There's no shortage of James Taylor hits collections out there, but that doesn't make this new live CD-DVD, any less welcome. Taylor's fans regard each reframing of his career as an artistic snapshot of his life at that moment, and this set offers a particularly warm portrait. Recorded at the Colonial Theatre near Taylor's home in the Berkshires, One Man Band finds the singer re-engaging such classics as "Something in the Way She Moves," "Sweet Baby James" and "Fire and Rain" in spare, mostly acoustic settings. While the nineteen-track CD is more specifically performance-oriented, the two-hour DVD features Taylor sharing photos, video footage and memories in ways that provide a rich context for his songs. Taylor's supple baritone remains a wonder of intimacy, and it finds its match in the effortless intricacy of his finger-picking. More recent songs like "My Traveling Star" and "Mean Old Man" hold their own next to the likes of "Shower the People." Taken together, the One Man Band CD-DVD is more a musical biography than simply a greatest-hits set, Taylor's latest missive from the long and winding road he's on.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"