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15 items by Gordon Fletcher

  • KISS

    KISS | ALBUM REVIEW

    Kiss is an exciting Brooklynbased band with an imaginative stage presentation and a tight new album. The music is all hard-edged — they call it "thunderock" — and throughout their electrical storm solid craftsmanship prevails. Paul Stanley's...

    December 28, 1978 12:00 AM ET
  • Bongo Fury

    Bongo Fury | ALBUM REVIEW

    Zappa, Beefheart and Co. ask the listener to take the ultimate leap of faith: to accept the validity of their every musical move. And a hearty leap it is. Beefheart's meandering musings usually have all the continuity...

    January 1, 1976 12:00 AM ET
  • Toys In The Attic

    Toys In The Attic | ALBUM REVIEW

    Aerosmith, a five-piece Boston hard-rock band with almost unlimited potential, can't seem to hurdle the last boulder separating it from complete success. Like Toys in the Attic, their two previous LPs have had several stellar moments which...

    July 31, 1975 12:00 AM ET
  • Dressed To Kill

    Dressed To Kill | ALBUM REVIEW

    Kiss does not play music — it makes very high-volume noise. If rock & roll intrigues you, though, you'd best be advised that for all the simplicity, overstatement and repetition within its records, Kiss does make fantastically...

    July 17, 1975 12:00 AM ET
  • That's The Way Of The World

    That's The Way Of The World | ALBUM REVIEW

    Lousy production works to this LP's detriment — Maurice White has surprisingly chosen to have the entire album sound "hot." It easily befits such uptempo numbers as "Happy Feelin'" and the popular single "Shining Star," helping them...

    July 3, 1975 12:00 AM ET
  • Standing on the Verge of Getting It On

    Standing on the Verge of Getting It On | ALBUM REVIEW

    Certainly no one can accuse Funkadelic of taking themselves too seriously. Here they've come up with a record that seems to be the initial mating of Afro-funk and LSD! The off handed spaciness that was so much...

    January 2, 1975 12:00 AM ET
  • Here Come The Warm Jets

    Here Come The Warm Jets | ALBUM REVIEW

    One of the more intriguing developments on today's English rock scene has been the emergence of a cult of marginal musicians bent on doing "weird" things to the traditional pop song format. Be it in the name...

    October 24, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Not Fragile

    Not Fragile | ALBUM REVIEW

    Imagine Black Sabbath without instrumental dynamism and lyrical vision; imagine Led Zeppelin without pyrotechnics: What you're imagining is the Bachman-Turner Overdrive — a lowest-common-denominator rock band that's found immense commercial success in a stylistic limbo between heavy-metal...

    October 24, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Second Helping

    Second Helping | ALBUM REVIEW

    This group is frequently compared to the Allman Brothers but it lacks that band's sophistication and professionalism. If a song doesn't feel right to the Brothers, they work on it until it does; if it isn't right...

    July 4, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Apostrophe (')

    Apostrophe (') | ALBUM REVIEW

    Having proven his stellar musicianship on a series of instrumental-based solo albums, Frank Zappa is now returning to the musical satire on which his formidable reputation was built. Apostrophe turns out to be so brilliantly successful, though,...

    June 6, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath

    Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath | ALBUM REVIEW

    Though they are best known as the planet's premier heavy-metal band, Black Sabbath's major contribution has been to successfully capture the gist of specifically Seventies culture through their music. They relate to this impersonal, mechanical decade much...

    February 13, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Mystery To Me

    Mystery To Me | ALBUM REVIEW

    Though they're all probably excellent musicians with talent coming out of their ears, the fact still remains that ever since Fleetwood Mac lost its three guitarists extraordinaire they've become increasingly less interesting. Things that are better felt...

    January 3, 1974 12:00 AM ET
  • Queen

    Queen | ALBUM REVIEW

    Rumor has it that Queen shall soon be crowned "the new Led Zeppelin," which is an event that would certainly suit this observer just fine. There's no doubt that this funky, energetic English quartet has all the...

    December 6, 1973 12:00 AM ET
  • Houses of the Holy

    Houses of the Holy | ALBUM REVIEW

    For me, Led Zeppelin began as the epitome of everything good about rock: solid guitar work, forceful vocals and rhythmic backing, devotion to primal blues forms, and most of all, thunderous excitement on stage and vinyl. But...

    June 7, 1973 12:00 AM ET
  • Billion Dollar Babies

    Billion Dollar Babies | ALBUM REVIEW

    Concerning Alice Cooper, it is by now axiomatic that any new album is intended only as the soundtrack of the latest group traveling extravaganza. But even considered as a soundtrack, Billion Dollar Babies seems an abortion. The...

    May 24, 1973 12:00 AM ET