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  • The 200-Word Review: Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey”

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    Much has been made about the spectre of loss lingering over Dave Matthews Band’s new LP “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King”. After all, it’s the first album the band’s released since the unexpected death of sax player LeRoi Moore. Truthfully, though, DMB’s no more fixated on loss on this album than they’ve been at any other point during their career, and “Big Whiskey” is by no means a mournful set. The quartet powers through a song cycle that’s more of a celebration of life and love (and sex) than it is about death, with the only obvious nods to Moore’s passing being the sax noodling that opens and closes the album.

    With veteran rock producer Rob Cavallo taking the reins on this album, it retains a shiny gloss while sounding far dirtier than 2005’s overproduced “Stand Up”. Highlights include the wickedly upbeat “Shake Me Like a Monkey”, the uber-jammy “Alligator Pie” (with it’s wildly shifting tempos and semi-nonsense lyrics), the ominous “Time Bomb” (on which Matthews howls Eddie Vedder-style), and the sexy “Seven”, on which Matthews unleashes a playful falsetto. The album flows together nicely, and although a major part of their operation may have departed, “Big Whiskey” finds the DMB in as good a form as they’ve ever been.

  • MJ To Lip Sync at London Shows?

    The King of Pop may not be singing at his much hyped concerts in London this summer according to a report in ContactMusic.

    The site quote Michael Jackson collaborator Ak0n as saying that Jackson would “perform”, but may not sing.

    The 50 year old pop star turns 51 this August and announced plans earlier this year for fifty concerts in London beginning in July.  The concerts immediately sold out and, according to published reports, could possibly generate enough income to solve the music star’s financial troubles.

    Speculating about MJ on Sonic Clash Radio in March, co-host Double G and his special guest (okay, me) mused about the concerts.  Double G says, “You don’t want the first concert …word to leak out that he doesn’t have it anymore.   That would be the worst thing I can’t imagine he wants anything but praise for that show.”

    Always eager to find something worse, I quickly chime in, “Even more of a threat to MJ than bad reviews…is if he is found to be lip syncing…I think that’s going to destroy any hope he has for musical redemption.”

    But what if a proxy, public red herring, stooge, collaborator like Akon spreads the word first that it’s a performance?  The debate is taking place now in our forum.  Go and be heard.

  • The Top 100 Songs of the ’00s, #95: “S.O.S.”

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    It’s amazing what producers and songwriters can do to a blank slate. Rihanna’s debut single, “Pon de Replay”, might get my vote as one of the most annoying songs of this past decade. I remember sneering at the TV every time the video came on VH-1’s top 20. However, just one year later, the Barbadian beauty was well on her way to becoming arguably the best singles artist of the decade (she’s the #2 artist on this list, with three songs on the survey). The song thatsent her on her way was this propulsive, sexy jam. Goosed along by a very prominent sample of ’80s classic “Tainted Love” (by Soft Cell), Rihanna channeled her thin voice into an attitudinal, erotic moan that was good enough to make us forget that we were (at the time) listening to a teenager. The song’s flirty, fun vibe took it to the top of the charts, becoming the first of Rihanna’s five chart-toppers this decade, and established her as one of the preeminent female pop singers of her generation.

    So suck it, “Pon de Replay”. “S.O.S.” marked the beginning of pop superstar Rihanna as we now know her, and for that, we as pop music listenerds (that was a typo, but I left it in, it kinda fits) should be quite appreciative.