Moriyama (森山 威男 Moriyama Takeo, born January 27, 1945 in Katsunuma (present Kōshū) in Yamanashi Prefecture) is a Japanese jazz drummer. Moriyama played piano as a child before switching to drums in his late teens. He then attended the Tokyo University of the Arts, taking a degree in percussion performance. He joined Yosuke Yamashita's small group in 1967, and went on several international tours with the group until leaving it in 1975. He moved to Nagoya in 1977 and began leading his own groups. In addition to Yamashita he has performed or recorded with Aki Takase, Akira Miyazawa, Fumio Itabashi, Masahiko Satoh, Peter Brotzmann, Nobuyoshi Ino, Takehiro Honda, and Manfred Schoof.

The Remo Four's lone album is an above-average slab of mid-'60s British mod-soul, with a tinge of jazz. Tony Ashton's organ playing could hold its own with that of better-known players in the same style, such as Graham Bond, Alan Price, and Georgie Fame; Colin Manley's vocals were first-rate blue-eyed soul; and Phil Rogers' bass was very assertive and well-recorded by the standards of the era. Although Smile! consisted wholly of covers, these were imaginatively and energetically executed, especially when they stretched out into some jazz-soul grooves on "Brother Where Are You" and "Jive Samba"; on "No Money Down," they sound quite a bit like the early Animals. The CD reissue on Repertoire adds eight important bonus tracks, half of which are from 1966 and 1967 singles, and half previously unreleased. Of these, the highlight is their storming version of Mike Settle's "Sing Hallelujah"; these also include a couple of original songs, although they aren't so hot.