Contributor

66 items by Parke Puterbaugh

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  The Hunter | ALBUM REVIEW

  With Autoamerican and, now, The Hunter, Blondie has become more difficult to enjoy, even as the group has strained to become something you can "appreciate." Appreciate for the potpourri of Third World rhythms, which are handled so...

  July 9, 1986 12:00 AM ET
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  Old Ways | ALBUM REVIEW

  Are you ready for the country? Neil Young posed the question way back when, on Harvest; now, thirteen years later, he's restated it as a command: "Get Back to the Country," he urges on Old Ways, with...

  October 24, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Some Of My Best Jokes Are Friends | ALBUM REVIEW

  George Clinton always seems to have more projects on the table than the CIA. His new album, Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, might actually give the boys at Central Intelligence cause to hammer out a...

  August 29, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  The Beach Boys | ALBUM REVIEW

  The Beach Boys brings to an end nearly five years of recording inactivity of a band that has doggedly held on through all kinds of rough water. Having endured more hardships than any group should suffer —...

  August 15, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Shaken 'N' Stirred | ALBUM REVIEW

  This couldn't be the same goldenhaired lemon squeezer who fronted Led Zeppelin, could it? The fingerprints identify him as that Robert Plant, erstwhile rock god and latter-day solo artist and Honeydripper. So what is this strange-sounding new-music...

  July 18, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Fables of the Reconstruction | ALBUM REVIEW

  One time, Jack Kerouac asked William Burroughs to read and react to something he'd written. Burroughs did so, and said he liked what he read. But that wasn't enough for Kerouac, who pressed: What do you specifically...

  June 20, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Steady Nerves | ALBUM REVIEW

  Once upon a time, Graham Parker was pub rock's rawest nerve and, along with Elvis Costello, New Wave's most literate malcontent. Nowadays, he's a happily married man who can boast of steady nerves, having put emotional traumas...

  June 6, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  A Sense of Wonder | ALBUM REVIEW

  A Sense Of Wonder is a plateau for Van Morrison: his first record for his new label, it draws upon and summarizes the last four albums he made for Warner Bros., which documented a period of spiritual...

  May 9, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Ocean Rain | ALBUM REVIEW

  Suspended somewhere 'twixt heaven and hell, Echo and the Bunnymen take an oddly visceral pleasure in their spiritual limbo, evoking a vast, white, arctic expanse that's silent, unbroken and pure — but also deadly. The band's fourth...

  July 19, 1984 12:00 AM ET
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  The Works | ALBUM REVIEW

  "Radio Gaga," the single that opens up the new Queen album, is another instant jewel in Queen's Top Forty crown. It's one more anthemic lament to that overfamiliar icon, sung and played with Queenly overkill in "Deutschland...

  April 12, 1984 12:00 AM ET
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  Rebel Yell | ALBUM REVIEW

  Equal parts hard rocker, glam rocker and punk rocker, Billy Idol has managed an estimable synthesis of the music of three decades on Rebel Yell, his second solo album. From the Sixties, he's brought a fair measure...

  January 19, 1984 12:00 AM ET
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  Pipes of Peace | ALBUM REVIEW

  After Tug of War. logically enough, come the Pipes of Peace. Carried, as it is, over two consecutive Paul McCartney records, the war-and-peace metaphor is not hard to miss. The message, too, is as simple and inarguable...

  January 19, 1984 12:00 AM ET
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  Alive, She Cried | ALBUM REVIEW

  Love 'em or loathe 'em, the Doors did manage to make the world wobble on its axis in their heyday. Jim Morrison may have been rock's first performance artist; he'd turn a concert into a theater of...

  December 8, 1983 12:00 AM ET
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  An Innocent Man | ALBUM REVIEW

  I don't care what consequence it brings," sings Billy Joel in "The Longest Time," an acapella number from his soul music tribute album, An Innocent Man. "I have been a fool for lesser things." Well, yes. One...

  August 18, 1983 12:00 AM ET
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  State of Confusion | ALBUM REVIEW

  For those like me who believe that the Kinks have been somewhat adrift in commercial commotion since their late-Seventies resurgence, State of Confusion, their twenty-eighth American album, is a strong reaffirmation of their best qualities. What makes...

  July 7, 1983 12:00 AM ET
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  Trans | ALBUM REVIEW

  "Well, Mr. Weird is at it again" was one of the first reactions I heard to the synthesized sounds and Vocoderized vocals that typify a lot of the material on Neil Young's new album. Trans. With Young,...

  February 3, 1983 12:00 AM ET
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  Absolutely Live | ALBUM REVIEW

  Recorded at some of the largest auditoriums in the world, Rod Stewart's Christmas-season cash-in, Absolutely Live, is a mostly noisy record that, in all its grand showbiz gesturing, plays to the back rows. Stewart's entrance, to the...

  December 9, 1982 12:00 AM ET
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  Ice Cream For Crow | ALBUM REVIEW

  Ice Cream for Crow, Captain Beefheart's twelfth album, will surely attain the sacred status enjoyed by the rest of this beloved eccentric's musical canon, and it will do so without so much as a critical blink. So...

  November 11, 1982 12:00 AM ET
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  Zombie Birdhouse | ALBUM REVIEW

  "I mean, whatever happened to when a guy just wanted to play some honest music for his peer group?" — Iggy Pop I'm afraid to wonder just who Iggy Pop's peer group might be, but I'd willingly wager...

  November 11, 1982 12:00 AM ET
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  It's Hard | ALBUM REVIEW

  It figures. Just when the Who had ceased to matter much — the band members having channeled a lot of their power and...

  September 30, 1982 12:00 AM ET