It's no wonder that mandolinist David Grisman came up with the name "Dawg Music" to describe his style of playing, which draws from bluegrass, jazz, and many other forms of music. This 1978 recording has long been a favorite of Grisman's fans, as all of the compositions and performances have stood the test of time. Grisman's lively "Dawg's Bull" and guitarist Tony Rice's upbeat "Devlin'" set a high standard at the opening of the album, yet the remaining tracks continue to meet the high watermark of the first two songs. In addition to Rice's presence throughout the recording, Grisman utilizes five different bassists (only one song, "Dawgology," features two of them together), violinist Darol Anger, mandolinist Mike Marshall, and on two selections, the jazz violin master Stéphane Grappelli.
Where Pyromania had set the standard for polished, catchy pop-metal, Hysteria only upped the ante. Pyromania's slick, layered Mutt Lange production turned into a painstaking obsession with dense sonic detail on Hysteria, with the result that some critics dismissed the record as a stiff, mechanized pop sell-out (perhaps due in part to Rick Allen's new, partially electronic drum kit). But Def Leppard's music had always employed big, anthemic hooks, and few of the pop-metal bands who had hit the charts in the wake of Pyromania could compete with Leppard's sense of craft; certainly none had the pop songwriting savvy to produce seven chart singles from the same album, as the stunningly consistent Hysteria did.
When this two-LP set was initially released in January 1971, Canned Heat was back to its R&B roots, sporting slightly revised personnel. In the spring of the previous year, Larry "The Mole" Taylor (bass) and Harvey Mandel (guitar) simultaneously accepted invitations to join John Mayall's concurrent incarnation of the Bluesbreakers…
Considerably lighter than Madman Across the Water, Honky Chateau is a rollicking collection of ballads, rockers, blues, country-rock, and soul songs. On paper, it reads like an eclectic mess, but it plays as the most focused and accomplished set of songs Elton John and Bernie Taupin ever wrote…
After the guest-star-drenched No Reason to Cry failed to make much of an impact commercially, Eric Clapton returned to using his own band for Slowhand. The difference is substantial – where No Reason to Cry struggled hard to find the right tone, Slowhand opens with the relaxed, bluesy shuffle of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" and sustains it throughout the course of the album…
461 Ocean Boulevard is Eric Clapton's second studio solo album, arriving after his side project of Derek and the Dominos and a long struggle with heroin addiction. Although there are some new reggae influences, the album doesn't sound all that different from the rock, pop, blues, country, and R&B amalgam of Eric Clapton…
Although Eric Clapton has released a bevy of live albums, none of them have ever quite captured the guitarist's raw energy and dazzling virtuosity. The double live album Just One Night may have gotten closer to that elusive goal than most of its predecessors, but it is still lacking in many ways…
Having made his best album since 461 Ocean Boulevard with Slowhand, Eric Clapton followed with Backless, which took the same authoritative, no-nonsense approach. If it wasn't quite the masterpiece, or the sales monster, that Slowhand had been, this was probably because of that usual Clapton problem: material…