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  • Friday Throwback – Let’s Chill

    I didn’t really get into Guy when their first album dropped. It wasn’t until I Wanna Get With You did I really notice them. It just happened to be that I was listening to a lot more stuff the year their second album came out. And then, there was this song.

    • What’s up with the glasses and flat top look?
    • I don’t remember there being a ballerina in this video.
    • Teddy Riley playing the piano in a bathrobe is just unintentionally funny.
    • Is there any reason why the color of the video changes?
    • Is it a dream or reality? Cause if it’s a fantasy, please don’t wake me.
    • Holy cow. That was a gutter ball from the word go.
    • I don’t get the singing on stools deal, but oh well, this was the early 90s.

    Paging Aaron Hall. Paging Aaron Hall. Come back to R&B music man. We need you.

  • Chart Recap: The January Dregs

    January has typically been no-man’s land when it comes to the music business. That’s never made much sense to me. I mean, wouldn’t you feel a bit more compulsion to release new music when there are folks running around with gift certificates and gift cards? It’s not like there’s not a precedent for music taking off at the beginning of a year. Way back in 1999, a young girl named Britney Spears released her first album right at the beginning of January, and that album went on to sell some 14 million copies. Not bad, huh?
    Hmmm..whatever happened to her, anyway??
    Moving right along, here we are in the first week of February, and the past couple of weeks of charts have looked like a hot mess. Not only are sales already behind those in 2007 by something like 10%, but there has not been one major release by a new artist through the whole month. While the chart figures have not reached the level of futility reached last year by the “Dreamgirls” soundtrack, they have come close, with only Radiohead’s 1/1 release marching over the 100,000 scanned mark over the course of January. Alicia Keys and the “Juno” soundtrack have traded places at the top with sales figures between 62,000 and 70,000. Numbers which, back in the heyday of the music industry, would have barely placed in the Top Ten.
    Thankfully, the triumverate of Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow and Lenny Kravitz should give a healthy(er) glow to the first week of charts, with sales kicks also expected later in the month from Valentine’s Day and the Grammy awards.

  • Super Tuesday!!

    Not just for the Giants victory parade (GO BLUE!!) or the big Democratic primaries (GO BAM!!), but because albums come out this week by artists that lots of people care about. Yay for Super Tuesdays! Here are this week’s three most anticipated releases, in ascending order of whether I care about them or not.

    Since breaking on to the music scene in 1994, Sheryl Crow‘s been fairly reliable, dropping hit album after hit album in crunchy-rock style, mixing anthemic hits with more reflective material. Her sixth studio album, Detours, promises more of the same, notable because it marks a reunion with Bill Bottrell, who produced her Grammy-winnin’ debut album Tuesday Night Music Club. It’s also her first album since adopting a child as well as being diagnosed with (and subsequently beating) breast cancer. Hopefully this doesn’t lead to her beating her listeners over the head with political nonsense like Melissa Etheridge (bless her heart) did on her absolutely rotten last album.

    http://www.sherylcrow.com/

    Speaking of rotten last albums, I would imagine lots of copies of the more recent handful of Lenny Kravitz adorn the shelves of used CD stores nationwide. He started out aping John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Mayfield. After a 1998 Greatest Hits album cemented his staying power, Lenny then started to ape himself. Most of his recent songs have been Kravitz-by-numbers, and I’ll be honest with you: even his latest song, “I’ll Be Waiting”, sounds a HELL of a lot like 1998’s “Again” (his biggest hit). However, it’s a good song despite the self-parody and it might bode well for Lenny’s new album (his eighth) entitled It Is Time For a Love Revolution. Once a hippie…

    http://www.lennykravitz.com/

    Well, Jack Johnson isn’t exactly a hippie, but a quick listen to any of his albums will tip you off that the Hawaiian based surfer/rocker’s lyrical style is based on hippie ideals. This is not a bad thing, as Jack’s records (four of ’em if you include 2006’s Curious George soundtrack) are all highly recommended by yours truly. If Jimmy Buffett was thirty years younger and played the comedian angle a lot less, he’d be Jack Johnson (but probably not as good…hopefully I don’t get assassinated by a Parrothead for saying so). Anyway, for those of us who have high-stress city lifestyles and want to imagine what life is like barefoot on the beach with a ukulele, check out Jack’s Sleep Through The Static, my personal recommendation out of this week’s new releases (although the songs on Sheryl’s site sound good enough that I’ll probably get all three albums).

    http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com/

    Check out a full list of this week’s new releases at: http://www.pauseandplay.com/cdfront.htm