Running

Jackson Browne went on tour in 1977 with a remarkable group of musicians to create an album about the road, on the road. The result was Running On Empty, a musical portrait of life on tour that is as brutally honest as it is achingly beautiful. Paul Nelson wrote in his original Rolling Stone review of the album that "Browne has consciously created a documentary, as brightly prosaic as it is darkly poetic, with a keen eye for the mundane as well as the magical."

Running for My Life is Judy Collins' 15th album for Elektra Records (not counting three compilations) in 19 years, and by now the 40-year-old singer knows what she wants in putting together an LP, which may help explain why this is her first album on which she alone is credited as producer. She still retains her affection for traditional folk music, which she demonstrates with a version of "Bright Morning Star." She continues to champion songwriters whose work she helped to popularize in the past, here taking another pass at Jacques Brel's "Marieke" and, as she had with Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," bringing the Broadway composer's work into the pop realm by performing both "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" and "Pretty Women" from his 1979 Broadway musical Sweeney Todd. Another songwriter she has called attention to recently is Hugh Prestwood, and she sings his "Almost Free," which, with Larry Gatlin's "I've Done Enough Dyin' Today," shows her continuing affinity for country music.

These two Bordeaux-born beatmakers mix electronic-infused hip-hop with the groove and melodies of 1930’s swing. Percussion solos played with scratches, beats, and melodies banged out on the MPC, everything is performed live, often incorporating guitars, brass sections, and drum sets. Currently the duo released their second album, ‘Running to the Moon’ in 2016, featuring the voices of Ua Tea, Blake Worrell, ASM among others.

Buffy Sainte-Marie has always been a good deal more versatile as a musician than most people realize, roaming through folk, blues, country, pop, and even pioneering electronica on her various albums, always using her Cree ancestry as an anchor, and very few singers have dealt with cultural polemics as intelligently as she has. Perhaps because of her restless drive to try new forms, Sainte-Marie's albums are often woefully (but endearingly) erratic and inconsistent, but each contains hidden gems, and while her eerie, vibrato-laden singing style can sound affected at times, her drive to constantly pull her agenda into new musical territories is inspiring. Running for the Drum is her first new album in 17 years, and while it probably won't change anyone's attitudes about her work, it wonderfully spotlights all of the musical themes, forms, and concerns she's pursued in the past four decades. The album opens with a pair of Native American rockers, "No No Keshagesh" and "Cho Cho Fire," that draw on Native American drum rhythms, and both are fiery and invigorating. She revisits one of her finest early songs, the beautiful and haunting "Little Wheel Spin and Spin."

Kiwi rock decadents Dragon's third album appeared in 1977 produced by Peter Dawkins, who tamed the verbose progressive rock sound of earlier efforts into an equally lurid pub rock sound. While their new approach took them chartwards and created one of the more extreme biographical histories in rock, the albums remain timepieces of a dark and decadent era for New Zealand rock probably best kept under the carpet…